Barbie caught a lot of flack back in the ’90s for declaring, “Math class is tough!” Today we find ourselves in the disorienting position of defending her. We recently got a note from an anonymous ...

Everyone knows that arithmetic is true: 2 + 2 = 4. But surprisingly, we don’t know why it’s true. By stepping outside the box of our usual way of thinking about numbers, my colleagues and I have ...

Bundle the ones to make 10. Moving left on the number line. Skip counting. Gone are the days of rote memorization, constant addition and subtraction drills and learning long division before you knew ...

What's the best way for children to learn arithmetic—memorizing number values and multiplication tables, or studying math at a deeper, conceptual level? Educators have long debated the merits of these ...

In the early years of the Republic, arithmetic was generally taught to teenaged boys planning careers in commerce, often by private tutors. With the advent of free common or elementary schools ...

If I could misquote Francis Keppel: "Education is too important to be left solely to the educationalists." At a stroke, Keir Bloomer would have us decimate the number of potential talented people who ...

The 30-year-old math sensation Peter Scholze is now one of the youngest Fields medalists for “the revolution that he launched in arithmetic geometry.” In the run-up to the presentation of the Fields ...

The Hechinger Report covers one topic: education. Sign up for our newsletters to have stories delivered to your inbox. Consider becoming a member to support our nonprofit journalism. For many students ...