There are also artifacts demonstrating their methodology for solving equations like the quadratic equation. These were mostly located in Mesopotamia where the Sumerians were practicing multiplication and division. However, there are many different writings on mathematics and mathematics methodology that date back to 1800 BCE. The first mathematics textbooks to be written in English and French were published by Robert Recorde, beginning with The Grounde of Artes in 1543. For example, the division of a board into thirds can be accomplished with a piece of string, instead of measuring the length and using the arithmetic operation of division. They also contrasted with mathematical methods learned by artisan apprentices, which were specific to the tasks and tools at hand. They contrasted with Platonic math taught at universities, which was more philosophical and concerned numbers as concepts rather than calculating methods. Spreading along trade routes, these methods were designed to be used in commerce. The first modern arithmetic curriculum (starting with addition, then subtraction, multiplication, and division) arose at reckoning schools in Italy in the 1300s. Although it continued to be taught in European universities, it was seen as subservient to the study of Natural, Metaphysical and Moral Philosophy.
In the Renaissance, the academic status of mathematics declined, because it was strongly associated with trade and commerce, and considered somewhat un-Christian.
Apprentices to trades such as masons, merchants and money-lenders could expect to learn such practical mathematics as was relevant to their profession. The teaching of geometry was almost universally based on Euclid's Elements. This structure was continued in the structure of classical education that was developed in medieval Europe. In Plato's division of the liberal arts into the trivium and the quadrivium, the quadrivium included the mathematical fields of arithmetic and geometry. Illustration at the beginning of the 14th-century translation of Euclid's Elements.