The subject will be introduced in a phased manner from academic year 2022-23 in class 6-10. File. Ten-year-old Arnav Premi of Noida enjoys learning maths and solves mathematics calculations as quickly as a calculator. Thanks to the Abacus lessons he began taking during the Covid era. What started as an extra-curricular activity is now helping Arnav learn mathematics in a fun way.
Vedic maths and abacus are mental maths systems, both designed for different age groups with the common aim to make mathematics calculations easier for children. Abacus is usually referred to students in the age group of 6-12 years while Vedic math concepts can be well taught to students above the age of 13.
In the last two decades, these mental maths systems have steadily gained popularity in India. With the Covid-19 pandemic resulting shift to digital mode, these methodologies have attracted learners more than ever.
Citing the market demand, ed-tech brand Vedantu launched a programme in Vedic maths. Offered under the V-Nurture and Super School initiative, the programme is now taught to over 2000 children of various age groups.
Nikhil Agarwal, an expert of Vedic Maths and the course curator at Vedantu said that the decision to introduce Vedic maths in the V-Nuture programme was taken after conducting market research and assessing the demand for the programme.
“Vedic Maths works on 16 word Formula which solves all known mathematical problems in the branches of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and calculus. It helps do mental calculations much faster. Therefore, not just school children but even students appearing for entrance exams like JEE and other competitive exams take up Vedic maths lessons,” Agarwal said.
Many teachers are also enrolling in the course to learn advanced skills. Sujata Mookherjee, a TGT Maths at Kendriya Vidyalaya, Kolkata took the advantage of lockdown period by enrolling herself in Vedic maths classes.
“With a shift from offline classes to online mode, the interest of students in learning mathematics online steadily dipped. It was difficult to keep their attention and concentration in the class. This is when I decided to do things differently. Hence, I enrolled myself in a Vedic Maths course online and as I learned new techniques to solve a problem, I taught them to my students. The overall response of the students significantly improved as they learned to do quick calculations,” Mookherjee told indianexpress.com
Meanwhile, schools are yet to adopt these methods in daily teaching. The principal of a reputed school in Delhi in terms of anonymity said that these methodologies can be useful in entrance exams but should not be encouraged at an early age. “Students get attracted to the habit of shortcuts and this encourages them to take the easy route in all subjects. These classes are good as extracurricular activities and it is unlikely that it will be adopted in the school curriculum anytime soon,” she said.
Vedic maths was discovered in the mid-1900s and have certain specific principles to perform various calculations in mathematics. For example, to make addition calculations, the number which is closest to the 10s multiple is counted because it is easier to add those numbers. Similarly, it uses a collection of techniques/sutras to solve mathematical problem sets in a fast and easy way.
While Vedic math is enhancing the mathematical skills at an advanced level, Abacus helps children as young as six year old to understand numbers in a concrete way.
Roma Nihalani, Abacus teacher and Delhi-NCR head of SIP Abacus believes that abacus learning is important for children especially in the early stage of childhood as it plays an instrumental role in molding a fully functional brain and developing other cognitive skills immensely well.
“Kids who learn abacus acquire the skills of listening, speed, imagination, innovation, creativity hence making them sharp & confident. It also helps to end phobia of mathematics by making arithmetic calculations easier, faster & obviously accurate,” she believes.
Sangeeta Kumar, mother of a 7-year-old said that her daughter’s performance has significantly improved after taking abacus lessons. “My daughter had number phobia. She is an excellent student in all other subjects but maths. One of our relatives introduces us to abacus classes and we casually enrolled her in the programme not expecting any results. However, her interest, as well as calculations, improved and now she looks forward to attending her abacus class every week. Kumar shared.
Although both – Abacus and Vedic maths ages old calculation methods, the awareness regarding their implementation and effectiveness took years to be recognised.
Gaurav Tekriwal, founder of Vedic Maths Forum (India) launched his platform in 2000. What started as an offline platform is now operational only in online mode.
“Earlier we used to organise seminars, workshops to aware students about the use of Vedic maths. In the initial years, the effectiveness of the methodology wasn’t well recognised. But with its popularity abroad and with the advent of internet culture, people are now well aware of the mental math system,” Tekriwal shared.
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