This is evidently a book on the psychology of teaching arithmetic, not on the inner motivations of the numbers themselves. A quick perusal of the text turned up this gem of a line:
What armament of satisfiers and annoyers, of positive and negative interests and
motives, stands ready for use in the formation of the intrinsically uninteresting connections between black marks and meanings, numerical exercises and their answers, words and their spelling, and the like? School practice has tried, more or less at random, incentives and deterrents from quasi-physical pain to the most sentimental fondling, from sheer cajolery to philosophical argument, from appeals to assumed savage and primitive traits to appeals to the interest in automobiles, flying-machines, and wireless telegraphy.
They just don't write 'em like that anymore.
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