Sean DiLeonardi, 2021 Junior Fellow, answers five questions about his work with the Science, Technology and Business Division’s “Arithmetic, Numeracy, Literacy and Imagination” project.
The Junior Fellow internship program is itself an amazing program which introduces undergraduate as well as graduate students to a vast world of information.
However, practical arithmetic standardized professionalization by treating all students as potential workers in fields that required numeracy skills--from banking and farming to masonry and carpentry. The business application of arithmetic education became so ingrained--apparently to Davidson’s dismay--that by 1895, the West Virginia State Series curriculum defined arithmetic as: “the solving of problems from its various applications to business life.”
...it also became clear to me that I was entering into a rare opportunity. During my ten weeks with the Library of Congress, I would have access to a collection of materials composed largely of textbooks, cypher books, or treatises in the history of math--a collection most of which had never been digitized and, as a result, was generally understudied.