Right teaching to self-esteem and confidence.

Many parents send their children to tuition centers to ensure they are not left behind by their peers. Sending the children for tuition is apparently the logical move to ensure the children are not left behind by their peers. However, is it the best way to achieve that goal?

When children are provided with all the facts and figures or explanations concerning the materials they have to cover academically, what are most of the tuition teachers really doing? They are actually spoon-feeding the children with facts and ways to achieve better grades.

With the facts that they memorise, they are even able to get excellent examination results. Yet, many of those same students with such good academic results are not able to write sufficiently well to apply for jobs at the end of their academic studies.

This is written as a result of meeting a parent whose two children did get into the Asian Scholarship Programme to study in Singapore where the standard of English is much higher. The parent told me that her child was once so proud of his results. Then, when her child had to go to Singapore where he was not given any tuition, he lost his confidence and self-esteem. She told me that the child was so used to tuition that he was lost without such an aid. He had to struggle to regain that confidence. Looks like a child can become lost without the tuition he has depended upon for getting good results.

However, I am not saying that it is totally bad to give tuition to children. After all, if the students are weak in their studies, they obviously need help and tuition could be the help necessary. However, what I wish to point out is that children should not depend too much on tuition. They must be given more opportunities to think and search for answers in their studies. They must learn how to look for answers.

I have known of tuition teachers who help students to complete their homework. They are some who impress parents by giving work that is too difficult for the children, forcing them to turn to parents or adults to supply the answers. The question is "Would such methods help the children to improve?". I am told by many Chinese students that many students were taught to memorise well in order to get excellent grades. Of course, such students can become really good at memorisation but is that the best method in acquiring knowledge?

Unless the child is a genius, it is only alright to memorise a limited number of things in the primary or secondary school. Certainly, it would be more difficult to memorise the kilograms of knowledge in upper secondary and university level. That perhaps is the reason very few of those who use the memorisation technique cannot reach the upper levels of education.

However, we do not need to memorise that much material in the actual world as knowledge is available on the net or in books in libraries. Ability to search for it and understand it well is even more important.