Tuitions

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

When I was a school boy I always felt excited to be in the class room. My teachers were loving, caring and brilliant. The after school hour games too gave me a sweaty pleasure. My school was more magnetic than my home. At home I lazed around and after early dinner sat with a book -mostly a puran or the Ramayana or Jaimini Mahabharata. I had finished reading the eighteen puranas and the epics by the time I passed class seven. Whether I understood or not I felt attracted by the small book case of my parents where religious literature was stalked.  I never felt any pressure from my parents. I did my home task regularly and enjoyed what I did. In the early evenings I frequented a library, Sadhana Pathagar inside the Hillpatna park in Berhampur. I read odia poetry and fiction and enjoyed reading whether I understood or not the nuances and subtleties: I never questioned myself. My parents never sent me for tuitions. In fact I never needed any coaching as my teachers were so good, intimate and wise.

Today my grandchildren cannot do without private tuitions. Coaching institutes have become more important than schools and colleges. All cities in India, even the rural areas, have more tuition houses than schools. Population has increased, educational institutions too have increased in number and the competition has become tough, at times soul killing. If a boy scores 90 percent of marks the parents are not happy for a seat in a higher institution or a technical college- engineering, medicine, fashion designing etc- is not guaranteed. They have to sit for an All India or All State entrance test and get a position high up the merit list: If not life, they think, is ruined. The boys and girls are always in tension. Their childhood and adolescence or early youth is always under an uncanny fear of failure. Running from one subject expert to another, going through IIT,JEE questions and answers, possible questions etc they forget even their birthdays. Life becomes a lonely hunt for success in a world which does not host a free lunch.

The rich parents as well as the middle class parents spend money on tuitions of their children to give them comparative ease in life. The society today is aspirational, the young persons are ambitious, the parents are aware of the requirements of the job market and the job market is shrinking all over the world. Educare institutes, a euphemism for organized tuition business promise cloud nine through their advertisements. The successful teachers of schools and colleges set shop at home. Children go in batches paying advance money for courses and wait for their turn till midnight. Anxious parents in bikes and cars wait outside the tuition centers to take back their tired sleepy children home.

The poor parents who can't afford tuitions for their children never entertain ambitions. If a determined boy of a rickshaw puller or bus conductor gets into IAS or IIT by sheer hard work and native intelligence it cheers our hearts much to the chagrin of the failed rich. Tuitions have become opium substitutes for children because right from class 1 they are under the tutelage of private tutors. I don’t see anything wrong with tuitions but if a child depends on tuitions all through his/ her schooling when does he/she get the time to think? If the child has no time to relax, play or indulge in child like frolic, it’s ok; he has to make a ‘small’ sacrifice for a settled, secure future. But rote memory or preparing selected questions are of what use in life?  If a boy gets a seat in a medical or engineering college by this method driven into him by his tutors can he ever innovate? Modern jobs, even in commercial enterprises or the IT sector need innovation. The Publish or Perish slogan of the universities and Tech institutes has now changed into Innovate or Perish. How can these tuition- fed children fit into our modern organizations?

But why do children go for tuitions? The ready answer is, the schools and colleges are busy ‘finishing the course’( if at all )  without bothering to see whether their students are inquisitive, innovative and analytical; whether their domain knowledge is adequate and above all whether they are for a profession or a vocation. The teachers have no time for this. The students naturally have no choice but to go for private tuitions.

The schools, first of all must stop the donnish practice of lecturing and focus on individual excellences and cultivate those to flourish innovatively. Rote should be abandoned as rot: the students must have a joyful tryst with learning without curtailing their fun hours.