Cashing in on extra lessons

THE EDITOR: I really wonder what is happening in primary and secondary education in this country. It seems extra lessons are the order of the day — lessons for Common Entrance (or whatever it’s called now), lessons for CXC, lessons for this, lessons for that.

It appears that we have a section of the teaching population who are intent on convincing parents that their children, no matter how bright and successful at school, need extra lessons. Seems to me there was a time when extra tuition was thought necessary only when students were backward in their work. Many parents are saying that teachers are deliberately taking a casual approach to their syllabuses so they can make extra money running classes in the evenings. Children spend six or seven hours in school Monday to Friday. What on earth are they doing during all that time. Aren’t the teachers teaching? Or are they perhaps marking time until three or four o’clock when they can get on with the real business of making money with their extra lessons.

I even heard of one teacher who wouldn’t teach during the day (the building was supposed to be unsafe), but was rolling up in the afternoons to give lessons in the same building. I know what the offending teachers are going to say in their defence; they are going to claim that normal school hours are insufficient to properly cover the curriculum, and extra lessons are an absolute necessity to get the work done. That sounds to me like balderdash; it would mean that the Ministry is giving children a syllabus that is too large to cover in the alloted time; in that case school vacations should be abolished altogether in order to provide more time in school.
These teachers are cashing in on parents who are afraid to deny these extra lessons to their children. These parents want to feel they have done everything as far as their children’s education is concerned, so they aren’t taking any chances.

JEREMY   BOYD
Gulf View