ABACUS KNOWLEDGES

Need of Abacus

There may arise a question in one’s mind that why is there a need to teach children to use abacus or to teach them solving arithmetical problems using abacus in this time of advanced technology. But the fact is that even if the advancements are made in the technology making it possible for human beings to perform complex calculations and to explore new dimensions in the field of knowledge, the mind of the child is completely empty and it is to be written on. Child’s mind could grab some things with difficulty and has the tendency of forgetting learnt topics after some time.

With the help of abacus simple arithmetical functions are easy to learn especially multiplication which may seem easier to an adult to perform but are very difficult for the juvenile to understand.

Learn While Playing

Nowadays abaci are also used as toys by children. These are among the things that they see quite often and are familiar with them. When children are asked to learn arithmetical calculation on their abaci they feel like playing and in this way they learn a lot without being bored at all. Children feel happy with something like abacus because of its shape. Anything, which has rods and beads attached to it, makes them feel good and relaxing while learning.

This process is easy to adapt for the beginners and puts less stress on the mind of children. Every bead of the abacus is assigned a particular value and it is relatively easy to learn those values and keep performing calculations on the device, as the beads are assigned certain values therefore there is no need to keep anything in mind rather keep fingers on the beads and place beads in their calculated positions. The result can be easily inferred from the positions of the beads on the rod.

Abacus Necessity

Sometimes it is needed to teach children how to use abacus. For instance blind children are taught to use abacus because they cannot perform calculations on the paper. Abacus has proved out to be an ideal tool for those people as it allows them to calculate easily and quickly while being reliable. The use of abacus is easy to understand for the new beginner and it also helps in developing the mind of the children.

At the initial learning stage of a child it is almost impossible to learn all of the things in a flash. Abacus has this innate tendency to design the model for the good development of a child’s brain. The study has shown that the children which have used abacus in their past could perform arithmetical calculations more quickly and comfortably when they are grown ups.

This is due to the fact that they have the golden rule of calculating long figures with the help of broken packets of that figure in their minds and it allows them to perform more conveniently in the later stage of their life.

Development of the right brain by the abacus method of mental calculation

The human brain consists of the right brain and the left brain. The shapes of these two parts are similar, but differences have been gradually found in their functions. The left brain is also referred to as the digital brain. It controls reading and writing, calculation, and logical thinking. The right brain is referred to as the analog brain. It controls three-dimensional sense, creativity, and artistic senses. These two work together to allow us to function as humans. The Japanese are thought to speak Japanese with their left brain, and this allows their left brain to be more efficient. On the other hand, westerners also utilize their right brain to learn their languages, so their right brain is usually more efficient. It is natural that young Japanese students are better at mathematical calculation than students in western countries who are the same age. It is also natural that, because of the better development in their right brain, students in western countries are more creative and original than Japanese students. In recent years, some have argued for the necessity of the Venture Promotion in Japan, but in order to foster this type of environment we need to develop an education system that would train the students’ right brain first. In addition, it is also found that if one trains the right brain, it is less likely to get dementia.To activate the brain,the best way to exercise fingertips, but also positively influences the right brain to be activated. Although it may take a little more time than for younger people, activation in the cerebral nerve cells certainly does occur even at the age of a hundred. In this case also, they have to come to like the abacus first. Throughout the lifetime there is truth in the saying that you do well at what you like. A “master of life” is a person who has a cooperation of the archicortex and the neocortex throughout their lifetime. Development of human brain 　What is the structure of our brain like? How does the brain develop? Cerebral physiology has seen great developments. However, there still is much that is unknown about our brain. Our brain is truly amazing. What we know up to this point includes that the human brain is created at an early stage of embryo development and that cerebral nerve cells are already made by the time of birth. Within the brain, the brain stem (all living animals have it, and it controls the functions necessary for survival such as the functions of the heart and internal organs) and the cerebral archicortex (which controls basic instincts such as appetite, sexual desire, sleep, desire to belong to a group, and emotions such as pleasant and unpleasant feelings, fear, anger,etc) are basically completed while in the womb. 　On the other hand, among animals of higher order, humans have the highly developed cerebral neocortex that can create nerve cells (some say there are 14 billion nerve cells!). This cerebral neocortex does not fully function at the time of birth. In the following years, suitable stimuli start to activate (to connect motor nerves and sensory nerves) the nerve cells in the neocortex. This is why children grow up well in many aspects if they receive appropriate stimuli that develop the nerve cells in the neocortex. The archicortex is more or less completed at the time of birth, but it of course can develop even further after birth. What is important here is that the archicortex requires “to be loved” and is responsible for the cultivation of aesthetic sentiments. 　Humans cannot live without “being loved”. Only those who grew up being loved can learn to love as they grow older. With the help of a good archicortex, the neocortex will be activated efficiently. Even with hard work, efficiency will not improve without cooperation from the archicortex. In order to activate the nerve cells in the neocortex, information or stimuli from outside the brain have first to be perceived as “pleasant” by the archicortex. This is when the activation of the brain improves and the systems to process information in the neocortex are most efficiently completed. On the other hand, if the information or stimuli are perceived as “unpleasant”, the activation of the brain does not occur and the neocortex is suppressed to grow any further.