(4) The omissions, on grounds of apparent excess practice, should be made only after careful consideration of the third principle described above.
(5) The amount of practice should always be considered in the light of its interest and appeal to the pupil's tendency to work with full power and zeal. Mere repetition of bonds when the learner does not care whether he is improving is rarely justifiable on any grounds.
(6) Practice that is actually in excess is not a very grave defect if it is enjoyed and improves the pupil's attitude toward arithmetic. Not much time is lost; a hundred practices for each of a thousand bonds after mastery to 199 in 200 at 2 seconds will use up less than 60 hours, or 15 hours per year in grades 3 to 6.
(7) By the proper division of practice among bonds, the arrangement of learning so that each bond helps the others, the adroit shifting of practice of a bond to each new type of situation requiring it to operate under changed conditions, and the elimination of excess practice where nothing substantial is gained, notable improvements over the past hit-and-miss customs may be expected.
(8) Unless the material for practice is adequate, well balanced and sufficiently motivated, the teacher must keep close account of the learning of pupils. Otherwise disastrous underlearning of many bonds is almost sure to occur and retard the pupil's development.
THE ORGANIZATION OF ABILITIES
There is danger that the need of brevity and simplicity which has made us speak so often of a bond or an ability, and of the amount of practice it requires, may mislead the reader into thinking that these bonds and abilities are to be formed each by itself alone and kept so. They should rarely be formed so and never kept so. This we have indicated from time to time by references to the importance of forming a bond in the way in which it is to be used, to the action of bonds in changed situations, to facilitation of one bond by others, to the coöperation of abilities, and to their integration into a total arithmetical ability.
As a matter of fact, only a small part of drill work in arithmetic should be the formation of isolated bonds. Even the very young pupil learning 5 and 3 are 8 should learn it with '5 and 5 = 10,' '5 and 2 = 7,' at the back of his mind, so to speak. Even so early, 5 + 3 = 8 should be part of an organized, coöperating system of bonds. Later 50 + 30 = 80 should become allied to it. Each bond should be considered, not simply as a separate tool to be put in a compartment until needed, but also as an improvement of one total tool or machine, arithmetical ability.
There are differences of course. Knowledge of square root can be regarded somewhat as a separate tool to be sharpened, polished, and used by itself, whereas knowledge of the multiplication tables cannot. Yet even square root is probably best made more closely a part of the total ability, being taught as a special case of dividing where divisor is to be the same as quotient, the process being one of estimating and correcting.