Takeshi quickly developed his ability through studying the materials created by his father for half an hour every day.
When Kumon almost reached one million enrollments, Takeshi died from bladder cancer. Toru Kumon giving a lecture in Brazil (August 1994). Toru Kumon, who was so dismayed when his 8-year-old son had trouble with second-grade math that he developed a streamlined teaching method now used by more than 2 million students in 29 countries, died on Tuesday at a hospital near his home in Osaka, Japan. It now has revenues of more than $500,000 a year.Through a network of franchised after-school centers and programs for public and private schools, the concern, which also offers a reading program, has about 65,000 pupils in the United States.Devoting no more than 30 minutes a day to the program, but doing it seven days a week, mostly at home, students in the program complete finely calibrated work sheets, each almost imperceptibly more advanced than the one before.The method requires pupils to get all the problems on a given work sheet right within a fixed time limit, generally 10 minutes, before advancing to the next level.It is a measure of the method's degree of gradation, and its stress on repetition, that there are 70 sheets of simple 1 + problems and 50 devoted to the addition of 2.In addition to teaching math, the program is designed to instill discipline and build self-esteem, a goal that is achieved in part by virtually assuring new pupils initial success by starting them on the graduated Kumon road at a point a year or two behind their current grade levels.The method has been derided by critics as a "drill and kill" curriculum that stresses rote learning and memorization over creative problem-solving, but Kumon lore is filled with stories of 8-year-olds mastering calculus.Such achievements seem all the more impressive since the after-school program, which costs about $70 a month, appeals primarily to parents whose children are lagging in school.But studies have shown that Kumon benefits gifted children as well as underachievers, groups the founder regarded as indistinguishable. Toru Kumon (公文 公, Kumon Tōru, March 26, 1914 – July 25, 1995) was a Japanese mathematics educator, born in Kōchi Prefecture, Japan. In 1974, Toru Kumon published a book entitled The Secret of Kumon Maths which illustrated the aims of the Kumon Method and its effectiveness so far. He died on July 25, 1995 at the age of 81 from pneumonia. It was well received, provoking a flood of enquiries. Its goal is to communicate and further develop the educational philosophy of Toru Kumon, founder of the Kumon Method. The year that Toru died many Kumon Centers opened up in different countries, exceeding a million enrollments. As a result of Takeshi's progress, other parents became interested in Kumon's ideas, and in 1956, the first Kumon Center was opened in The Kumon Programs are designed to strengthen a student's fundamental maths and language skills by studying worksheets tailored to a student's ability. Prior to creating Kumon franchises, Kumon had a job teaching at Kochi Municipal High School and Tosa Junior/Senior High School. He was 81.Mr. "Every child is a gifted child," he once said, perhaps in reference to a remembered second grader with a poor report card.In addition to his son Takeshi, Mr. Kumon's survivors include another son, Hiroshi.TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996.