Private tuition : Merits and demerits
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: August 02, 2014 -
Since the past couple of decades, groups of parents thronging at the gates of tuition centres or residences of teachers have become a common sight.
In these unnatural gatherings, they mostly talk about the achievements, potentials and prospects of their children.
Presence of the parents at such sites seems to have a common purpose, a mission to ‘educate’ their children through private tuition. Parents’ escorting their children to the tuition centres and back home is another inescapable sight.
This is a new found tradition visible in almost all localities of Imphal and greater Imphal.Thirty years back or so, private tuition was reserved for a privileged few who were academically not so bright.
Even then, private tuition was largely confined to one or two subject(s). Over the years, private tuition or coaching has become an integral part of formal (school) education system in Manipur.
With students going for private tuition for each and every subject, private tuition or coaching is fast acquiring the status of a parallel schooling system.
There are many compelling and not so compelling factors for the rise of private coaching system in parallel to the formal schooling system. Frequent bandhs, boycott and other disturbances are some of the compelling factors.
But we cannot overlook the heightened sense of competitiveness. It is a matter of serious concern that private tuition is assuming the character of an all pervasive tradition in our society.
We do agree that private tuition equips students better to face examinations. At the same time, it evokes a question of fairness.
Whereas the level of competitiveness is rising year after year, the arena of competition is shrinking reciprocally.
Competition and sense of competitiveness has already become an exclusive domain of private and mission schools only.
This is reflected most glaringly in the results of Class X and Class XII examinations conducted by Board of Secondary Education Manipur (BSEM) and Council of Higher Secondary Examination Manipur (COHSEM).
These exams have become so lopsidedly unfair that students of Government schools have been thrown out of competition.
Private tuition has many inherent demerits, producing serious implications on multiple aspects of our social life.
However, by virtue of its sheer relevancy to the education system, private tuition centres are gaining prominence at the expense of public schools.
The shift in the education pattern is that schools are there to conduct exams and issue certificates, while the actual teaching and learning is done in private tuition/coaching centres.
Schools have deviated asunder from their sacred purpose of imparting education to students. Growing culture of private tuition is a manifestation of parents’ dissatisfaction with the educational performance of schools.
The rising popularity of private tuition and coaching centres has its roots in the Indian education system where marks secured in the examinations are used as the sole criterion to measure a student’s abilities. This system of judging a student’s potential and ability defies the very purpose of schools, which is to prepare students for examinations and more importantly for life beyond.
Again, private tuition contradicts the aim of education, that is, to make students think and nurture their innate potentials.
Underscoring the flawed education system which has deviated quite afar from its intended line, the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) recommended in 2005 that education should be for nurturing multiple intelligence in order to fructify the full potential of each child.
And this has to be supported by a constructivist approach to learning and a flexible, scientifically designed student assessment system. Private tuition/coaching operates in total contradiction to such recommendations.
In other words, it stands to mould students to secure maximum marks in examinations. Guided by this objective, private tuition/coaching feeds students with readymade answers/solutions.
With private tuition assuming central role in the school education system of the State, students have been accustomed to a culture of spoon-feeding.
The culture of spoon-feeding is robbing away the thinking power of our young students.
Students are not allowed to exercise their mental faculty to tackle a problem and arrive at a conclusion of their own because teachers in coaching centres are ever present to supply them with readymade answers.
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