The teaching of numbers in the primary grades is seen in this book as the foundation of the beginnings of mathematical understanding. Mathematics is taken to be a language, and the aim of its teaching is to make the pupil, so to speak, bilingual, or so to increase his understanding that he is able to translate a concrete numerical problem into the symbolic language of calculation. For a child taught along these lines, how much easier, for example, would be the transition from arithmetic to algebra!
Miss Churchill is fully conversant with the works of Piaget, Cuisenaire, Cassirer and other leading thinkers in educational philosophy, psychology, and linguistics. She has synthesized their concepts with her own experience and research at Leeds University, and, though written within the contexts of British education, her book should also have a marked influence on the teaching of young children in North America.
