These Korean children holding up the workbooks that they will clearly never work on somehow convinced my parents to enroll me (their first child, aka parenting lab rat) in this program.
For those of you who don’t know what Kumon is, you are blessed.
I’m actually not sure how American Kumon works, but the Kumon I had growing up was a tutoring service that covered a variety of subjects (math, Chinese, English, you name it) and was also synonymous with cruel and unusual punishment for seven to twelve year olds.
Look at these children’s dead eyes and the rigid way in which they hold their workbooks, avoiding the wrath of their parents if they don’t do as they’re told and pose for the camera. These kids already know how to survive in this ruthless world.
Kumon taught me more than just math. It taught me how to be an alpha in this #grind society. Here is a summary of the lessons I’ve learned.
Rule #1: Fake it til you make it.
This child is clearly in elementary school, middle school at most, but she’s already prepping for high school! Goes to show that it’s never too early to start prepping for the #grind.
The Kumon program works like this: every week, a teacher comes to your house holding a generic workbook full of generic problems. For math, it would be pages of just 2×2 multiplication, or 3×3 multiplication, or integration, for all I know.
I wouldn’t know, because I never did any of the homework, and spent all of class time working on it instead. Even though it was visibly noticeable that the teacher was pissed, as long as they didn’t talk to your mom, there’s no real consequence.
Rule #2: Do the minimum work possible to not piss off your mom.
“Kumon understands that every child has a different way of learning, and we encourage them to solve through every workbook independently, step by step…”
Encourage is a strong word to be using as you train your children to do repetitive problem sets at the age of five, but ok.
Look at that little boy looking up to that girl. That girl knows that she has an edge in this competition because she’s taller than him. She still has some light alive in her eyes, that she will survive in this brutal society that pits children to measure against each other from such a young age.
If I had a dollar for every time my relatives said something about my height (positive, negative, passing comment, whatever) I could pay my college tuition and have 2 dollars left over. You never know when you’ll have this power back, or when the boy will hit puberty and grow two meters and brag about his height constantly. Attack the patriarchy before they hit the age of 13.
Rule #3: If you know you have an edge, fuckin take it.
“Kumon teachers regularly meet their students to check up on their progress, and assign new material as they see fit (…) Kumon trains your child to tackle difficult problems and fosters their ability to think for themselves.”
I mean look at that girl. She clearly does not want to be there right now. If meaningless high fives help your child to “think for themselves” it did not have to be Kumon.
Kumon teachers, however, don’t go easy on you because you decide to slack off. They just keep bringing the same amount of worksheets that you were supposed to do that week, and add it to the previous week’s worth of work, making a really thick workbook.
Turns out procrastinating work when you’re eight years old has the same outcome as procrastinating as a college student. It’s never too early to start your procrastination habit.
But going back to Kumon–at a certain point, the ring that supports all of the blank, unworked worksheets will burst. Before that happens, you have to sit your butt down on that chair until it hurts and cramps and grind through just enough pages of math to stop the workbook from falling apart.
Rule #4: Exercise your butt muscles. 10 squats a day should do.
Inspired by my return to math with Math 100. This goes out to all of my math teachers who always told me to trust the #grind.
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