Ghana to take part in Mental Arithmetic Competition (21/11/08)

Story: Jennifer Dornoo
TWENTY children below the age of 14 will represent Ghana at an international mental arithmetic competition in Malaysia on Sunday, November 23, 2008.
The children, who are from nine selected schools in Accra, will compete with more than 3,000 children from 40 different countries around the world.
The competition is being organised under the Universal Concept of Mental Arithmetic System (UCMAS) programme which involves calculation solely by the human mind without the aid of instruments.
The 20 children representing Ghana are from the Rect Academy, Morning Glory School, St Bernadette School, Christ the King International School, Queensland International School, Faith Montessori School, Mary Mother of Good Counsel School, Mothercare School and Danem Royal Montessori.
They will be the first African children to compete in the programme since its inception in 1993.
The Director of Koios International Limited (KOIOS), the sole organiser of the UCMAS programme in Ghana, Mr Girish Gurbani, who announced this at a press briefing in Accra on Tuesday, said the children had been trained to do calculations using a counting tool called Abacus which the children visualised to master the skill of calculating mentally.
He explained that the UCMAS programme provided well-rounded education to develop children’s concentration, creative thinking, memory power, logical reasoning abilities and boost their confidence to face challenges.
He said the programme concentrated on what he described as the right brain, which was the long-term memory used in imagining, day-dreaming and keeping songs such as the nursery rhyme “Twinkle, twinkle little stars” which a lot of people remembered even after 20 years.
Mr Gurbani announced that KOIOS and UCMAS Ghana were sponsoring one of the participants, Denick Nii Kotey Amon, 11, who had been able to complete 150 questions within eight minutes.
The participants, after the competition, would be sent to a museum in Egypt. They will also see the Great Pyramids.