Posted on 12/29/2004 11:51:07 AM PST by hsmomx3
To test your diversity acumen and math skills, please read the following 10 names and calculate the percentage of the names that have something in common. (Note: Recent public school graduates will be better at the diversity part of the quiz than the math part.)
Julian Gau
John David Strickland
Aniket Ketkar
Sreyas Chintapalli
Carl Lian
Neil Gurram
Oliver Fang
Marcele Januta
Kent Huynh
Alex Xu
If you determined that 80 percent are Asian names, you are partially correct. The rest of the answer is that 100 percent are American students from grades one through 10 who won the Kumon Math Challenge for 2004.
What is Kumon Math? It is a Japanese method of teaching math. Students complete daily worksheets that are corrected by their parents. Once a week, they attend Kumon "class," where they complete a worksheet under the supervision of a Kumon instructor, who helps them if they get stuck and who determines when they are ready to move to the next level.
My 13-year-old son has been enrolled in Kumon Math for nine years. He has not participated in the Kumon Math Challenge, but he has won various Kumon awards, including one for progressing to the algebra level by the sixth grade.
For seven of the nine years, he completed a worksheet each day, seven days a week, 50 weeks a year. For two of the nine years, he completed a worksheet each day, five days a week, 50 weeks a year. That comes to 3,650 worksheets.
At about 20 minutes on average for each worksheet, the total time that he has spent on Kumon over the nine years has been 1,216 hours, excluding the time that my wife and I spent scoring his worksheets and nagging him to get them completed. To compare, the typical public school student will be lucky if he spends that much classroom time on math from first through 8th grade. He also will be lucky if he learns math, especially in schools with a preponderance of minorities other than Asians.
Which brings me back to the list of names above. Eight of the 10 are minorities, and chances are, the eight are not wealthy. Well, that's not entirely true. They may not be wealthy in terms of money, but they are wealthy in terms of having responsible parents and coming from a culture that puts a high value on education and both parents remaining married for the good of the children.
Over the nine years that my son has been enrolled in Kumon, I have been struck by the fact that Asians are represented in Kumon classes at a higher proportion than their representation in the population at large. The reverse is true for Hispanics and Blacks (and Italians).
I also have been struck by the disproportionate number of Asian mothers who can be seen at the local library after school each day helping their kids with their homework. And in speaking with them and with other Asians I've worked with and known over the years, I have been struck by their focus on academics and on extracurricular activities that develop the mind.
My son, a fairly typical American kid, spends much of his free time playing the guitar, being on sports teams and skateboarding. Thankfully, unlike many of his friends, he does not spend hours each day playing video games and watching MTV. Asian-American kids, from my experience, gravitate to such extracurricular activities as playing chess and taking violin and piano lessons.
Through his No Child Left Behind program, President Bush believes that the way to fix public education is to provide "free" tutors and after-school programs to failing students, many of whom are the children of irresponsible parents and/or live in one-parent households. The education establishment believes that the fix requires smaller classrooms, higher teacher pay, fancy buildings, all-day kindergarten and state-provided early childhood development.
As Kumon Math and Asians show, the government may be pursuing the wrong fix, because it has misdiagnosed the root problem. The root problem is a culture and a government that absolves parents of their responsibility to be responsible parents. _________
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (www.haalt.org). He can be reached at haalt1@aol.com.
Ten million for the lousy students. How about putting the 10 mil toward the really bright students who might go on to find a cure for cancer or write the great American novel or become President?
Sort of. Technically they come from a culture that puts a high value on work. Work, work, work - and lots of it.
That’s what Americans don’t understand. Americans think school is some place to send the kids while mom/dad work. A place to socialize and play and hopefully pick up a thing or two.
Asians typically view school as WORK. Their child has a JOB and it’s called school. They are expected to be enthusiastic, productive, eager little workers at their “job,” too.
I took a “walking tour” of Chinatown once. Chinese lady that led it was interesting. Talked about “Chinese life” and growing up in Chinatown (still works much the same today).
They’d start out with “regular” school at 8:30am. After school was over it was off to “Chinese” school until 6:30pm. They’d go home and while mom/grandma prepared dinner they’d study. Then they’d eat and go back to studying.
She said that even as a child in grade school, she cannot ever remember going to bed before midnight. Study, study, study.
Regular school was off on weekends but Chinese school was held on Saturdays. So not only is it viewed as a job, it’s a six day per week job and a darn-near all-day-long job.
This busy-busy all the time attitude doesn’t end when you graduate either. The lady leading the tours (on weekends) also owned a restaurant, a jewelry shop, a touristy gift shop, and sold real estate.
Anybody have any questions why you “average” semi-pro X-Box playing American doesn’t really *truly* want to compete against them? It’s because it’s too much WORK. Not enough leisure time to unwind… stuff like that. (And it hasn’t always been that way here, but that’s the way it is now from what I can see.)
I worked as a Kumon tutor for a few weeks, and I was not impressed. It seemed like more busy work to me, without any instruction.
< /sarcasm >
Isn't this counterproductive? The schools with the larger number of failing students get exta money. They will be rewarding the failure of these schools.
My daughter, we have discovered, is a potentially gifted pianist--she sat down after a month of piano lessons, and could play any song in her first-year and second-year books. My son, we also have discovered, is a gifted drummer. He can quickly pick up rhythms and patterns with surprising ease. We have also found that his talent translates into math. Once we showed him the connection, his math score soared.
The point is, genius or talent shows up in many places. Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein were both thought to be poor or troubled students, certainly not the "bright kids" you would fund. The list could go on and on.
I am not saying take money away from the "bright kids." I am saying do not write off the struggling students simply because someone labelled that child as such. Perhaps there is a genius among the rest as well.
So the answer is that Asian students do better at Asian math.
Do people of color consider Asians to be 'people of color', and therefore eligible for affirmative action, etc.?
No, recognizing and rewarding GOOD results is elitist.
If the kids are learning the math, it doesn't matter if there isn't much "instruction". I just finished a General Chemistry course at a state college. The instructor's lectures consisted of just reading off a bunch of pre-fab Powerpoint slides which were a skimpy outline of the textbook. Students sat quietly, reading the textbook (where all the important details were), reading books for other classes, and some actually napping. You were supposed to teach yourself Chemistry. The sooner kids develop the ability to self-teach and stop expecting someone else to do it for them, the better off they'll be -- not only in college, but especially if they go on into some field where constantly developing new knowledge (that no one else knows yet, so they can't teach you) is important.
Perhaps. However, when you have limited money you place your bets on those with the best odds.
It's too bad that all American public schools do not give as much attention to the needs of the higher end students as ours does.
That's not what I mean by instruction, obviously. It is an egregious example of how many college faculty don't know how to teach. Although college relies on students being able to teach themselves more than secondary and elementary school does, a skilled professional knows what people are likely to have trouble with and helps them over the rough sport with explanation and examples. This produces much better results.
My niece who was having learning problems in school used this method. Her parents worked with her for the last three years.
She went from failing grades to the honor roll. She has gained confidence and enjoys the challenges of school. I would not have believed how the program not only changed her ability to learn, but increased her social skills as well.
In my eyes, she is a Great American, even if she can't find a cure for cancer or become President of the United States, but she will make our Country a better place because of her ability to believe in herself.
Asians benefit from minority set asides in government contracting, SBA loans, etc. Most Asian social service agencies in New York and on the west coast have seminars on how to exploit Uncle Sugar.
ping
It's not so much the method as is the parental involvement and parental expectation of excellence. Fat American kids of the Me generation are told only to do things that "feel good" and their parents loathe having to do things like parenting or God forbid, weighting their kids down with heavy vibes like expectations man.
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