PROBLEMS IN LEARNING ARITHMETIC IN EMOTIONALLY DISABLED CHILDREN

Abstract

Mathematics, a subject of paramount importance in our ever more scientific society, often evokes intense feelings of ambivalence. It may be strongly loved and strongly hated, sometimes with sudden shifts from one attitude to the other. Students may find certain concepts elusive, cloudy, and frustrating, and yet be deeply gratified by a sense of mastery and aesthetic pleasure on attaining gradual or sudden insights. Clinical experience, our own as well as that of others, suggests that arithmetic is the subject most frequently failed by emotionally disabled children. Symbiotic psychotic children at our center in recent years were all able to read and spell well beyond their capacity in arithmetic. Although arithmetic is a subject in which the obsessive-compulsive is frequently competent, it is very vulnerable to anxiety and to problems of concentration and attention span. Children with conflicts about aggression often have difficulties in arithmetic. Children with effort and performance conflicts feel that solving and writing out arithmetic problems is especially onerous and difficult, although they may demonstrate rapid understand-