Word: kumon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...tutoring industry is marveling too. Franchises geared toward giving toddlers an academic edge are popping up across the country. A few years ago, Sylvan Learning Centers, which operates 1,100 tutoring sites in the U.S., started a pre-K reading program. Around the same time, Kumon, a Japanese company with nearly 1,300 centers in the U.S., launched Junior Kumon to teach kids as young as 3 how to add and read the alphabet. The latest glommer-on: KnowledgePoints, a 60-center franchise based in Lake Oswego, Ore., which last summer began a program for 3- and 4-year-olds...
...such straightforward reassurance may not be enough to counteract the tutoring industry's bells and whistles, such as Sylvan's trained instructors and Score! Educational Centers' fancy computer-based curriculum. Kumon encourages the pre-K crowd to come in twice a week for about 30 minutes--at a cost of about $125 a month--to memorize letter charts and study flash cards. "I didn't feel like my son was where he could be," says Gina Monteiro, 38, a quality-assurance worker in Indianapolis who in June started taking her 4-year-old to lengthy sessions at a place called...
...Japan has showed us, the answer to our mathematical dilemma in the U.S. is a five-letter word: Kumon. Kumon is one of the largest math and language tutoring methods in the world. Kumon is also a tutoring center for students that was founded in Japan, but has branches in the U.S. It uses repetition and drills to teach students basic computational skills. Students are given packets with exercises they can complete at their own pace. Once students complete the packets, they turn it in for a grade and, depending on that grade, students get packets of the same level...
...Kumon and other similar teaching methods are the best way to ensure that students practice math skills outside the classroom. Mastery is something that takes time and practice even for some of the most gifted students. The government should focus on ways to fund tutoring through schools or through local organization so that it is available to all students regardless of economic background. Instead of trying to come up with some revolutionary method of teaching math, we should simply learn from what Japan and other foreign countries are doing. Tutoring is best in small doses: not too much to overwhelm...
...heard it all before: thanks to our decisively Asian values, Asian Americans have "made it" as an immigrant group; we have surpassed all other minorities and, in some cases, even our white counterparts. That quiet Asian classmate of yours who spent all his time doing extra homework between Kumon and piano lessons had it right; his work ethic explains the rise of the Asian tigers, or at least it did until the recent financial crisis. A great story, a model in fact, but interestingly enough, its protagonist, the quiet Asian American, appears oddly silent...