Grube Method - American Education

An obsolete but once widely used method of teaching mathematics developed in 1842 by A. W. Grube, an otherwise obscure mathematics instructor. Instead of teaching one arithmetical process at a time—for example, by learning all combinations of adding numbers from 1 to 10—the Grube Method taught all four processes simultaneously for each successive number in combinations with smaller numbers. For example, students would learn all processes for the number 2 by writing and memorizing 2 = 1 + 1; 2 - 1 = 1; 2 - 2 = 0; 2 = 2 × 1; 2 = 1 × 2; 2/1 = 2; 2/2 = 1. Each successive number produced more and more combinations—10 for the number 3, 13 for 4, and so on. The method was abandoned by the end of the 19th century in favor of more effective and less boring methods of instruction.