Too much tuition is bad for your brain...

This post is about what I see as a rather unhealthy trend in Singapore society: the rise of a 'culture of tuition' that has become obsessive to the point that it defeats the very purpose of education.

Most parents in Singapore feel that tuition is necessary or beneficial for their children. In principle, the concept of tuition is supported by a rather convincing ideology which has nothing but positive connotations. This ideology says that there is no harm trying to improve your academic performance by seeking some guidance.

As a result of this kind of thinking, tuition has become a booming industry in Singapore. Tuition centres appear all over the island, and tuition-related advertisements can be seen at bus-stops, public notice boards, and in the newspapers. Parents who are not financially well-off are willing to part with their hard-earned money in the hope that their children can 'cope' with an increasingly stressful education system. Photocopies of 'top schools' exam papers' are on sale everywhere; and the 'Assessment Books' section in Popular Book Stores form a bigger and more crowded section than sections on 'Local Works' or 'English Literature'.

But what could be so wrong with 'tuition' when it is based on such a convincing argument? In my opinion, too much tuition does harm to your child in several ways. Firstly, it exhausts your child's physical and mental energies and lessens the time left for his brain to rejuvenate after school. Exhaustion makes the child unhappy and causes him to dislike the subject(s) for which he is being given tuition. Secondly, the child has less time to play, and playing is important for the development of a less uptight personality. Thirdly, and most importantly, tuition is based on a flawed pedagogical philosophy of 'coaching to or even beyond the point of understanding'.

Coaching per se is alright, but it is possible for 'over-coaching' to occur, with great harm to the intellectual development of the child. Overcoaching robs the child the precious opportunities for (a) discovering things for himself, (b) struggling and then succeeding in solving a problem by himself, and (c) feeling an enhanced level of self-confidence after achieving the above. It takes away much of the joy of learning and mastering a subject, and turns it into a cluster of banal chores that must be performed daily: doing exercises in assessment books, one after another; marking out vaguely difficult questions that they can't be bothered to struggle through by themselves, and then expecting a 'quick fix' by the tutor.

Overcoaching also prevents the development of a genuinely self-created and original 'kungfu of studying' by the student, which is likely to be crucial if he wants to really excel at the University level. The rationale is simple: everybody has different strategies of studying, and one must simply discover for himself the strategies or 'bag of tricks' that work best for him. The sophistication and effectiveness of such a set of skills can only come about with the practice and refinement over years of self-studying, not what I call 'over-reliant studying', which is overly guided by a tutor who may not even be that good himself.

I see no way that this Singapore-specific trend could be reversed, because of two reasons. Firstly, the culture of kiasuism sustains the tuition industry. People are 'kiasu' (literally 'afraid of losing') and will do everything they can to make sure they have some kind of competitive advantage over their neighbours' kids. Related to this is the fact that people are risk-averse, and risk-averse people would rather stick with the common approach of putting the poor kid through hours and hours of tuition. After all, this is what everybody is doing, so if the strategy is wrong, at least everybody suffers to the same extent. So unless every family in Singapore agrees to prevent their children from going for tuition, it is unlikely for this vicious cycle to be terminated.

Secondly, the prevalence of tuition could be the symptom of a deeper problem in the educational system. Is there something wrong about the syllabi, or the teaching methods in schools, or both? Why is there still a need for children to go through hours of additional instruction beyond what they go through in school during the official hours? Do teachers encourage students to go for tuition?

With that, may I reiterate the point that I wish to stress most in this post: that tuition robs your child of an opportunity to become a great scholar in his own right. He may become a great mugger, a reasonably competent student who knows how to get the correct answers to all the assessment books on the market, but that will not be because he has learnt how to think for himself or has cultivated for himself a unique style of studying and learning that will benefit him when he grows up. Everybody who practises enough number of assessment books can get A's. But what does this show about his cleverness? Not much at all. He will not be passionate in his subjects, because everything has turned into a routine, a routine of reviewing and regurgitation. Learning becomes a simple and predictable process of practice, rather than the exciting and unpredictable process of making enjoyable discoveries that it should be. When there are no longer any surprises within the educational realm, is it any wonder why creativity does not manifest when the children turn into adults and have to compete with people from other countries in this creativity-driven, knowledge-based, and innovation-oriented global era?