This paper is about the method by which young children learn the nature of number. By arguments in the language of the primitives, in the history of number, and in the modern approaches to teaching number concepts, we establish that numbers are understood by most people to be qualitative, rather than quantitative. Accordingly, we employ this idea to conduct real experiments to teach young children with a qualitative sense of number. We conclude by restating the principle that education is life itself. Children should and can learn number qualitatively, since their cognitive psychology of number is quantitative, not quantitative, at an early age.