A centre near us is pitching Vedic maths to parents at our daughter's school. The brochure says children calculate '10x faster'. Ten times faster than what? Doing what? If your child did it, what changed? In school maths, I mean. Not in the demo.
Our son did about six months of it in class 4. He became very quick at certain multiplications, the tricks for multiplying by 11 and squaring numbers ending in 5, and enjoyed showing them off. His school maths marks did not move in either direction. Word problems were his weak area before and after. We did not continue with our daughter.
That's the kind of answer I was looking for. So it's a party trick, unless the weak area happens to be speed of calculation.
Replying to @plum_pebble_9048
From the teacher side, mostly yes. The tricks are useful to check an answer. Problem comes when a child skips the working because the trick gave the answer, and then loses step marks.
Replying to @silver_kettle_7192
That matches my daughter. She learnt the tricks at nine. Now in class 8 algebra she resents writing steps because she 'already knows'. I would not do it again before the basics were solid.
Replying to @apricot_badminton_7925
Same thing I see in my school. To be fair, some kids who enjoy these tricks just like numbers more afterwards. If she's into puzzles it won't hurt. Only don't pay for the 10x promise 🙂
Keep going
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