Excerpt from Junior High School Mathematics, Vol. 1

During the first six grades the pupil has learned to compute with some skill, using whole numbers, fractions, and decimals. The work of these grades was necessarily centered around an arithmetical topic and the pupil had but little opportunity to apply his knowledge except to problems involving the topics studied. But to continue such a division of topics results not only in a loss of interest in the subject, but in a very inadequate training in using mathematics to answer the quantitative questions that necessarily arise in the varied Interests and activities of life.

This series of mathematical textbooks assumes a knowledge of the arithmetical processes, and after a brief review of them in Book I the entire series centers the thought about some social issue and uses whatever mathematics is needed to answer the questions that naturally arise in an intelligent study of the issue. Such an arrangement is used not merely to give an increased interest in the study, but to develop the power to apply mathematics to the quantitative phases of life and to develop the habit of raising questions needed to interpret more Lilly the quantitative side of life.

It should be noticed, then, that this series especially emphasizes the interpretative power of mathematics and seeks to develop both the power to see and the habit of seeing the quantitative relationships that necessarily arise in topics of general conversation and reading. This necessarily involves the use of large numbers, for our newspapers and magazines are now full of such numbers in their discussions of the production and consumption of the world's necessities. Hence, certain chapters involving such numbers are given, in order to train the pupil to interpret them more intelligently.

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