A jade abacus with a yin-yang pattern in the center is part of the collection at the China Zhusuan Museum in Nantong in Jiangsu province. Xu Congjun / for China Daily

In about a decade, the abacus went from a necessary skill to a math-instruction tool for select primary schools and kindergartens.

A five-year National Institute of Education Sciences study ending in 2009 found abacus education clearly boosts elementary school students' overall intellectual development. It builds IQ, memory, attention span, and problem-solving and presentation skills. It also benefits preschoolers, the research found.

Beijing Bright Horizon International Academy's principal Liu Liquan says the device has shown results in helping young kids learn math.

He says the school trained teachers after discovering a lack of standardization in their abacus lessons.

"They must realize it's only an auxiliary tool to learn math," he says. "It's not a skill we require kids to master to any certain level."

Lessons' availability diffuses outside first-tier cities.

Anhui province's Hefei Shilimiao Primary School is the only school in the provincial capital with abacus lessons.

It offered the course as an extracurricular class from 1995 until it became required from grades 1 to 4, who can also take additional extracurricular abacus classes, in 2009.

Students start mornings with a special regimen the school developed in which they hold their abacuses while performing fitness routines.

They also learn to do "mental abacus arithmetic", in which they visualize an abacus executing calculations in their mind's eye.

Headmaster Li Yanhao says first-grade students who take the extracurricular class can perform incredible arithmetic on the device. He claims some can add and subtract a dozen three-digit, round numbers.

Li is glad UNESCO inscribed the abacus.

"We should preserve our tradition," he says. "It's good for mathematics. And it doesn't affect other classes."

Yet while extolling the abacus' virtues and use in their school's curriculum, Li and Liu are reserved about the view the UNESCO proclamation should spur the re-introduction of abacus classes in all primary schools.

"The calculator rendered it obsolete," Liu says. "We should inherit culture but not make tradition the core."

The abacus' pedagogical efficacy extends to special education in China.

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