Looking Ahead

Excuse the pic. My scanner is busted and these things never photograph well.

That's the backcover of a Kumon math book. Click graphic to enlarge. Right now my 4.5 year old son is on Grade 2 Subtraction which covers vertical subtraction and borrowing. Remember that?

Anyways, my ambitious plan is to do all of those books - up through Grade 6 Fractions - with Prince C-Nut within the next twelve months.

So he'll be approximately a full six years ahead of government school curricula before he's legally eligible for kindergarten!

It may sound like a lofty goal but remember that I was two years advanced in math with no parental boost whatsoever, AND that the schools have watered down their expectations even more in the past 30 years.

On another front, in a previous post I discussed the progress of Princess C-Nut and lamented that she may be getting neglected in the early on because she is a *second child*.

But today I started her on Uppercase Letters and noticed that my son hadn't done that book until he was about 9-10 months older.

And lastly, I'm happy to announce that yet another holdout friend of mine finally broke down.

Yesterday I received an email from him asking about how to get his kids started with the Kumon books.

So months of badgering, and blogging on the subject, by me finally paid off. Heck, just last week he was telling me that it was impossible for his wife, a former *educator* no less (!), to homeschool FOUR CHILDREN.

Yeah, he'll be the first to remind me that he's still not homeschooling - AND, he may very well not go down that road.

But, if he starts a home Kumon program with any application at all....he, or anyone else, will be hardpressed to send his kids into the infantilized factory school *system*.

Today's adults (including moi) are impervious to reason; they are mentally lazy AND stubborn. Therefore it's hard to convince anyone via intellectual argument of just about anything. Instead, hard evidence must be waved in their faces.

That may be my son's precocity to start with; then the clincher will be that of their own kids'.

John Taylor Gatto insists that "genius....is as common as dirt."

And Malcolm Gladwell's research essentially corroborates:

The striking thing about Ericsson's study is that he and his colleagues couldn't find any "naturals," musicians who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did. Nor could they find any "grinds," people who worked harder than everybody else, yet just didn't have what it takes to break the top ranks. Their research suggests that once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That's it. And what's more, the people at the very top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.

Visit my prior post - Outliers - A Must Read.

That book lit a fire under my hiney; it could very well have the same effect on y'all - on your work, your golf game, or on your parenting.