An educationist, Dr Bukola Dosumu has called for the integration of Abacus skills into learning activities from elementary classes.
Dosumu, a school proprietor in Abuja, disclosed this at the Grand Finale of a 10-day Demonstrating Mastery of Abacus on Friday.
The event, organised by Pro-Math Abacus Mental Arithmetic Club(P-MAMAC), is with the view of building the mental capacity of students and teachers in arithmetic.
An Abacus, also known as a counting frame, is a hand operated calculating tool designed to support students with multiple methods to perform calculation.
Dosumu, also the Lead Coordinator for P-MAMAC, called on the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) to look at introducing the skill to the school curriculum.
“This calls for organisations like the National Mathematical Centre, the NUC, and the NERDC to begin to look at this programme.
“How the programme can be integrated into the learning activities from a very young age so that the children can get used to it, the teachers can get used to it, and it can help us,” she said.
Also, the Business Developer, Educare, Mr Ikechukwu Onyia, pledged the organisation’s continued support to developing talents in the young ones.
“As you can see, these children are impressive, and to be honest, I am amazed with what I saw today, and we in Educare want to encourage young ones.
“When we were young, we did not get this opportunity, they did not teach us all these things, and if you look at all these countries, they are more interested in the young ones and developing them is very important,” he said.
One of the participating teachers, Juliet Courage, expressed the importance of the skill, noting that it equipped teachers on requisite knowledge of developing and boosting their inner abilities.
“It makes you more aware; it makes you knowledgeable, it makes you fast; it makes you consistent, it challenges you to do more.
“And when you have been able to activate that, you will be able to activate it also in your children, students and everyone that comes in contact with you,” she said.
In the same vein, a parent, Mr Ayodele Igbinosa, commended the organiser, while urging the government to take advantage of the skills in the total brain development of students.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the skills have numerous benefits among which are to sharpen the calculation ability of children and improves concentration span.
Other benefits are that it increases memory power, enhances students’ Intelligence Quotient (IQ), develop the patience and will power of students and improves study discipline, among others.
The event featured donation of N100,000 as awards to the best students and teachers in the training competition by the Educare.
By Funmilayo Adeyemi, NEWS AGENCY OF NIGERIA