Prof. Dr. Dino Wong, President and Founder of UC MAS Education Group, Malaysian Ambassador
Dato’ Abdul Malek Abdul Aziz and Mr. Moataz Azar, GN UC MAS Jordan .Photo Embassy of Malaysia
By Thameen Kheetan ‘ Jordan Times
AMMAN - Four Jordanian students will head to Malaysia in November to take part in an international competition on abacus and mental arithmetic, after winning a similar local contest this week.Sandra Shawish, Rami Barham, Mohammad Osama and Osama Ilias won first place in the Abacus and Mental Arithmetic first National Competition on Saturday, an event sponsored by Universal Concept of Mental Arithmetic System (U C MAS) Jordan, an international Malaysia-based programme that aims to ‘develop’ latent mental power’ of children between the ages of four and 12.
Following their victory, the four winners will head to Malaysia in November to compete with peers from countries across the world in the UC MAS 16th Abacus and Mental Arithmetic International Competition in Kuala Lumpur.
Introduced in the Kingdom one year ago, some 2,000 local students have joined the programme, which entails a 30-month course on how to enhance mental skills, according to organisers.The abacus is a counting frame that is used for solving arithmetic problems. It originates in Asian countries and predates the adoption of the written numerical system. During Saturday’s competition, participating children were given eight minutes to solve 150 addition and subtraction problems.
Some used an abacus, while others used their fingers to move beads of an imaginary abacus to calculate the answer, a skill promoted in the programme’s advanced level.
‘The more they do these operations using only their minds and without any tools, they are training and developing their skills,’ U C MAS Jordan General Manager Moataz Azar told reporters in a press conference following the competition. He added that at the end of the 30-month course, students are expected to solve arithmetic problems without the use of abacuses or their fingers.
The initiative is sponsored by the private sector, and organisers predicted that public entities will join the trend later on. ‘The public sector usually waits for results to appear before adopting such a programme,’ Azar noted, pointing out that in several countries, including Malaysia, U C MAS is part of the official teaching curricula.
Dino Wong, founder and president of U C MAS, said that the 16-year-old programme, which focuses on both sides of the brain, currently operates in more than 42 countries and is taught in 5,000 colleges and teaching centres - 20 July, 2009.