Education -- Norway; School management and organization -- Norway
Simple arithmetical operations occupy the entire field during the
earlier years. The elementary algebraic forms and methods of solution
are introduced relatively early, and minor geometric relations and
operations are presented during the last (seventh) year of the lower
schools. These latter features are radically different from our general
procedure in the United States. We are in the habit of presenting the
various mathematical subjects one at a time, completing one before
another is considered to any extent whatever. For example, arithmetic is
taken up and gone through, while parts of geometry and algebra which
would be great aids in some of the arithmetical solutions are studiously
avoided or excluded until the formal study of that particular subject is
finally begun. The people of Norway, on the contrary, enter the larger
field of mathematics and, in a more rational manner--a more
psychological way--utilize available processes and forms at every
opportunity. The phases of mathematics are not specialized into
isolation but coordinated into a working unity. Instead of studying one
subject throughout its intricacies and side issues before admitting
consideration of other phases of mathematics, they make it the rule to
utilize the elemental factors of the various mathematical subjects in
every way possible. They give recognition to the simpler and more
fundamental principles and operations regardless of the special phase of
the subject to which they belong, and use the entire product as
groundwork for succeeding steps in the science. In this way parts of
algebra and geometry become valuable contributing preliminaries to
higher arithmetical operations.
The texts used by the pupils are little more than a series of exercises.
All teaching is done by the teacher and the texts are arranged in such a
way that the children may have opportunity to become skilled in the
principles evolved in class through application of them in the long
lists of problems in their texts. Very little blackboard is provided for
the pupils' use, hence but little blackboard work is accomplished. Each
room has a small board on which the teacher of a pupil may go through
solutions. Never have I seen more than one at a time working at the
blackboard. While the limited use of blackboards generally calls for an
increased amount of dependence upon intellectual activity and consequent
increase in mental alertness, the free use of blackboards relieves the
mind of unnecessary burdens which may as well be borne by crayon, and
thus provides for the higher centers a freer activity in pushing on the
quest for the unknown.
_Geography_
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