With its vaguely sad-looking logo burned into the brains of children across the world, Kumon has been a staple of Asian American life for decades. The math and reading training center has been the subject of standup jokes, memes and, most recently, TikTok fame.
Videos of young adults spoofing their time at Kumon have reached millions, bringing in Asian American audiences who say they can definitely relate.
“I feel like I spent my whole childhood at Kumon,” said Aly Panjwani, 26, who was a student at a Texas center from elementary to early high school. “It was somewhere between a community center, tutoring center and a cult.”
Kumon-Tok is mostly filled with jokes about tall stacks of homework and anxiety-inducing timed tests, a common experience that represents a few laughs and stellar mental math skills years later.
“It’s a place for childhood trauma,” one Indian American TikToker joked in a viral video talking about her experiences.
Kumon-related content is among the most popular on her page, with commenters hungry to chime in with their own experiences.
“Kumon was the death of me,” one person said in the comments of one of her videos.
TikToks like hers have given Asian Americans the chance to reignite their collective Kumon commiserating, something they say brought them together as kids, too.
Panjwani said that, strangely, Kumon provided a space for him to spend time with his friends and cousins, as they were also all enrolled in classes there. As he got older, he also found himself getting closer in age to the center’s teachers and support staff, who were high school students, too, he said.
“It was a thing we all did together,” he said. “At times we really hated it, and at times we found it a space to hang out with each other.”
Parents who went to Kumon as kids are also now documenting their own children completing the familiar packets of work.
Popular creator Vidya Gopalan has gained a following of nearly 3 million…
Read the full article here
