Kumon is a well-known educational material, but there are certain opinions that the effectiveness of Kumon is not seen. And as I got to know Kumon Japanese, I felt that there are indeed times when it seems meaningless.
In this article, I would like to explain some of the reasons behind when I feel that Kumon Japanese is meaningless.
Application and thinking skills are not acquired very well
Kumon aims to help students perfectly understand the basic content at each grade level through repetition. In other words, Kumon does not focus primarily on the acquisition of applied thinking skills.
In the case of arithmetic, being able to perform basic calculations quickly and accurately is remarkable. As you progress in your studies, there will come a time when you will be required to think and apply your skills, but it will often be in difficult problems that are based on the fundamentals. It is not uncommon for students to be asked to apply their skills when their multiplication and division skills are still unstable.
However, this is not the case in Japanese.
No one asks a first grader to read a high school text. Most people think that the texts they read should be appropriate for their grade level, such as "Ookina Kabu". However, in Japanese, even at the stage of reading "Okina Kabu," students are expected to be able to express their thoughts and impressions based on the content. Even in the first grade of elementary school, students are required to have the ability to think in an applied way, to summarize their thoughts based on a foundation of correct understanding of the content.
Regardless of the pros and cons of requiring application at a stage when the fundamentals are unclear, the reality is that Japanese language requires application at an early stage. However, Kumon places emphasis on the basics. Therefore, even though I had my students study Kumon, they did not acquire the ability to apply and think. There may be cases where students end up feeling that there is no point in having them study Kumon.
Knowledge-based learning is insufficient as the grade level increases.
The theme of Kumon Japanese is to improve reading comprehension through its teaching materials. Although there is learning about kanji and grammar, there is a nuance that reading is the main focus and knowledge is a secondary focus.
This nuance is most strongly expressed in the J- to L-text materials, which focus on the ancient and Chinese literature. In the J to L materials, there are questions on the ancient and Chinese texts, but they are accompanied by modern translations and explanatory texts. This means that students can read and comprehend the texts without memorizing the vocabulary and grammar of the ancient/Kanbun texts. This may be reflected in the fact that there are no parts on vocabulary and grammar in the materials of the Ko-Bun and Kanji.
Even so, students can acquire a sufficient amount of knowledge while they are still in the lower grades. For example, if a student does not know elementary-level kanji, he or she will have difficulty in reading a slightly difficult passage.
However, as students move up through the grades, it becomes more and more common for them to be able to read and comprehend even if they do not understand some of the kanji. This is because the kanji learned in high school appear less frequently than those learned in elementary school. In addition, although the number of kanji learned increases with grade, the number of printouts per grade remains the same. Inevitably, the study of each individual kanji becomes less intensive.
By reading many sentences, students will be able to grasp the nuance of the whole sentence without memorizing detailed vocabulary and grammar. You will also be able to understand the general meaning of words and grammar without memorizing them. However, in order to answer knowledge questions that pinpoint vocabulary and grammar, additional study will be necessary.
Therefore, for those who think that studying means memorizing knowledge, Kumon does not match the amount of learning and memorization. It is possible to think that the amount of memorization is meaningless if the amount of memorization is only this much, even though you were made to study so much.
Not specialized for entrance examinations
Kumon is not a cram school for entrance exams. It is a cram school. It is not a place where you can learn techniques for entrance examinations.
Therefore, it is not a place where you can acquire techniques for specific examinations, nor is it a place where you can obtain information related to examinations. Even if you acquire basic skills at Kumon, you will need to take other measures to turn those basic skills into the ability to score points in the examinations.
There is a belief in the world that "if you don't get results, it's meaningless. There are various theories as to whether the process or the result should be more important, but Kumon alone is not enough in terms of directly connecting to the result of the examination. In this sense, the idea that "Kumon alone is meaningless because it is not enough to pass the entrance exam" is a valid one.
There are times when a child who loves books cannot compete with a child who reads a lot.
I have already mentioned that the main purpose of Kumon is to improve reading comprehension. However, there are some cases in which Kumon does not produce outstanding results in reading comprehension. This is because no matter how much you study Kumon, you may not be able to match the amount of reading by someone who loves books.
The pace of learning Japanese in Kumon depends on the individual, but you will generally be expected to complete about 10 pages of printouts per day. However, if you love books, your reading volume can be ten or twenty times as much. Often, people can read through hundreds of pages of a book in a single day.
Especially common are children who are addicted to novels around the upper grades of elementary school. Many novels are educational in nature up to the early elementary school years, but from this point on, many of the novels are more entertaining than educational. Once they are fully absorbed in the world of a story, there is no stronger emotion than that of love. You will be reading many times more text than you do in Kumon, and you will be reading without eating or sleeping.
The feeling of love for reading may not last forever. If the other student simply likes to read, his or her reading ability will be reversed in the medium to long term. However, it is also true that it takes time to make up for the overwhelming difference in the amount of reading.
As a result, the idea will arise that there is no point in paying money to have children do Kumon if they don't want to, and that it is better to make them love to read.
What they learn ahead of time they will eventually learn at school.
Although I mentioned the improvement of reading comprehension as a characteristic of Kumon Japanese, another characteristic of Kumon as a whole is preemptive learning. Kumon advances the material according to the level of understanding, regardless of the actual grade level, so in some cases, students can advance far beyond the actual grade level. Many students may begin Kumon with the expectation of learning ahead of the actual grade level.
However, this anticipatory learning is not very useful if it is completed halfway.
The preemptive learning is simply learning ahead of time the content that will eventually be learned. The content studied in each unit is the basic content. Kumon has the advantage in terms of thoroughness of the basics, but the content itself is not special.
Therefore, one of the advantages of learning ahead of time is that the extra energy created by learning ahead of time can be used for other studies. By building a solid foundation in Japanese before the university entrance exams begin in earnest, students can spend more time preparing for math and English. Even if students finish the D material (equivalent to grade 4) in grade 1, they will lose the advantage if they quit Kumon and enter grade 4.
If you cannot use the advantage you have gained by learning ahead of time for something else, it can be said that learning ahead of time is meaningless.
Growth in reading comprehension is difficult to see
We have talked about the difference between expectations and reality, but there is more to the story than that. The improvement of reading comprehension is difficult to see in the first place.
Reading comprehension is closely related to comprehension itself. Even without special training, the ability to understand things improves with emotional and brain development. Various knowledge that is useful for reading and comprehending sentences will be acquired more and more, and your vocabulary will also increase. Even without studying Japanese, reading comprehension improves to some extent as the child grows.
Reading comprehension is a difficult thing to measure. Although scores can be obtained from Japanese language tests, the difficulty level of sentences and questions is not something that can be easily quantified. Also, even if the difficulty level of the passages is the same, the score will be completely different depending on whether your child is familiar with the subject or not.
Even if reading comprehension has grown since Kumon Japanese started, is this due to the effects of Kumon Japanese or growth in other areas? And if you start to think about whether reading comprehension is really growing, it is very difficult to determine the effect of Kumon Japanese from the surroundings. In a sense, it is natural to question whether there was really any point in having the students study Kumon Japanese.
It is surprisingly difficult to make Kumon Japanese meaningful.
In this article, I explained the patterns that make Kumon Japanese less meaningful.
I myself have studied Kumon Japanese and feel that it has been of great significance. On the other hand, I think it would be very difficult to show that objectively to those around me. I also thought it would be very difficult to correctly understand the merits of Kumon and apply them to my examination strategy.
I think there are many families who start Kumon for the time being because of the large number of classes and the low hurdle to start. However, I think that there are equally many families who lose sight of why they are having their children study Kumon.
If you find yourself in a situation where you feel that there is no point in having your child study Kumon, please check what kind of condition you and your child are in by referring to the points mentioned in this article.