The Scrabble board looks very familiar, till one sees that the words have been replaced by simple equations! Instead of alphabets, the little square tablets have numbers, signs and symbols on them. Models for reinforcing place values for numerals, a clock to teach the child numbers, lots of woven mats that bring out patterns in maths, soap bars that can be carved into shapes and so many other little items make up a wonderful kit for primary school mathematics teachers. This kit has been developed by Dr. Gananath and his colleagues at Suvidya, an educational resource centre in Bangalore.

Children have some concept of maths right from the time they pick up a heavier toy, make a pile of blocks, ask for more biscuits or use plurals. This abstract idea, often intuitive, of mathematics is soon made a part of formal learning when the child starts school. And this is exactly where given a good teacher the child can learn to enjoy the subject, while many individuals who have a bad or inadequate teacher acquire a distaste for the subject and are intimidated by it for life. If the unfortunate learner finds himself struggling to acquire a mass of details without being illuminated by a single concept then this great and elegant science gets reduced to one of the most traumatic, incomprehensible experiences of childhood – the “Math Block”.

While the other sciences have some amount of hands on activity included in the syllabus and the idea of a physics, chemistry or biology lab is common, maths is still taught only by the chalk and talk method. This is particularly unfortunate as a subject like maths can be understood only when a child experiences, first-hand, the idea of weight and volume, shape and size, number and pattern.

A few privileged schools spend money on importing equipment, often expensive and underutilised, for teaching mathematics, but what about the vast majority of schools outside the major metros of the country? Overcrowded classrooms, understaffed and working with insufficient funds. In such places both the enthusiastic teacher and the eager pupil suffer. While tomes have already been written about the need to teach mathematics more effectively, some people prefer not to talk but act. One such person is Dr. S.N. Gananath.

Dr. Gananath is an unassuming and taciturn person and yet after spending some time with him one realises that there are people to whom a cherished idea, however single-minded it may seem to others, is worth pursuing till the very end. His dream sounds simple -- to make children learn better --- but out of this was born Suvidya, an educational resource group. Dr. Gananath obtained his doctorate from the Indian Institute of Science, worked at the Oil and Natural Gas Commission, and then taught mathematics at Rishi Valley School in Andhra Pradesh for 5 years. He has a string of accomplishments to his credit and has been awarded the Ashoka Fellowship for innovations in maths. His distress at the abysmal quality of primary education in rural Karnataka is what made him decide to address the problem full-time.

Suvidya is part of Samuha -- a development agency working in Karnataka. Samuha operates in some of the most backward districts of the state in areas like education, community health, rural water and sanitation. Suvidya was established to promote and utilise innovative ideas in education. It believes that every school should create a space -- both physical and psychological -- to promote activity-based mathematics. In short, a maths lab.

Imagine a child playing with numerals made of rubber. One side of the numeral is rough. This guides the child in orienting the numeral correctly. He places it rough surface down. The smooth top surface has little pegs. A 3 has three pegs, a 5 five pegs, and so on. This way, a child learns to correlate the numeral with its value. Older children can distinguish units and tens by the colour and length of the pegs. A textured toy like this can be used by the visually impaired child as well.

The primary school maths kit is a treasure trove of a hundred such simple ideas that can be applied in a myriad of ways. There are also models, games, puzzles, charts and activities. The kit is accompanied by a user's manual, which can help any teacher make optimal use of it. The models themselves are simple, multipurpose, inexpensive and can be duplicated easily by the teacher. Teacher trainers have been trained by the Suvidya team on how to duplicate the kit from commonly available materials.

Gananath says: “We wanted to show teachers the wide range of materials available as each has a unique property. We have used materials from hardboard to PVC pipes, soap and sponge, clips and marbles. In the kit we have also included a sample of 15 materials commonly found as sheets. Even if a teacher doesn’t know the name of a particular material, he can take the sample to a village shop and ask for it. We are also encouraging teachers to build up their own library of materials that they can use.”

In collaboration with a government scheme, the District Primary Education Programme, the Primary School Maths kit has been distributed to about 380 centres across Karnataka. These are training centres that serve a cluster of 20 primary schools around them. Typically, the training centres are in areas where the literacy percentages are low and dropout rates are high.

From the first Maths Lab that Suvidya set up at the Planetarium in Bangalore in 1995 they have grown in leaps and bounds! They have distributed 125 high school maths kits in Rural School Science Centres run by the Karnataka Rajya Vignyan Parishad. Gananath is now busy working in 41 primary schools in Raichur, where Suvidya is working with both teachers and children. In this programme, they want to evaluate the long-term efficacy and use of the kit. Gananth is cautiously optimistic about the results: “It is difficult to make claims yet. But children who used to go home for lunch never came back earlier. Now they do!

While Kannada labs and other science labs are also part of Suvidya's agenda, their promotion of the math lab concept is worthy of applause. Their math kit includes original items like a match stick abacus, a perpetual calendar and a wonderful little toy - a little stick with a wheel attached to one end. As the child pushes the wheel and runs along, for every metre covered a little bell chimes and so the child measures out the dimensions of the room he is playing in. It comes as a shock to realise that it takes just a lot of creativity and very little money to make teaching and learning maths a truly exciting experience!