Busting math-phobia

THE KING of all arts is not rock. Definitely not. It's not cinema either. Not poetry, not painting. Not dance, yoga or poga. It is - hold your breath - Mathematics.

After all, dance is about geometry, painting about patterns, rather algebra, as is music and the play of words. Art is about the logical and the illogical, about reality and the abstract, both elements of math.

If it really is all that, math should be fun. If it isn't, the Ramanujan Museum and Math Education Centre is determined to make sure it is.

In association with the Tamil Nadu Science and Technology Centre, the Ramanujan Centre has organised a training course for school teachers to introduce them to an innovative Math curriculum for pre-kindergarten, KG and class one students.

So kids will play games, solve puzzles and investigate patterns to learn Mathelang - the Mathematician's language, known in normal terms as algebra. It will be all play for the kids, mostly with patterns and designs for which they have a natural flair.

Algebra at pre-school might seem to be a bit too early, but it's a pattern followed worldwide, according to the centre. The idea is to introduce kids to a mathematics not quite viewed as a bitter pill, but to a study of patterns, relations and structures. A math that they learn to be fun, that it's a game of intuition and imagination.

The centre also reckons that pre-school is a good time to bust math-phobia at its zero, and to introduce algebra at a time of least learner resistance.

In later stages, this should smoothen the transition from basic arithmetics to algebra and theoretical geometry.

The teacher training course will be held over three Saturdays in batches till April 2002; the first batch has already been completed.

Each school can depute one PG Mathematics teacher and two parents to the course, and the teachers are in turn expected to train their colleagues.

For details, contact: Mr. P.K. Srinivasan at 2346813 or Mr. S. Rajesh at 3774490.

Of course, you always knew that Math is the queen of all sciences.

By Feroze Ahmed

It will be all play for the kids, mostly with patterns and designs for which they have a natural flair.

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