A
successful organization does not do different
things, but does things differently. UCMAS,
which has a lot of initiative, has gone a step
further and widened the scope of its mission.
The company is recently set to provide their
unique training to the physically challenged
children in Mumbai. UCMAS has started classes
for the visually and partially impaired children
and been teaching them how to use abacus for
their mathematical functions like
multiplication, division, subtraction and
addition.
After a lot of consistent
enquiries, meetings and many rounds of
discussions with the authorities of National
Association of the Blind and The Victoria
Memorial School for the Blind, Tardeo, Mumbai,
Shri Sriram Hadpad the Chairman and MD of UCMAS,
Mumbai could clinch an arrangement with this
institution for running its arithmetic classes
in their school premises. Impressed by this
unique mental arithmetic training concept, this
school for the blind, which was established in
1902, gave UCMAS the permission to run classes
for their blind students. Initially, on a trial
basis, the school has enrolled only a handful of
children, numbering about 25, for the training.
And as a social cause, UCMAS is also set to
offer this training to these special kids free
of cost.
This new vision teacher Mr. Hadpad’s
trailblazing endeavour has brought UCMAS to the
sightless kids in India, and that too in Mumbai
and thereby introduced the use of abacus as a
tool for a blind student. Though Abaci are
commonly used by individuals who have visual
impairment in some of the developed countries in
the west, UCMAS’s effort in Mumbai is the first
of its kind in South Asia. For educational
purposes, a student with visual impairment is
one whose visual acuity is not sufficient for
the student to participate with ease in everyday
activities. The impairment interferes with
optimal learning and achievement and can result
in a substantial educational disadvantage,
unless adaptations are made in the methods of
presenting learning opportunities, the nature of
the materials used and/or the learning
environment.
With the use of Abacus,
mathematics has been made easy for children with
visual impairment. I do not think abacus is
archaic, I think it is a very tangible way to
keep track of the various steps in more
complicated math problems. A person using an
abacus properly is doing more thinking than
those who only use a calculator. Blind kids can
use abacus like any other normal child, by
hearing, sensing and moving the beads up and
down and write the answer on their Braille. All
a child needs to use abacus is hearing sense.
Despite visually disabled, with the help of
abacus the blind kids can hope to turn out to be
a sensational performer on par with their
sighted courterparts, so all one needs to learn
abacus is ‘a good sense of hearing’, and mental
ability to visualise things.
Proper finger
technique is paramount in achieving proficiency
on the abacus. Most of you have seen an abacus
somewhere in your life, but you may never have
used one. For the child with a visual impairment
the abacus is comparable to the sighted peer’s
pencil and paper, and should be considered a
fundamental component of his math instruction.
The visually impaired will become very
proficient with addition, subtraction and
multiplication using their abacus and really can
enjoy doing math more than they use to compute
using their Perkins Brailler. With the abacus,
they compute problems faster and have an easier
time erasing and starting over, if they make a
mistake. I believe that using an abacus will
help the blind children to better understand the
concepts of place value and decimals.
What
triggered Sir Hadpad’s entreprenuerial instict
and made him turn his focus on teaching the
blind students abacus was a news report about a
blind graduate who was denied his right to get a
position just because he is visually disabled
and lacked logic. Mr Hadpad says, he was moved
by the incident very much. It was then that he
decided to take up the challenge of teaching the
blind. After all, men distinguish but not Abacus
– whether you have light or no light in the
eyes.
Now a few months down the line, having
been through the training, the sightless child
can also stand long side his sighted
counterparts and give a live demonstration, to
every one’s surprise. The class is doing well,
as expected. Listening to the blind children
singing The UCMAS song is one such ineffable
thrilling experience. The teaching method is the
same. No special effort or technique is used
while imparting this training. Since the
visually impaired children are extra dextrous,
they can easily learn, even faster than the
normal sighted children and overcome their
physical shortcomings. One cannot help admiring
our CMD for his initiative. Well done, Sir.
Please keep it on as we don’t want our blind
kids to settle for anything less.
— Albert
David
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