I refer to the report “Tuition culture has to go, say MPs” (March 7).
Encouraging a paradigm shift is laudable, but some time is required before the mindset that prioritises grades as both a psychological and pertinent symbol of success, or as a preferred route leading to it, can be changed.
This mindset is rooted in the role of examinations, which represent to many students the core of their school lives, a key responsibility to their schools and themselves.
Simplistically, exams are the seeming be-all and end-all, given that they are still one of the key considerations when selecting job candidates.
In a more nuanced view, tuition has inevitably become a status symbol that distinguishes students based on wealth and class, given the nature of tuition services they can afford, of which some can be exorbitant.
The perennial stigma of mediocre grades is expressed implicitly, mostly via parental scolding or constant comparisons among friends, relatives or siblings.
Tuition is construed as the remedy, given the attractiveness and credibility pushed forth by tuition centres.
The problem that is easier to rectify is the use of tuition as a crutch for one to attain good grades.
However, there is nothing wrong with getting tuition if one has exhausted all available resources from today’s vast technological platforms or schoolteachers, and thus concludes that one requires additional help.
This help should then be construed as a means to an end, that is, acquiring the skills to handle the subject on one’s own eventually.
Also, tuition has come to serve various purposes: Some wish to stretch their mediocre grades to an ideal grade, and a minority hope to merely pass. To most, tuition is irrevocably intertwined with grades and seen as the formula for success.
However, education should not be an end, but a means of having a good grounding in the hard skills and mental fortitude required in life.
While the tuition culture will not simply go away, because it has been ingrained in us, parents should carefully weigh its purpose and significance with regard to improving a student as a person, before signing him up for tuition classes.
Most importantly, it is not grades that define the individual, but the process of forging through the grind and the values inculcated that make a person.
Renowned statesman Edmund Burke once said: “There is in mankind an unfortunate propensity to make themselves, their views and their works the measure of excellence in everything whatsoever.” This propensity is what must change.
Encouraging a paradigm shift is laudable, but some time is required before the mindset that prioritises grades as both a psychological and pertinent symbol of success, or as a preferred route leading to it, can be changed.
This mindset is rooted in the role of examinations, which represent to many students the core of their school lives, a key responsibility to their schools and themselves.
Simplistically, exams are the seeming be-all and end-all, given that they are still one of the key considerations when selecting job candidates.
In a more nuanced view, tuition has inevitably become a status symbol that distinguishes students based on wealth and class, given the nature of tuition services they can afford, of which some can be exorbitant.
The perennial stigma of mediocre grades is expressed implicitly, mostly via parental scolding or constant comparisons among friends, relatives or siblings.
Tuition is construed as the remedy, given the attractiveness and credibility pushed forth by tuition centres.
The problem that is easier to rectify is the use of tuition as a crutch for one to attain good grades.
However, there is nothing wrong with getting tuition if one has exhausted all available resources from today’s vast technological platforms or schoolteachers, and thus concludes that one requires additional help.
This help should then be construed as a means to an end, that is, acquiring the skills to handle the subject on one’s own eventually.
Also, tuition has come to serve various purposes: Some wish to stretch their mediocre grades to an ideal grade, and a minority hope to merely pass. To most, tuition is irrevocably intertwined with grades and seen as the formula for success.
However, education should not be an end, but a means of having a good grounding in the hard skills and mental fortitude required in life.
While the tuition culture will not simply go away, because it has been ingrained in us, parents should carefully weigh its purpose and significance with regard to improving a student as a person, before signing him up for tuition classes.
Most importantly, it is not grades that define the individual, but the process of forging through the grind and the values inculcated that make a person.
Renowned statesman Edmund Burke once said: “There is in mankind an unfortunate propensity to make themselves, their views and their works the measure of excellence in everything whatsoever.” This propensity is what must change.