Dr Rashmi Mantri, founder of Supermaths, was invited to speak with Kaye Adams on her BBC Radio show “The Kaye Adams Show”.
“Should we ban the calculator from Scottish classrooms? Dr Rashmi Mantri from Glasgow said she felt a sense of shame when her son couldn’t do simple sums at 8 years. She taught him the Asian abacus and went on to set up Glasgow’s British Youth International college offering abacus classes to young people.”
About Dr Rashmi Mantri
Dr Rashmi Mantri is using the abacus method as an alternative to the standard Mathematics curriculum assigned by the Scottish Government and the Scottish Qualifications Authority. With classes in the West End and Southside of Glasgow, along with the classes also offered in Edinburgh, Dr Mantri is adapting taking what was a way of helping her son Druv after she saw him struggling with mental sums, to the masses.
The abacus method works by mentally moving the beads of an abacus. Initially, students are taught simple addition and subtraction but once they’ve gotten used to the method they then move on to more complex techniques like multiplication and division. Eventually, students become so used to the method that they are able to answer complicated sums in a matter of seconds, the same time it would take to input into a calculator.
Dr Mantri hopes the method and the abacus itself becomes commonplace in the classroom.
About Kaye Adams
“Kaye Adams is a British television presenter and journalist, best known for being a panellist on ITV topical discussion show Loose Women from 1999 to 2006 and again from 2013, in which she left to become a regular panellist on Channel 5’s daily morning show The Wright Stuff from 2007 until 2012.
She hosts the popular The Kaye Adams Show on BBC Radio Scotland weekdays from 9am to 12pm.”