IN TUNE WITH EASY LEARNING

THE students of the Panchayat Union Primary School in Kurunchankkulam of Tenkasi district were repeating after instructor M Muthu Durai's words; astoundingly, the chorus they made had a tune to it.

- THINAKARAN RAJAMANI

One glance and anyone can misinterpret it for a music class, with the presence of two keyboards, a set of hand drums and a tambourine inside the classroom. It was a language class and the students were singing verses made by Durai with a tune. With the array of musical instruments at his command, Durai turns harder-to-remember poems, pieces of information, and fact snippets into digestible verses, easy to memorise.

"When I joined the school in 2016, I observed the difficulties of the students in remembering the lessons," the government schoolteacher reminisced. As a method to enhance memory recall, he decided to incorporate music into his teaching techniques. With the assistance of a philanthropic alumnus of the school, Durai was able to purchase musical instruments. "Besides understanding the subject, the students are able to memorise the lessons easily when I teach them with the help of music. I see so much improvement now," he says.