Fun With Numbers

Vikalp aims to democratise maths among children of government and affordable private schools through learning aids

- Shilpa Elizabeth Abraham

Let’s rewind back to our childhood — we were probably three or four year-olds when we were introduced to the world of numbers. First came the counting of numbers 1,2,3,4… on our fingers. And the as addition and subtraction came along we started folding and extending our fingers. Then came multiplication, division, and more abstract concepts that were beyond demonstration through fingers. Somewhere along the journey, Mathematics became a nightmare to many. The math-phobia among students might be as old as our education system — which hasn’t changed too much from the rote learning days — but it continues to be perceived as an abstract and complex subject.

Dinesh Gupta, a JNU scholar and former journalist, draws his question from this reality. “As children why did we use our fingers for counting?” he asks. “They were our first form of learning aids. After that, concepts started getting more complex and we stopped getting any learning aids,” says Gupta, who is now trying to change this through his startup, Vikalp. According to the 11th Annual Status of Education Report that was released in 2017, only 27.7% of class III students could solve a two-digit subtraction and a mere 26% of class V students could solve simple division problems. This means that over half of the children in primary schools complete primary grades without understanding the basics of arithmetic.

Vikalp — the Hindi word for alternative — is Gupta’s initiative to provide an alternative learning and teaching method of understanding Mathematics for elementary classes. Gupta and his partner, Neha Choudhary (previously an advisor to the Prime Minister’s office as an editor in the National Technical Research Organisation) are attempting to inculcate learning aids and math kits as part of the existing NCERT curriculum for kids in nursery to class V.