Tuition

Was driving home at around 10.00 p.m. one night and noticed that many cars had school-going kids inside. And one word came to mind... I made a passing remark to Other Half about how much petrol can be saved if kids don't go for tuitions. There will be a significant amount of reduction in the emission of gasses in Malaysia at least. It's end of the year, and right now even some of the post UPSR students are still attending tuition - to prepare for next year! Whatever happened to free time?

Imagine also the time available to be spent at home as a family. Right now, I think many families exist without really much time together... though these days the general consensus seems to be the emphasis on quality time. Guess quality now refers to the little time that's left. I think young people today are left to their own devices quite a lot.

Parents seem to think of tuitions as a gain. I think it's a loss. It has caused the kids to lose opportunities to dream, learn new skills, pick up games... basically pick up life's other skills and values from play. These days everything is rigidly learned. So, when you throw them into a situation, it's kinda difficult for them to cope.

And that's life for them... being ferried to school and back, then ferried out again for tuitions. Parents' lives evolve around that. Everything is rushed... and you even have meals in the car to save time. I've seen many parents doing that, these meals-on-the-go (on the wheels).

So, from the time these kids enter Std 1 (some even younger) they lose their time and begin an adult-like schedule. School followed by tuition and more tuitions sometimes. And this goes on until the end of their schooling days... 11-13 years!

Look at the state of sports and games in most schools today. We hardly get exceptional athletes from non-sports schools. Many kids are too busy chasing time for tuitions. In the rural schools, where once teachers used to make a difference, the new breed of teachers are hardly able to mentor the students cos the teachers themselves are products of the same mill. Kids today are generally 'soft'.. for many the main game they play is computer game.

Part of the fault lies with the teachers. The general perception is teachers don't teach. I think that is only part of the problem. The other part lies with the parents. Some teachers give the excuse of not teaching in class because the students take tuition. Add that to the fact that kids who go for tuitions generally do not pay attention in class because they feel that their tuition is adequate, you have a vicious cycle in the making. Parents send their kids for tuitions because they want their kids to have an extra edge. In the end the parents and their kids lose out as they have to fork out more resources for the tuition thingy. And their quality of life also takes a beating.

Another problem is the quality of teachers that we churn out these days. I see many half baked teachers these days. Half baked teachers are teachers who don't seem to know their subject matter very well. And many of them come 'highly-qualified'. You have teachers with a Masters but who do not teach very well... you have language teachers who ask students to copy essays because they say students can't write. You have Maths teachers who cannot seem to solve problems and Physics teachers who don't seem to have a good grasp of concepts. I have come across trainee teachers who sleep on the job... and you wonder how such people are accepted into the teaching profession. So it's back to the drawing board again - and the solution called tuition!