To Kumon or not to Kumon. That is the question.

[megabored]

DD is starting school in September. Below are the Pros and Cons I have been debating recently.

1. She is bright, so should be okay without extra help in school
2. It is too early to put her through this
3. Kumon is expensive and time consuming.

The Pros

1. It may give her that bit of extra confidence at school
2. Earlier is better as then she can grow with that system
3. Its not so expensive as to be prohibitive.

I really cant decide either way. Please someone help?

Love the quotes by the way.

'When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret. Now I'm fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness'.
C.S Lewis

ive never heard a teacher effuse about kumon

Don't bother. It's boring for the child. I sent my dd to 2 lessons because they were free but dd was bored with doing the 'homework' exercises after the second lesson.

Not sure it's worth persevering here... just wanted to add that DS has reached Level M, which is Calculus, and not about counting dots at all, while DD is doing quadratics - again FWIW, ds's best friend also did the whole set of Kumon levels as part of home ed and went on to get the top scholarship to a certain very famous school - he is now planning to do physics and philosophy at uni.

No doubt this may be misrepresented as 'pushy parenting', but the right and left here has been annoying me. On the one hand, people say Kumon is pushy, and on the other banal and boring. Actually, above the early levels it is neither. I have been astonished by the level of careless misrepresentation here, but I hope this is to do with the OP's focus on very early years at Kumon - again fwiw, DS was 12 when he started, and dd was 8, and I wouldn't on the whole favour it as a way of grounding. But as a method of consolidation it is excellent or has been for my dcs.

I think that we lose sight of the fact that it is merely a maths scheme-one of many and it may or may not suit your DC. Since OP DC is little more than a baby and hasn't even started school I would wait and see what sort of thing suits her.
Personally I would go for Target Maths which are great for consolidation BUT not if they are using them at school and not until they are 7yrs. It is a lot cheaper. Or I would use Maths Zone again when older.
I didn't use anything extra-they all got enough at school and with homework-we played lots of card games etc which sharpen the mind and are fun.

Various posters seem surprised that teachers don't 'effuse' about kumon.

Many parents turn to kumon because they think that the traditional methods at their school has failed their children. So why do you expect the teachers from this system to effuse about kumon?

People choose kumon for various reasons. For me, I had a mathematically able child that I felt wasn't being challenged at his school. Kumon challenged my DC and got him to the point where he was two years above the national average by Year 5 so I had a positive experience.

Others choose kumon because their child is struggling and, for whatever reason, the parent is unable to help. Hence the search for an outside solution. If this is you then of course you are going to have a negative experience with kumon.

Kumon is an aid to learning. It's not a total solution to your problems. If that is your expectation then course it is going to disappoint.

I would agree with you there-an aid to learning-one of hundreds.

sieg - My DC did kumon from 5 to 11 so I must have liked it but it is boring and repetative, which is a problem for some parents and/or children.

At my university karate club I got to know a Japanese student and he was saying that Karate was taught differently back home. For example, a beginner would spend weeks practising his stance. Only when he had a rock steady platform would he learn how to punch. Such a teaching style wouldn't work in the West he said. Here, students want instant results, they want to do flying kicks, they want gradings, they want wax on wax off :) training techniques and so on.

Basically, the philosophy behind Kumon suits the Japanese-type mind set. And that is why it has so many detractors here in the West

exotic - We usually don't agree but at least you have a reasoned reason for your positions, unlike some others that seem to go into auto attack mode. What is it about kumon that you don't like?

I'm not asking for a children should be children argument. Stacked against other learning aids of the same cost what makes you like those aids and not kumon?

I say same cost because other posters have said that xyz is better but when I go to the website I see that it is more expensive or you pay for each session or its one2one. So its apples and oranges.

Also, if I was buying the cbeebies magazines every week and sitting down with dd every day, no one would bat an eyelid. As it is not called kumon. The kumon sheets I have seen for dds level are infant less confusing and better pictorially than cbeebies mags.

I have nothing against kumon as I don't know much about it. I have heard that its something that pushy mums subscribe to. FWIW I don't like the education system at all, for any subject, but I get all my resources free. I certainly wouldn't pay for them when there are so many activities you can do with your dc that are fun. I suppose if you don't want to make time to do things with your dcs and they attend a failing school, you maybe feel as though you should pay for this. I agree though there are many alternatives to bring dcs up to the required level.

morethan I am happy to pay for the motivation of having to see a third party every week. I am more than happy to spend time going thru the sheets with dd. i am happy to spend endless hrs climbing trees and jumping puddles. i am not happy seeing dds lack of confidence when put against a say another kid in class who does kumon and therefore is ahead of the rest of the group. No matter how many apples and cheerios we count, my dd will not be as fast in mental arithmetic due to lack of practice.

Now I feel obliged to say something anti kumon.

I don't like it because when I have taught DCs who do it I find them inflexible-they tend to state 'that is not how we do it at Kumon' and they don't want to even consider another method. I consider that a good mathematician is the one who makes connections, knows why something is done, can pick the way that suits them and can apply it in other areas.
A good analogy is my theory of music, as a child I went to classes every Saturday morning and did worksheets. I loved it, found them easy where others struggled and got top marks. Every so often we went to a centre and had an exam and I got a lovely certificate with distinction embossed on it. However, I had not a clue what any of it meant musically and it didn't help my piano playing!
To be fair, the children who go to Kumon are not the good mathematicians and they like a crutch so they can say 'this is....... and this is how you do it-but that is too rigid an approach. The really good mathematicians are more likely to play competitive chess etc.

glaurung - Mine finished with the dot counting after 6 months which was shortly after he turned six. No, I am not stealth boasting ladies. I was just adding perspective to the comment about how older kids were still doing dot counting.

A mathematically able child of a maths graduate spending 6 months counting dots? You are not exactly selling it to me, PooshTun.

Kumon does not claim to make a good mathematician of a 4 or 5 year old. It claims to increase concentration in children and make them more able to attempt arithmetic. I have a phd in physics based subject. All sciences and business and even art and sport involves Maths. And to be more specific, arithmetic. For fear of being branded I have not mentioned my Background openly before. I will be tryin out kumon and seeing how it works in more detail. It may work, it may not. But it certainly won't scar my dd for life.

Glad you said it CecilyP. I was confused by that post and the reference to stealth boasting. Seems like you have to settle for pretty low standards with Kumon.

What is stealth boasting?

Cecily

The more anti kumon comments I read the more I conclude that some of these critics don't have any first hand experience of what it is they are criticising.

A kumon critic upthread smugly went on about how she taught her child to count by counting cars or telegraph poles. The purpose of the dot counting is to train the child so that he can look and 'see' 5 cars instead of going 1, 2, 3 .... like the critic's DC. The next stage is to do adding. Imagine throwing down a domino piece face up. After 6 months DS could look at this and instantly 'see' 6 dots and 7 dots without having to count them and then add it all up in his mind. The next stage is to get the child to actually do 6 + 7 = ? in his mind.

As I said, by the year 5 DS was ahead of the national average for maths by two years so snigger all you want about dot counting :o

Megabored, each to thir own I supose. I'm not at all interested in what other peoples children do in relation to mine. As long as my dc are doing well thats enough for me, its not a competition.

exotic, just want to say all over again that my ds IS A PRETTY GOOD MATHEMATICIAN, and he also benefited from Kumon.

You absolutely do NOT have to settle for low standards with Kumon; DS has an A* atMmaths and Further Maths GCSEs and an A in Add Maths, all marks in the high 90s. He's also won some prizes and Maths Olympiad...

Could we not all agree that individuals might differ, and that some might benefit?

Agree too with PooshTun's anecdote about karate. We are the same in every subject. Let's make language teaching FUN so kids never learn any grammar. Let's make humanities teaching FUN so kids never learn any dates.

Obviously this is fine for the OP's 4-year-old, but at what age are we willing to say, ok, let's add some work in here?

megabored, school at this stage isn't a competition. Don't you want your daughter to be happy in school? I can't see what anything has to do with being at the top of her group. I'm not sure that prepping our daughters to ensure that they will always be ahead of their classmates is a good reason for doing it. But preparing them for the three rs for its own sake seems reasonable to me. I don't think parents can control who's at the top of which group anyway, because parents don't allocate the children to groups.

Um, at the risk of going way off topic here, I disagree about karate. Karate is a Japanese invention so it has cultural significances there that it doesn't have here. The implication is that if sport was done the Japanese way it would be done better. So why aren't the Japanese any good at rugby, cricket and football, (because they're not traditional Japanese sports.)

mega - In answer to your question "Stealth Boasting" is an accusation thrown by people with a complex about xyz :o

My accountant recently did my tax return and I was having a whinge in the Real World to my friend about how much tax I had to pay at year end. My friend said that was nothing. She got a big bonus from her firm but a large chunk of that was going to the tax man. We then proceeded to have a whinge about the British tax system. To some, me or my friend or both are guilty of stealth boasting i.e. look at me, look how much I earn and how much tax I pay. Whereas to us, it was just two friends having a whinge about how much tax we had to hand over to the taxman, a conversation that many of us have whenever we get our payslips :)

Basically, if you are on a low income or you have kids that aren't doing as well as you would like then you are going to be sensitive to others talking about how great their jobs are or how well their children are doing at school.

I accept that there are some parents out there who do use the opportunity to boast about how much money they have or how clever their kids are but I know who these people are so I make sure that I avoid them.