THE LEARNING JOURNEY (PART 1)

Founded by Toru Kumon, the Kumon Method is designed to help children to learn progressively at his or her own pace and eventually learn beyond their school grade level. While incidences where our children lose interest in learning a certain topic or subject isn’t unheard of, what can we do to help?

Quoting Toru Kumon, “It is not the child who is at fault”, but the way in which they are taught to learn. The question then would be…Why do children lose interest or “fall off the wagon”?

Often, children loses the love of learning as they feel challenged to succeed in the materials given. They experience frustration and stress and eventually feel defeated, leading to loss of interest as well as motivation to overcome the challenge.

How can we help them?

At Kumon, we believe that children should always learn at a “just right” level that is suitable for them. At the “just right” level, they will be able to self-learn with the given worksheets, instructions and examples. They will gain confidence to overcome more challenges as they see success, chapter to chapter, thus develop self-learning.

Further, our instructors believe that our children’s learning journey is also a learning journey in itself for the instructors, as they observe and seek new approaches to help their students adapt to learning in their own pace and ability. As Toru Kumon once said, “Excellent instructors are those who continuously improve on their coaching methods compared to the previous year. This is because when the instructors carefully observe the way their students study throughout the year, they will certainly learn a lot from them.”

There’s no “one-size-fits-all” at Kumon, all students will learn and overcome difficult topics or subjects at their own pace and ability.