On New Year's Eve, I, like so many other Americans, was glued to my TV set watching ABC and PBS take us to celebrations across the globe, beginning at some remote island in the South Pacific where the year 2000 started, then to New Zealand, Australia, Japan, China, Moscow, Bethlehem, Rome, Paris, London, Newfoundland, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Montreal, Toronto and Chicago. I did not stay up long enough to see the new year arrive in Los Angeles, or Honolulu, which was probably the last major city on earth to finally come into the year 2000.

It was amazing to see the delirium in Times Square as more than a million folk turned out to see the famous ball atop the Times building lowered so that the sign 2000 could light up. The only thing that changed after that momentous countdown was a number -- from 1999 to 2000. Yet that immaterial, spiritual change of one number forced nations across the globe to spend billions of dollars on fireworks displays, parades, concerts, dances, celebrations, and feasts, all of which took years of preparation. My favorite displays were the fireworks on the Eiffel Tower in Paris. It lived up to all its hype. That tower, a culminating display of 19th century technology, has a grace, dignity, and solidity reflecting the inventive genius of that century.

Why is one number so important? Why is it capable of creating delirium among millions of celebrants? We are the only species who believe in the power of numbers. The Bible is full of numbers. There is even a Book of Numbers. There are Ten Commandments, Seven Seals, Twelve Tribes, Seven Angels. God gave man not only the ability to count, but the absolute necessity to count.

What are numbers? They are merely the names and written symbols we give to quantities. The need to count is what makes numbers necessary. We count everything. We count days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, millennia. We count the miles we travel and the number of hours and minutes it takes us to get from here to there. We count a hundredth of a second in Olympic races. We count our birthdays. The countdown of life begins at conception, nine months of gestation. Some lives are cut short before birth, before that developing human being has learned the meaning of numbers.

We register the day, month and year of birth and then count each completed year of life as a blessing. Last May, I completed 73 full years of life. My brain, like a computer, has a storehouse of memory which is now so full that sometimes it is slow in bringing up a name or a particular event. But memory is extremely useful in being able to recall what life was like 50 or 60 years ago. It gives one a view of a changing world that the young simply do not have. Reading about it is not like having been there. And most young people do not bother to read if, indeed, they can read.

And many young people have difficulty with numbers because of the way they are now taught in our public schools. Math test scores have been dismal. Why? Because the schools cannot deal with the mystery of numbers, which is really part of religion. For example, the delirium over the beginning of a new millennium is fraught with religious significance. The counting in our calendar is based on the birth of Jesus Christ, who was sent to this earth to save men from their sinful natures, to offer them forgiveness of sin, salvation and eternal life after death.

But humanists, who do not believe in biblical religion, prefer to celebrate the New Year as the time in the calendar when the days begin getting longer. They simply see mankind as a species of animal living on a planet that revolves around the sun every 365 days or so, and rotates on an axis which gives us days and nights. They see no religious significance in any of this. They see no mystery in numbers.

But it is religion that has created meaning in numbers. The Lord created the universe in six days and rested on the seventh, which is why we have a week and a Sabbath weekend. We celebrate festivals that conform to biblical commandments, requirements and events. God gave us a rudimentary calculator in our ten fingers. That is why we use a ten-base system of counting.

We also know that the marvelous technology that permitted us to place satellites in outer space so that we could view the New Year celebrations around the globe depended on the development of mathematics. All of computer technology is based on the ability of the human brain to translate numbers and letters into zeros and ones by way of electrical impulses. Even the concept of zero is one of the great inventions of the human brain, without which all of our modern technology would not have been possible.

Another important use of numbers is in the forming of chronological memory, on which all of our knowledge of history is based. In fact, the Bible itself is the standard of chronological narration, which begins with Day One of Creation and extends beyond the written word of Scripture to our present-day calendar of events. History can only be understood in chronological terms, for it permits us to analyze cause and effect. And that is why American children are deprived of a chronological study of American history -- so that they will be unable to understand cause and effect. They are told that remembering dates is not important. It's no longer necessary to know what happened in 1492, 1776, 1789, 1860, 1917, 1939, 1941, or 1945.

I became acutely aware of the importance of chronology when I was researching my book, "Is Public Education Necessary?" I wanted to find out why the American people gave up educational freedom for government owned and operated schools so early in our nation's history when the advantages of educational freedom were so obvious in view of the fact that that is what our Founding Fathers enjoyed. I had to do a year-by-year investigation to finally understand how and why that change took place. It had nothing to do with economics or literacy. It was all philosophical, and that was a profound revelation to me. That philosophical revolution was engineered by a small Unitarian elite that had captured Harvard University and began its work of secularizing education through government ownership of schools. It was the beginning of political liberalism.

We need to know numbers in order to survive. We must count money. We must count taxes. We must count commodities. We must count billions and trillions in government spending. We must count people. In the Book of Numbers we find much counting of people of different ages for social, military and religious reasons. Civilized nations count themselves. Counting always answers the questions of how many, how long, how short, how high, how low.

And now we must start dating our checks, and letters, and diaries with the year 2000 or, if we prefer to use Roman numerals, MM. The human race has reached an incredible milestone when we think of what life was like in the year 1000. Most of the material advance that has so profoundly changed human life took place only in the last 150 years. The young have so much to look forward to, provided they don't forget that what they enjoy today is the result of what human beings did and invented before them. The past is, indeed, prelude.

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Samuel L. Blumenfeld is the author of eight books on education, including "Is Public Education Necessary?" "NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education," and "Homeschooling: A Parents Guide to Teaching Children." His books are available on Amazon.com. For information about Blumenfeld's reading instruction program, "Alpha-Phonics," write: The Tutoring Company, P.O. Box 540111, Waltham, MA 02454-0111.