On July 24, 2021, it was announced that starting from January 2022, all for-profit academic tutoring would be outlawed in China. It was chilling news for the multibillion-dollar tutoring industry in China and has resurfaced Singapore’s own dilemmas over its own tutoring industry which has grown due to increased wealth and the desire for academic excellence by parents for their children.
Source: iMath
There has been much controversy about the necessity and effectiveness of tuition, so, let’s look at 3 different experiences we have had with tuition.
Christopher
For me, the word ‘tuition’ conjures up dreaded memories of Chinese lessons I used to take every Saturday morning whilst in lower primary. To this day, the bus ride, walk to the tuition centre and classroom experience are etched in my mind. Lessons were 3 gruelling and tedious hours long and the teaching technique employed was mind numbing and repetitive memorisation. Discipline was strictly enforced in class: no walking and talking in class (unless asked to). It was a horrible experience.
I always had a weak command of Chinese by virtue of hailing from a non-Chinese speaking household. With little need nor interest to learn the language, my parents decided that Chinese tuition would be necessary. They weren’t wrong. Tuition did prove effective and my Chinese scores in lower primary were extremely good. However, tuition also squashed the little remaining interest I had for the language. I absolutely dreaded having Chinese tuition every week and towards the end, utterly hated it. It took a huge fight with my parents before they relented and dropped the lessons.
Funnily enough, my relief from the unpleasant tuition experience was soon rattled by a different problem, poor Chinese grades! It got so dangerously low that I personally requested for Chinese tuition (albeit at a different centre). The second experience was more pleasant as lessons were less intense and having requested for it, I had a greater drive and willingness to concentrate during class. Whilst I would definitely be the last one to say it reignited my interest in Chinese, I did at least become more tolerant of learning it.
I realised that personal motivation is immensely important for effective long term learning. A big issue with tuition is that it often kills personal motivation to study. An academic upbringing built heavily on tuition threatens to collapse once tuition is stopped. Are we to take tuition even in university and our working life? If we fail to find our own personal motivation to learn, the years of effort taking tuition might all be for naught.
Hyeeun
Cram education has been well-known in Asian countries such as Singapore and South Korea. Back in South Korea, as a child I have been enrolled in cram schools in Elementary and Middle School, better known as “Hagwons” a.k.a Academies where once school ends, students study till 10pm or occasionally 1am in order to gain the best results for their College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) causing immense stress and competition. In other words, those who are able to cope have good results, albeit having no or less social life. Upon coming to Singapore, I was utterly disappointed at how similar the education system was (In fact, some Koreans were unable to take the stress hence “escaping” to Singapore for a better school-life balance).
Like South Korea, Singapore too, has their after-school cram schools daily, better known locally as “Tuition Centres” or “Private Tuition”. Dreadful memories flooded as soon as the word “Tuition” mentioned. Personally, my parents too enrolled me for Tuition Centres for every single subject in High School, in order to ace my exams to enter University (That one goal that everyone has when it comes to studying). Tuition Centres often meant additional homework to be completed on top of the homework we have already been tasked by our teachers in school, it ended up with an insurmountable mountain of homework constantly piled up day-on-day hence I resorted to skipping classes to avoid submissions and a trickle-down effect on my grades.
With less tuition, I was able to concentrate better in classes and lectures and build my own self-discipline and confidence in being resourceful to find the materials to study or through practice in my own way. Therefore, Polytechnic in Singapore does well in emphasising on inculcating soft skills for example, allowing students to explore their interests, passions, enable them to find their own resources and take the initiative to ask questions and leveraging on real-life training to enhance creative problem solving, critical thinking skills through Final Year Projects where students work in teams to help solve business problems.
Alicia
Just like every other child in Primary school, I placed no importance on the completion of my homework or revision. Thus, my mother signed me up for tuition for almost every subject; math, chinese, science, and even creative writing. Back then, I constantly lamented the fact that I had to attend so many classes a week and always had extra work to complete.
However, now, I think back and am grateful for the multitude of tuition I had to attend, which forced me to stay on top of my work despite my tendencies to slack off. As I grew and matured into my secondary school and junior college days, my mother stopped forcing me to attend different tuitions, instead allowing me to decide how I would like to manage my workload. For example, if I felt that I needed tuition for a particular subject, it was my choice to sign up for tuition. If I felt that I would rather have no tuition and focus on self revision, she would have no qualms with that either. This was because I was now mature enough to manage my own workload and decide whether I needed extra help with my studies.
Thus, I am of the view that when strategically planned out, tuition can be very effective. It is true that with tuition, the higher workload will definitely cause stress. Which I think is necessary for young children at the age where all they want to do is play. Having tuition is effective in making them stay on top of their studies.
However as we grow, our workload from school becomes heavier and heavier, such that it is no longer viable to be attending multitudes of tuitions, and by doing so is likely to become detrimental to our studies due to extreme stress and having no time to self revise. Thus, it is necessary to cut down on the amount of tuition, and allow teens to make the decision whether to attend tuition as they are now mature enough to make the decision they think is most advantageous towards their studies.
After looking through these experiences, we can see that while tuition is essential in providing students with gradual preparation for the examinations, it is time for us to ask “how much is too much?”. When it comes to tuition, we must strike a balance since each individual has differentiating needs and capabilities - too much tuition could be more detrimental than having none at all or a different teaching approach could be needed for some others. This can be done by looking at factors such as maturity level, amount of workload and the learning styles of the individual, before deciding on how much tuition to undertake.
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