APRIL 28 — All over Malaysia, tuition centres remain hugely popular.
After-school classes have been the favorite approach for parents to help their children excel in their studies for many decades now.
One report noted that the average Malaysian student spends six hours in supplementary tuition a week.
Yet I wonder how long the appeal of private tuition will last.
Education is one of the most fast-changing sectors in our society. Simply attend any conference on education and you’ll be surprised how our schools can maintain their status quo given the improvements in technology, pedagogy, educational psychology and so on.
How do these developments affect tuition centres? Given that such centres are run more or less the same way they’ve been run since the 1980s, what will happen to the demand for their services?
A time-tested, but fragile (?), institution
Tuition may still be relevant for some so-called time-tested reasons.
Oh, my child doesn’t fully grasp Physics so hopefully the tuition teacher can communicate in a way the school teacher couldn’t or proffer new insights into more difficult concepts.
Or my boy is struggling with Maths so an extra two hours a week of drilling those differential equations surely can’t hurt.
Or I absolutely believe that academic excellence is the key to my daughter’s future, I want to ensure she comes out among the top in her school, thus giving her extra classes is the best way forward, if only to strengthen her studying skills and, of course, her grades.
These sound like valid reasons and, ultimately, a student’s academic journey (at least up to 21 years of age?) is largely in the hands of his or her parents.
Also, given how most Malaysians still value academic performance it is unlikely tuition centres are going to be closing anytime soon.
Having said that, there are also numerous reasons why tuition centres may face a drop in demand in the future.
The most obvious answer is the presence of the Web and the (literally) infinite number of online learning and/or personalised learning websites and apps out there.
From Khan Academy on YouTube to Coursera to the open FOC courses uploaded by universities, it would appear that the need to be taught by (yet another) human being approximates the need to buy any more DVDs or CDs.
I suspect more parents today, unlike those of yesteryears, will look online for solutions especially given the rising cost of everything. I mean, if my child can learn profitably from, say, Udemy, why would I need to pay a few hundred a week to a tuition teacher?
Indeed, I would argue that a key skill schools (and maybe parents?) can impart to students is simply the ability to self-learn. It’s the whole “teach me how to fish and I eat for a lifetime” philosophy applied to academic studies.
Another reason why tuition centres may eventually fade away is that most such centres essentially play the same “game” as schools i.e. their absolute top priority is helping students score as many As as possible. The key difference is they employ different tactics to excel in this same game.
However, more and more leaders and companies recognise the superficiality of formal education grades. Nobody ever ever excels as an employee or manager or director by virtue of “having scored 10As” in his/her SPM”.
In fact, as everyone knows, top academic credentials are at best a foot in the door to a good job and are practically irrelevant when it comes to achieving corporate KPIs.
The sad paradox is that often to obtain academic distinctions entail utilising a different skill set from what’s needed to excel in a job.
In our national education system, let’s be honest: The #1 “studying method” students up to Form 5 (and maybe a little beyond) adopt is — surprise, surprise! — memorisation. That’s the truth.
Ninety-nine per cent of Malaysian students do well in their written non-Maths exams because they’ve learnt to memorise the best and lengthiest answers to exam questions (see note 1).
And tuition centres are more often than not an extension of such learning.
But rote learning (which is what memorisation essentially is) is almost completely useless in the corporate world.
Therefore, training a student to excel in rote learning right before she enters college and university (let alone the world of work!) where rote learning is almost irrelevant is like teaching a would-be marathon runner how to speed-walk. Or preparing for Wimbledon by playing badminton.
So will or can tuition centres shift from teaching students “how to score higher in Science” to “how to become better leaders to team-players”?
Note 1: Even with Maths, the key to success is somewhat similar to memorisation; it’s called, uh, repetition. No top scorer in Additional Maths has achieved said accolade without doing and re-doing certain exercises in the textbook over and over again. This kind of skill is hardly a bad thing in itself; it’s just not (as per my argument) what a lot of the working world demands.
*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
