If you have your child study Kumon from a young age, you may be surprised to find that he or she can learn more and more content ahead of the current grade level. Parents can be proud when their children are learning the content of junior high and high school from elementary school.
However, in some cases, children may take this to heart, disregard schoolwork, and look down on their classmates. This is not desirable and may cause children to stagnate as they progress through the grades.
In this article, I will explain the exact current position of a child who is ahead of his or her Kumon peers and the perceptions you want to share with your child.
Kumon provides a high level of foundation.
The first assumption is that Kumon allows you to acquire the basics at a high level.
Kumon thoroughly repeats the basics of reading and calculation. If you cannot answer most of the questions correctly within a set amount of time, you will not be able to move on to the next content.
Reading and calculation may sound like a low-level subject, but Kumon's reading and calculation includes content such as ancient Chinese literature and differential and integral calculus. Kumon is characterized by its ability to not only understand but also to do so quickly and accurately.
Children who can learn ahead of time with Kumon are excellent, but they are not geniuses.
Then, how superior is the group of people who are able to learn ahead of their peers with Kumon?
Roughly speaking, the correct perception is "those who can do so-so.
In Kumon, you repeat the basics. You will continue to look at examples and solve problems with similar patterns, so if you can understand the examples, you will eventually be able to move on. If you continue Kumon for a few years, there are many children who can advance about three grades ahead of their classmates.
The reason they are able to move ahead with Kumon is that they are able to understand the example problems and their patterns, and that they are able to do a large amount of repetition. There is no doubt that children who can do these things are excellent, but they are not yet geniuses. This does not mean that geniuses are not doing Kumon, but it does mean that just because they are learning ahead of Kumon does not mean they are geniuses.
However, there are reasons to mistakenly believe that being ahead of the curve in Kumon is genius-like.
Being ahead in learning is not the same as being smart.
If an elementary school student solves a differential and integral calculus problem, anyone would think that the child is a genius. However, there is both breadth and depth in learning progress. With Kumon, you can acquire a wide range of knowledge up to the next grade level, but you will never go deeper than the basics in each area.
And beyond a certain level, there is a world where it is taken for granted that the basics are solid. People who have holes in the basics are not at that level, and from there, the important part is "how deep can you think?
There is no doubt that it is a great thing to be able to step into that world. In reality, there are probably very few people who have a solid foundation before taking an entrance exam. However, this is because they have worked hard in their studies, and it is their efforts, not their talents, that should be praised.
Enthusiasm for study can easily make a difference when you are young.
Another area where misunderstandings can easily arise is when a child is still in a low grade.
I mentioned earlier that at the upper levels, no one has a solid foundation. However, there are very few people in the lower grades of elementary school who are passionate about solidifying the fundamentals. Even children with a genius mind may not yet be that focused on their studies or only interested in what they like to do at this time.
Therefore, if they are early in the school year, they can be in a position where they can be called geniuses just by consolidating the basics with Kumon. However, the fundamentals that Kumon has established will eventually be learned by everyone at that grade level. If you only have a head start with Kumon, you will eventually catch up with or be overtaken by those around you. And being overtaken more and more can be a very tough experience for a child.
Completing Kumon's elementary school range before taking the junior high school entrance exam does not directly lead to success in difficult junior high schools.
When these aspects are misunderstood, the most adverse effects are likely to occur in the junior high school entrance examination.
Pre-emptive learning is not an advantage in taking the junior high school entrance exam.
Studying ahead of your junior high school or high school classmates is hardly an advantage in taking the junior high school entrance exam. This is because the scope of the examinations is outside of the scope of the study. The key to success in the junior high school entrance examination is how deeply the student has studied the elementary school curriculum and how well he or she can deal with questions that are unique to the junior high school entrance examination.
Therefore, children enter cram school with a high level of confidence in areas unrelated to the junior high school entrance exam. Since they have already mastered the basics of the subjects studied in the upper grades, they will have an advantage for a while, and their relative ranking will be better. However, they will not realize their lack of ability until they have studied the same subjects at the cram school and have solidified the basics as their peers. The delay in getting serious about the subject will be fatal in the entrance examinations.
Kumon does not cover certain areas of study
Kumon's English, mathematics, and Japanese courses do not cover all the areas necessary for the junior high school entrance examination. Kumon does not cover English vocabulary, English grammar, and Kanji characters, and in mathematics, Kumon does not cover graphic problems at all.
Kumon probably does not intend to prepare students for the junior high school entrance exam. The merit of Kumon is that students can acquire a solid foundation, but they naturally cannot learn the areas that Kumon does not cover. If you cut it off at the point of taking the junior high school entrance examination, Kumon will not help students acquire the ability to apply their knowledge, and there will be holes in the basics as well.
Kumon does not help you acquire the thinking ability and sense necessary for applied problems.
In the junior high school entrance examinations, there are many situations in which the ability to think and sense are tested. This is because the scope of the fundamentals is narrower than that of high school or university entrance examinations.
Kumon materials tend to be more familiar than learned, and you do not have to sweat your brains out to tackle a single difficult problem. It is just like muscle training does not improve your athletic ability.
Kumon's true value is demonstrated in university entrance examinations.
If you look at Kumon up to this point, you will not understand the merit of Kumon. This is because we are talking on the premise of taking the junior high school entrance examination.
The true value of Kumon is demonstrated in university entrance examinations.
In the university entrance examination, the scope of study is wider, and the difficulty level of consolidating the basics increases dramatically compared to junior high school and high school. Therefore, if you have a solid foundation, you will be able to reach the level that you can aim for, with the exception of Tokyo Tech and medical schools. There was a time when you could get into some schools, even Waseda-Keio, without having to take the second exam, if you could get 90% on the first exam, which consists mostly of basic questions.
Because of the relative increase in the importance of the basics, there are not many universities where thinking ability and sense are tested.
In addition, Kumon covers the entire range of mathematics in the high school process. As expected, Kumon alone is not enough to cover English vocabulary, English grammar, and Kanji, but even so, the scope of what you learn in Kumon is much broader.
How to make use of the leeway gained from Kumon
The most important fact to note is that Kumon has the potential to cover most of the basics of English, mathematics, and Japanese for university entrance examinations in elementary and junior high school.
The wide range of questions means that the amount of study can easily become a bottleneck. It is not an easy task just to consolidate the basics of all subjects after starting full-fledged study for entrance examinations. However, English, mathematics, and Japanese are subjects that are difficult to neglect in both the humanities and sciences, and they are also subjects that take a long time to develop.
If you are able to finish the final material in Kumon, you will be able to greatly reduce the amount of resources you have to devote to English, mathematics, and Japanese when you start studying for the entrance examinations in earnest. What to do with these freed-up resources is the key to Kumon's preemptive learning.
The worst thing you can do is to proceed with Kumon half-heartedly and get carried away.
The worst thing that can happen is to get carried away with Kumon's preconstruction. The merit of Kumon is that by establishing the basics at an early stage, you can spend more time on other subjects and take on the challenge of applied problems. It is meaningless if you are satisfied with the position you have achieved, even though you have established the fundamentals early on.
What you learn in Kumon is not what others cannot do, but what everyone will eventually be able to do. If this is correctly recognized, parents will not be buoyed by Kumon's preoccupation with learning ahead of time. Rather, they will be more conscious of what they should ask their children to do in their free time. Or, at their age, the time may have come for the children to decide for themselves what they should do.
It is the responsibility of parents to properly inform their children of the benefits of Kumon.
Kumon's pre-emptive learning has various implications as explained so far. What children learn in Kumon is the fundamentals, and preemptive learning by itself may not be as much of an advantage as people around you may say. In particular, while the skills acquired in Kumon are not useful for junior high school entrance examinations, the fundamentals acquired in Kumon can be significant for university entrance examinations.
However, children may not realize this until much later. At the age of elementary school students, it is natural for them to think that they are geniuses, learning far ahead of their peers. Also, they will probably be praised by the people around them in many situations. There will be times when they waste the extra time they have gained from Kumon because of pride, or when they are shocked to realize the difference between themselves and those who are really smart.
Not only in studies, but elementary school students do not yet have a broad view of things. They may think they are great just because their parents are rich, or they may think it is cool not to be serious. Eventually, they will grow up and realize that their thinking is biased. The later they realize it, the greater the negative impact it will have on their lives.
That is why it is necessary for parents to have a correct understanding of the benefits of Kumon and communicate them to their children. If they do so, the timing when they can realize the benefits of Kumon will surely come at some point.