Thoughts about American Mental Arithmentic from 1892

In my hand right now I am holding a book called "American Mental Arithmetic," published 1892, The front page, under the cover, is signed by "Perry Clark, Salem fifth grade, Lodi California United States of America of the Eastern Hemisphere." (His geography was obviously not up to par, but I'm sure his intentions were good, and he should be made to feel good about that.)

In the book's 160 pages are covered such topics as precedence of signs decimal-fractional conversions, denominate numbers (English weights and measures), denominate numbers (metric weights and measures), factoring, areas and volumes of geometric figures, and arithmetic progression. A typical problem, to be performed mentally, without recourse to pencil and paper: How many board feet of lumber are there in 4 timbers 4 x 4 x 20?

I wonder how many of today's fifth graders could get through page 20 of the book--finishing the chapter on simple addition--without breaking down completely over a problem (to be done mentally): It is 38 miles from A to B, 19 miles from B to C, 17 miles from C to D, 18 miles from D to E; how many miles does a man travel who goes from A to E, passing through B, C, and D?

Or page 49: Which of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, are factors of .... 72754? (One of six problems to solve mentally.) I wonder how many fifth graders today could do that. I wonder how many high school graduates today could do that.

Or page 125: Bank Discount. After a discussion of the impact of days of grace on the amount of interest actually paid, the student is directed to solve a number of problems, such as: What is the bank discount of $523 for 68 days at 9%? I wonder how many college graduates today could do that--mentally OR on paper.

At the end of the book is a series of review questions, such as "By buying apples at 2 for a cent, and the same number at 3 for a cent, and selling all at 5 for 2 cents, I lost 2 cents; how many apples did I buy?

I wonder what would happen to a teacher who tried to impose such mathematical rigor on fifth graders today. And some try to insist that modern education is not dumbed down? Of course, we couldn't have the little dearies frustrated and damaging their self esteem because they didn't know the answers. There once was a time when a student had to master both Hebrew and Greek to get a B.A. from Harvard. I understand Harvard no longer requires any foreign language, even something as simple as Swedish, for graduation. Knowledge is no longer relevant. What is relevant is how we feel about being oppressed by people who think we should learn something.

The same dumbing down trend has occurred in the spiritual sphere. I wonder how many contemporary seminary graduates have any real understanding of the great theological debates of the past five centuries. Nowadays in many religious communities it suffices to say that God loves everybody and wants everybody to be good so they can go to heaven. What is important to many modern liberal seminarians is that economic oppression be replaced by common ownership. It just wouldn't do to threaten a communicant's self esteem by suggesting he might be a sinner in need of repentance.

Of course, not all of this decline in expectations can be ascribed to the self-esteem movement--in the academy or in the chancel. There is almost never only one cause for anything. But certainly the extremes of self-esteem and outcome based education are inextricably interwoven.

Children need to learn at an early age that some things are right and some things are wrong--always. Some other things may be right or wrong depending on the circumstances. (Like sex: right in marriage, wrong outside of marriage.) Some may label that "rigid." But such are the foundations of a rational, humane society.

Even though the terms may be construed as synonyms, I am much more comfortable with "goals" than "outcome"--largely because of so much silliness that has been promoted under the name of outcome-based education. Any learning process which has no meaningful goals can produce meaningful learning only by accident. Too much education is only busywork, without meaningful goals. I remember when my kid brother was in the eighth grade at a "demonstration school" where students in education were supposed to learn how to teach. He had to spend many hours a week clipping pictures out of magazines and making scrapbooks on various topics. He got to be very good at clipping and pasting. I'm sure his teachers thought that was a good outcome. But I think I taught him more about arithmetic and English than he learned in the classroom.

We can play with the semantics, but the bottom line is that facts are facts and squash is squash--whether for the aeronautical engineer, the neuro-surgeon, the nine year old child, or the student of scripture. An outcome-based approach to Scripture allows a church to appoint a practicing homosexual as bishop. It's all about love, you see, and we have to show our love for everyone--a noble Christian outcome--and pretend that the Bible does not really condemn homosexual practice because that would not be loving.

Our lesson for this Sabbath (week 5) was on discipling our children. Our children deserve better from us than putting squishy feel-good outcomes ahead of reality.