So, about 3 years ago someone posted a review of their experiences at Coto Academy and asked if it was a scam or not. Coto Academy was offered the opportunity to respond and chose not to. Then Coto Academy got themselves banned for spamming the sub with their business posts.
And, of course, Reddit being the most visited website in the world guess what pops up on the front page any time you search for Coto Academy? Scam or not? Yes, that thread.
So, in the last couple of weeks we have been getting a regular few reports of that post a day. You can guess who's behind it. We warned them and complained to the admins but nothing has come of it so far. So now we're going to give them the treatment Reddit gave Dr. Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated (aka Dr. Douglas Berger – now going by Marc Berge – yes, he changed his name the press from his lawsuit was so bad) and share our experiences, good or bad, about them.
Currently the report counts are:
user reports:
23: This is spam
6: It's personal and confidential information
5: It's targeted harassment at me
4: It's promoting hate based on identity or vulnerability
3: It's targeted harassment at someone else
1: It threatens violence or physical harm at me
1: It engages in illegal or harmful behavior
1: It's sexual or suggestive content involving minors
A reminder, Japan's defamation laws are very strict. Please make sure you phrase your reviews of their services as your opinion rather than statements of fact. Based off my experiences with him I feel that Bulldogdiver is a great big poopyhead is fine. Bulldogdiver is a great big poopyhead is not.
So I'll go first:
I attended Coto in 2018 to try to help improve my Japanese language skills because they are one of the few schools that offers night/evening classes that make it possible for working professionals to attend.
I attended for about 6 months. I was originally put into a lower level course. This makes sense, they supposedly have a syllabus they're following (I never saw any evidence of one) and like Japanese language schools they want to make sure everyone has the same level rather than having holes.
In my classes there was not a book or syllabus that I saw. Teachers had a 3 ring binder with hand outs and some teaching materials they handed out in class. This made it difficult for me to study ahead or know what general area we were going to cover in the next classes.
The teachers were not consistent throughout the term. They changed relatively often. They also had different methods and seemed to be teaching from different sections of the syllabus. This made it very very difficult for me to keep up and maintain my pace. Also if I missed a class, since they were using hand outs, I did not get the hand outs at the next class and just missed that section. Again not conducive to my style of learning or making sure there aren't any holes in the student's knowledge.
After the 2nd term there were problems scheduling a new teacher so I simply decided my learning goals were not being met and I chose not to reenroll/buy more time.
I tried to get off their mailing list. The one they spam you with non-stop. Much to my surprise there is only 1 e-mail from them in my spam folder (from 9/30). Normally there are significantly more. I gave up asking them to not spam me and just filtered them.
Obviously, much like psychiatric care, you should visit and make your own assessment of whether Coto Academy would meet your educational needs, but, I do not feel I could recommend them.
by bulldogdiver