These are familiar sights: an overworked, harried mother, sweating profusely, dragging her young son through a scramble of auto and bus rides, from one corner of the city to another, sneaking in quick bites of food to survive these short but excruciating journeys while her son, saddled with a schoolbag inside which he could probably fit, tries to make sense of the delirious urgency with which his mother moved and talk during these routines. These mothers are aplenty in my city and by extension, this country; dedicated, assiduous women, forces of nature in their own right, who would traverse through mountains and high tides for the sake of their children’s education. When asked about this, they speak with unrestrained pride:
“She has Maths tuition in Shobhabazar, chemistry tuition in Kasba, both Physics and Maths tuition in Ballygunge, you see, her tutor is much esteemed, Mr. Sen, he is very experienced and all his students get 95%. An English tutor who comes home every Saturday and Sunday and for geography, she goes to Mrs. Roy,”
Both amusing and infuriating in its severity, it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when the culture of tuition began taking precedence over actual academic education. Initially, its necessity made sense; students in the higher classes, who struggled with certain portions of their subject, could turn to, let’s say, someone with adequate knowledge about that subject, preferably living nearby, someone who could assist them with the portion they were struggling with and maybe share some advice regarding it. To be fair, the basis of that arrangement is still inherent in this convention but most items in it have been heightened, distorted and in turn, abused beyond proportion.
For starters, it has become the norm. Its massive proliferation was so natural that it’s now difficult to imagine a period when tuitions were means for weaker students to catch up and improve their school work. I was in class one or two when my parents hired a daily, home tutor to help me with all the subjects. She was a young, sweet woman, in the midst of getting her own degree from university and I must say that I enjoyed those sessions every day despite missing play time with my friends who lived in the complex and had not been inserted into the realm of tuitions yet. I was an above-average student, even at age six but the reasons why I had to be taking those tuitions remained unclear to me for a very long time.
Given that this is a developing country with a population of over 1.2 billion, where unemployment rates are climbing and job opportunities are dwindling, there can only ever be one reason: competition. A lot of parents do not want to admit to their children how competitive they want them to be but it is on all of their minds; competition invaded the country years ago but this present generation is enduring the heaviest blows of it. As a result, most parents want their young kids to not only bring satisfactory results in academics and extracurricular activities but excel beyond their limited capabilities. I’m referring to children as young as six being enrolled in group tuitions because their parents want to extract the maximum out of them in this spirit of competition. It would be tolerable if this spirit of competition encouraged in preparation for a future in which the children would have to work hard and sacrifice for their aims, but that is not the case with most parents. Most parents seek the bragging rights that present themselves alongside an academically-inclined child. That is why battalions of children, who would rather be playing with toys or napping, are dropped into the hostile pits of tuition and more often than not, not a big deal is made out of this.
Let’s move towards the older section now: the teenagers. If you live in an urban household, go to school and are over the age of fourteen, then you take tuition. That is a fact; that is a scientific fact. If you do not, then I must applaud you for having survived without it for so long and warn you; it’s striding towards you, my friend. It is evident that the standard of Indian education still has miles to cover before it can null the trend of tuitions altogether but what is most disheartening, something I have observed over and over again, that most students would rather chatter and sleep in class during an interesting and useful lesson, all because they are guaranteed the notes anyways in tuition. Such blissful their lives are to always be certain of tuition notes! Students’ reliance on tuition is boundless and unflagging; they expect their tutors to rescue them from desert islands, donate their kidney to them in times of crisis and pour them with notes to last them a lifetime.
This reliance is not only taking responsibility out of their hands, responsibility that a mature student has towards his/her education and the lectures and lessons it encompasses but it is removing their will to learn and grow through the opportunities available to them. This would be surprising to them but paying attention in class would actually alleviate many of their study problems. Why pay extra money for tuition when some lessons can be learnt in class?
I’m aware that that is not a definitive or assured solution. I have floundered in class myself, because let’s face it: not all lessons are exciting, not all teachers are perfect. But that doesn’t necessarily allow you to drop everything and enlist in the requisite tuition automatically. Your parents have always been telling you that hard work is the solution to all your problems, that unfettered perseverance will elevate you to the highest positions of society but deep down, you know this as well as any student: hard work is sometimes simply not enough.
There is no degree or measure of hard work and there is sometimes little to no evidence of it actually paying off. I don’t want to descend into the debate of hard work vs. luck, but achieving your goals will require hard work of many forms, I can attest to that. Simply joining a tuition and expecting to obtain all the best marks in the class is foolish and even futile; hard work is consulting your schools teachers, then friends, then the internet, then reference books when you have encountered a problem. If you’ve exhausted all your sources and are on the verge of giving up for good, that’s when I suggest you join a tuition.
People will clamour, “What’s the point of doing all that?” but the point is that you’re solving your own problems and there is no richer value in life besides that. Much like how cheating never feels as comforting as coming up with a correct answer yourself, being able to counter obstacles by being resourceful and determined is an incredibly fulfilling feeling that triumphs over the lazy resolution of tuitions. Not only do you learn the skills of networking, communication and improvisation, you’re actually imprinting knowledge in your head that way instead of rote memorization or ‘mugging up’.
Our country is teeming with youth wrangling with themselves, angry, mad, deranged, and exasperated with their performance in exams. The stress brought on by tuition further fills the barrel of anxiety till it begin overflowing and the youth lose their bearings to it. Overworking themselves with multiple tuitions might make them think their marks will improve by one or two but is it worth to sacrifice most of your free time to the scourge of tuitions?
When teenagers are asked about their occupation, they respond with ‘student’, which is not an inaccurate label but what’s significant here is that ‘occupation’ is the operative word. Being a student is an occupation and when your occupation becomes your life, then should you not be paid for it?
