‘Mere paas maths hai’

Since Bollywood stars enjoy a mass appeal, says Kamath, he thought of using their iconic dialogues, social behaviour and cultural references to send across the message. The memes apart, Grammy-winner Ricky Kej has composed a math song in English and Kannada to popularise the subject. Akshara also runs a mathematics programme called Akshara Ganitha to aid the learning of the subject among government school students through various activities.

“Sports is fun, science is nerdy, mathematics is perceived to be tough,” observes Kamath, worried that the all India (rural) figures for basic arithmetic has not shown any improvement over the last few years. “Students can’t fathom what a dot below and a dot above a little horizontal line means even though they can neatly divide their entire class to form two competing cricket teams,” he notes referring to the fact that the ability to do division among Standard VIII students has been dropping since 2010.

Apart from capacity building and working on community-school relationship, Kamath hints at more innovative ways. “University of Illinois hosts a MoSAIC Math + Arts Festival (MoSAIC stands for Mathematics of Science, Art, Industry, and Culture). Berkeley and Columbia have held festivals to creatively activate centers of a child’s brain he/she wouldn’t usually associate with mathematics.” Kamath plans to connect with organisations working in the field of education and Teacher Training Institutes. Along with children book publisher Pratham Books, Akshara has come up with ‘Happy Math’ series that can be downloaded, shared and donated.

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