The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : 11,000 children have a shot at it

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Nov 29, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

11,000 children have a shot at it

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI, NOV. 28. Navneeth Krishnan (9) had been preparing for two months to crack the national abacus mental arithmetic competition organised by UC MAS at the Trade Centre at Nandambakkam here.

His grandfather had coached him. On Saturday, his father chauffeured him to the venue. His mother was there for moral support. Navneeth was one of 11,000 children between four and 14 years in bright yellow T-shirts participating in what may go into the Limca Book of Records for being the biggest contest of its kind. Compared to the parents, the nearly 11,000 children were completely tension-free.

On the sprawling grounds, they were playing catch, dipping their hands into a fountain, shaking hands with Mickey Mouse, jabbering with a peer from Baroda, pestering their parents for popcorn, getting lost and being found again.

Once inside the auditorium, after the instructions in English, Hindi and Tamil, there was silence — save for the scratching of around a 1,000 pencils on paper. Divided in 12 batches, according to their level of expertise, the children took their seats inside the auditorium, as their parents and interested onlookers peered inside. In the contest that dragged on for the better part of the day because of a delayed start, children from all over India, at different time slots, were calculating the result of sums like 476 + 352 +988 + 218 + 735 in mere seconds.

UC MAS, established in 1999, works on the concept of "whole brain development," teaching children mental arithmetic using an abacus. With 80,000 children enrolled in 700 franchised centres in India, Basheer Ahamed, managing director, says the numbers are growing at 4,000 children a month.

"Now that we have rural centres, charging just Rs. 150 a month (the fee in cities is Rs. 450), our target is to teach every child in India," says Mr. Ahamed.

UC MAS is sponsoring around 20 senior-level winners of this competition for an international competition in Malaysia in December, he adds.

Over 3,000 prizes and 54 trophies were given away to children declared as champions.

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