The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c5.s17.11

c5.s17.11

10. Having attained a thorough knowledge of the letters, the scholar next learns to write the compounds, or the manner of embodying the symbols of the vowels in the consonants and the formation of syllables, etc., then the names of men, villages, animals, etc., and finally arithmetical signs. He then commits to memory an addition table, and counts from one to a hundred; he afterwards writes easy sums in addition, and subtraction of money; multiplication and the reduction of money, measures, etc. Here great pains are taken with the scholars, in teaching him the fractions of an integer, which descend, not be tens as in our decimal fractions, but by fours, and are carried to a great extent. In order that these fractions, together with the arithmetical table, in addition, multiplication, and those on the threefold measures of capacity, weight, and extent, may be rendered quite familiar to the minds of the scholars, they are made to stand up twice a day, in rows, and repeat the whole after one of the monitors.