Resilience: bouncing back and emerging stronger

Resilience is the capacity to bounce back quickly from difficulties or setbacks. Kumon believes resilience to be an essential attribute for children to develop and possess. With resilience, students can emerge from challenging experiences with a positive perception of themselves and their future.

Resilience was important prior to the emergence of COVID-19. According to a report by the World Economic Forum, 65% of students who entered primary school in 2016 will be in new jobs that have not been invented . Students who grow into resilient adults are better able to acquire the new knowledge and skills necessary for them to succeed in the newly invented jobs.

COVID-19 has reinforced the importance of resilience in students. Measures to suppress or eliminate the COVID-19 have brought about disruptions to daily life in Australia and New Zealand, as well as potentially lasting societal change.

In Australia and New Zealand, students experienced the temporary closure of schools for onsite learning. Kumon centres were also temporarily closed for in-centre study of worksheets.

For several months, learning in school and Kumon was all conducted at home. Students – as well as their parents, teachers and Kumon Instructors – showed resilience by adapting to the challenges of learning from home. This included learning to use new technologies, adopting new routines and time-management techniques, and adjusting to a home-based learning environment.

Kumon supports students to build resilience through self-learning and daily study. Kumon students have to overcome a small challenge each day in order to progress in their learning. This continual exposure to challenge builds student’s selfconfidence and their belief in their own abilities.

They also develop the discipline and skills necessary to adapt. Through Kumon, students grow in resilience as they understand that no setback is permanent, they need only to adapt to overcome the challenge they face.

“We hope they develop an academic ability that is solid enough to enable them to understand new content without having to be taught”, explained Toru Kumon in an article for Kumon Instructors.

“Children who have developed the habit of self-learning will surely grow to become people who can continue solving problems in life on their own. They will be able to do this by continuing to read and learn … even after university and as they venture out into the world.”

Resilience will help students to continue to learn throughout the pandemic. Resilience will also be of benefit to students after the pandemic as well. It is inevitable that students will encounter some form of difficulties.

Developing resilience will allow a student to bounce back from a setback and learn from the challenge. Students then proceed to apply their learning in new ways, allowing them to adapt new solutions to solve the problems they face.

1 Chapter 1: The Future of Jobs and Skills. (2020). Retrieved 10 June 2020, from https://reports.weforum.org/future-of-jobs-2016/chapter-1-the-future-of-jobs-and-skills/#view/fn-1