The Evil Clutches of Kumon

I work at Kumon on Sundays from  11 to 1. It's a tedious job (all I do is grade worksheets. It's taught me to never become a teacher), but at least I get something out of it right? I remember as a kid, never, ever wanting to do Kumon. It sounded like torture to a 5th grader (actually it still sounds like torture.) Kumon is pretty much doing math and reading worksheets under a time limit. There is also a whole lot of repetition involved, and being taught what you're learning? Forget it. My mom's friend owns the Kumon place where I work and when I explained to her why most kids hate Kumon and refuse to do it, she said that people in other countries have very different views on the Kumon work.

Kumon originated in Japan. It was made for Japanese kids, and somehow, the business worked its way to America. The point of Kumon is to have the math or reading skills programmed into your mind, so most of the time, kids will be doing the same worksheet five or six times over just to make sure the material sticks. The worksheets have to be done under a certain time, otherwise the child is not allowed to pass to the next level. Kumon is also a sort of self study. When a new concept is introduced, a small part of the worksheet is designated to teach the child what to do. But the method absolutely sucks. I did Kumon for a while right before I started high school. It helped at first. I knew what I was doing in the beginning and it really made me faster at the math. However, when the new concepts were introduced, I was totally and utterly lost. I spent more of my time looking in the answer book than actually trying to work out the answer. And this made me feel dumb and incompetent  So, I quit. There was no need for Kumon anyway. I was doing great in school, what was the point of the extra "tutoring"?

A lot of American kids feel this way. As soon as it gets tough, we start quitting. The kids in Japan, they will sit there and do the worksheets diligently for six hours if they have to. We don't have that patience to learn. We are a mostly hands on country. Looking at a worksheet and trying to figure out how to solve the problem just doesn't work for most of us. We need to be taught. Kids in Japan don't need that. So Kumon works for them. Most of the kids who come into Kumon are Asian  Every now and then, there will be an American child, but they don't last long. Usually they'll transfer to another agency like Sylvan. Kumon is torture to American kids. But to those kids in Japan? It's like homework. You have to be the best of the best, otherwise in the race of life, you'll fall behind.

This doesn't mean that the average American  doesn't work. It just means we don't work the same way as others in different countries. I want to know how that even happened. How did we as a country, become so addicted to being taught?