Abstract
This chapter examines the extent to which arithmetic curricula in schools in North America before 1776 were concerned with calculations and problems involving money and weights and measures. Analyses of chapters in arithmetic textbooks (deemed to be “author-intended curricula”) and handwritten entries in students’ cyphering books (regarded as evidence of “teacher-implemented arithmetic curricula”) reveal that tasks related to money and to weights and measures permeated what historians have called the abbaco curriculum. That curriculum influenced the way the content of arithmetic was structured and sequenced in education institutions below the college level. The analyses also reveal that although money tasks and weights and measures tasks provided the principal emphases in school arithmetic, many students merely applied rules and methods which they did not understand.
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