October 21, 2004

Buzan targets S’pore children

LEARNING guru Tony Buzan (pictured) wants to teach every child how to learn the right way.

He hopes to achieve this through the world’s first Tony Buzan Learning Centre for children, which opened in Singapore last year.

Located in Goldhill Plaza at Thomson Road, the enrichment centre teaches primary level English, Maths and Science using his Mind Maps® technique, which he invented in the late 1960s.

The centre is run by banker-turned-entrepreneur Tan Buck Chye.

Mr Buzan founded Mind Maps when he was an undergraduate at the University of British Columbia in Canada, after figuring out that images helped improve his learning and memory.

Mind Maps® is a learning tool where information is organised using key words, images, numbers and colours to show the structure of the subject and linkages between points and facts, instead of the traditional linear way of writing notes in sentences.

This method is said to help the mind recall and review information faster.

Mr Buzan, 62, was in town early this month to conduct training for 25 teachers at the learning centre, which started with five Buzan-trained teachers a year ago.

He told Streats: “When a child learns how to learn, he is picking up lifelong skills such as how to remember, read with speed and comprehension, how to imagine and how to communicate.”

He has conducted workshops at the Singapore Institute of Management for the last 12 years, and with the Civil Service College for the last seven.