Japanese Parents Look to Abacus to Give Children Learning Advantage

A survey conducted by the abacus education organization Zenshuren of parents with children of elementary school age or younger attending abacus classes in one of central Tokyo’s 23 municipalities found that 43.7% of the children began learning the abacus in the first year of elementary school, while 31.6% started prior to elementary school.

The results of this survey, based on 348 responses, suggest that children attending abacus classes are beginning well in advance of the third or fourth grade, which is when students are taught to calculate using an abacus under Japan’s course of study for elementary schools.

The main reason parents had their children learn the abacus, as cited by 85.6% of respondents, was to improve their ability to calculate, while 82.8% said that the calculation ability of their children had indeed improved as a result. Among the 211 parents surveyed whose children had not been good at arithmetic to begin with, 80.8% said that abacus classes had a positive effect on their children’s daily life in terms of everyday shopping, conversations, and school life, while 56.9% said that their children’s grades for arithmetic had improved. Such results suggest the benefits of the classes for overcoming a dislike of math.

The second most common benefit cited by survey respondents as a reason for learning the abacus was improved concentration. Some respondents also pointed to the benefit of improving grades in science courses and better performance on junior-high entrance examinations.

Regarding future careers, 48.0% of the parents responding to the survey hoped their children would choose a science-related profession, far exceeding the 7.8% who wanted their children to pursue a path in the humanities. Medicine was by far the specific field that parents hoped their children would develop a future interest in, as cited by 42.5% of the respondents, well ahead of the 26.4% who hoped their children would be interested in the now much discussed field of artificial intelligence.

The survey was conducted from April to June of 2024, with the cooperation of abacus schools belonging to the Tokyo branch of Zenshuren. A total of 348 people responded to the survey.

(© Pixta)

(Originally published in Japanese. Banner photo © Pixta.)