Do students need tutoring to succeed in the VCE?

[paulsterio]

I think you should ask him, it's not a misinterpretation

Kumon goes into methods and spesh level material. I know someone who was doing volumes of revolution in yr8, and thushan is a fair bit above that guy intellectually (no offence to this person).

Alright, I'll ask Thushan

But relating this back to the discussion, does doing, say, Volumes of Solids of Revolution in Year 8, really help a student achieve more highly later on in Year 12?

[pi]

Alright, I'll ask Thushan

But relating this back to the discussion, does doing, say, Volumes of Solids of Revolution in Year 8, really help a student achieve more highly later on in Year 12?

I don't think so, this guy got similar scores to me in yr12 maths (1 SS higher in methods, same in spesh).

I think it's just parents who are overly keen when this sort of stuff happens, I'm not for it tbh. Kids should be kids.

[thushan]

mmm, not complaining though - without kumon...i would have been a different person...

[paulsterio]

That's exactly what I'm thinking, because in the end, VCE maths is really about minimising the amount of careless errors you make and really getting down to the nitty gritty and hard problems which separate the 50s from the 45s and I don't see how someone who's done this in Year 8 would have much benefit.

On top of that, I doubt someone in year 8 has enough "world knowledge" to reallly understand the maths in the same way that we do?

[paulsterio]

mmm, not complaining though - without kumon...i would have been a different person...

How so?

- sorry for double post, ceebs editing

[pi]

On top of that, I doubt someone in year 8 has enough "world knowledge" to reallly understand the maths in the same way that we do?

Who cares about that, a kid in yr8 shouldn't be doing anything other than maybe basic quadratics and trig. It's yr8! One of the very last years with pretty much no substantial homework. Go outside and play a sport or something, don't get bogged down over little booklets filled with calculus.

[thushan]

mmm, not complaining though - without kumon...i would have been a different person...

How so?

- sorry for double post, ceebs editing

kumon was the reason i did well in maths in year 12

[paulsterio]

Who cares about that, a kid in yr8 shouldn't be doing anything other than maybe basic quadratics and trig. It's yr8! One of the very last years with pretty much no substantial homework. Go outside and play a sport or something, don't get bogged down over little booklets filled with calculus.

kumon was the reason i did well in maths in year 12

hmmm, interesting conflicting views here, but yeah :\

[Lasercookie]

On top of that, I doubt someone in year 8 has enough "world knowledge" to reallly understand the maths in the same way that we do?

This sounds like a very interesting discussion point, can you elaborate on this point?

What do you mean by 'world knowledge' and how is that applicable to understanding maths? Isn't it mostly abstract? I'd have thought that a year 8 would be quite capable of understanding the relationship between numbers, graphs, shapes, vectors and what not. You would assume that if they're working at year 12 level content, they'd be pretty good with algebra and all that lower year level content etc.

Hmm, what are a few related issues? I guess:

• How to approach maths?
• being forced into it (not always a bad thing)
• rushing through content - not going over basics first
• forgetting it
• being bored in class
• not taking the opportunity to understand it in a bit more depth
• not taking the opportunity to go outside the school curriculum and play around with other interesting maths (if you're working ahead out of interest, I don't see any reason to not do this last point

A few of those can relate to VCE students and how the way they approach maths too.

[MJRomeo81]

Getting some hands on experience with complicated stuff at a young age certainly helps. Even if you don't fully understand it or you develop bad habits in the area (e.g. programming for example), I've found that the sheer experience of "seeing it all before" gives you an inherent advantage.

[pi]

Who cares about that, a kid in yr8 shouldn't be doing anything other than maybe basic quadratics and trig. It's yr8! One of the very last years with pretty much no substantial homework. Go outside and play a sport or something, don't get bogged down over little booklets filled with calculus.

kumon was the reason i did well in maths in year 12

hmmm, interesting conflicting views here, but yeah :\

What's your view out of curiosity? Would you encourage your younger siblings to be able to do volumes of revolution by late primary/early secondary school?


My view is a bit biased, as I did Kumon for about a month in primary school (grade 1) but my parents pulled me out because they too believed "kids should be kids". I distinctly remember them taking me out to a movie instead of going to the next Kumon class (they didn't tell me I was to stop going), saying that to me. Furthermore, my yr8 maths teacher drilled a guy in my class (the same one as aforementioned) for being a "monkey with no tricks" after using the Kumon rote-learning techniques (which I don't think is the right way to learn secondary school maths either).

Getting some hands on experience with complicated stuff at a young age certainly helps. Even if you don't fully understand it or you develop bad habits in the area (e.g. programming for example), I've found that the sheer experience of "seeing it all before" gives you an inherent advantage.

This isn't really about a head-start, this is more about extreme parenting. Whilst it may make things easier, there is more to success than rote-learning how to solve problems. And I don't really think that this is too much of an advantage, I wouldn't trade hours of my childhood for Kumon.

I'm against it, you can only be a kid once, and personally, I'd live those memories to be filled with fun rather than work. There's plenty of time for work later in life imo.

[abeybaby]

kumon is AWESOME for teaching mental arithmetic, little tricks when working with big numbers and speed, but when you get to levels L+, it just gets ridiculous.. it becomes somewhat useless...

i wish i knew about kumon in primary school, i would have loved to finish up to K

[thushan]

kumon is AWESOME for teaching mental arithmetic, little tricks when working with big numbers and speed, but when you get to levels L+, it just gets ridiculous.. it becomes somewhat useless...

i wish i knew about kumon in primary school, i would have loved to finish up to K

nah, M = trig, useful. O, P = advanced calculus. Q = statistics + matrices.

Quite useful.

[charmanderp]

I wish I had done something like Kumon in primary school. Never really took maths seriously until Methods 3/4 and as a result, my algebra skills are just awful. I think essay writing tuition as a youngster can also be of huge help. I did about a month or two of that at the start of Year 6 and I feel like it's one of the major reasons I've done well at English and other written subjects in high school.

[abeybaby]

the logs in L drive me nuts.. some of the questions are so irrelevant to VCE, and the students just had no understanding on what logs really are.. it just became a rote learning game for them