Vedic Math and The Abacus

Chennai, India, July 21, 2008, (school picture). “One who wants to acquire knowledge should not think of physical comforts; should be prepared to forgo even sleep”. A quote outside the open air classroom at the most famous and prestigious dance school in India, the Kalakshetra School of Dance. No pictures were allowed so I have no photos. This school also does weaving and block printing. We got to watch students in open air classrooms, practicing with their instructors. Is a fascinating school that brings in students from all over the world to learn native Indian dance and arts?
We visited the Padmaseshadri Bala Bhavan Senior Secondary School, a private school where students learn about the Hindu culture as part of the instruction. The kids in this school were a lot more relaxed and had smiles on there faces, then some of the other schools we have seen in India. The school has 2000 students and we met the 83 year old director who started the school and still runs it. She wanted a school for students that brought back Indian traditions that were lost when the British took over. The ninth grade science students are broken up into thirds and each group rotates through physics, biology and chemistry every week. Kids get more one on one instruction this way.
Had a professor give us a lecture on Vedic math today. What an interesting way to get students to compute large numbers without a calculator. India teaches Vedic math to increase their student’s math scores on test that you can’t use calculators. Many students can multiple numbers in their head quicker than someone on a calculator.
Had another professor lecture on the use of the Abacus in India. They do not use the Chinese abacus, they use the abacus based on five (one bead on top and four on bottom). They have brain research that shows an abacus greatly improves elementary math scores as it brings in tactile and listening skills to help kids learn math. Kids that use an abacus for a few years don’t actually need the abacus to do mental math because they have a mental picture in their head of an abacus. The videos of elementary students doing four and five digit addition, subtraction and multiplication were awesome.