Saturday, January 06, 2007

The Mauritian Tuition


The start of a new year implies a lot of different things to different people. For me its about keeping my resolutions whilst for many secondary students new year means new teachers , new mates , new subjects , new uniform ....and new private tuitions.

I remember how private tuition selection used to be in my days , we used to talk between friends which tuition had the greatest concentration of cool people or which tuition professor was the most brilliant ever ...

But then there was those private teachers that had built a small empire from mass teaching school kids and this is why am writing this blog. I know at least a handful of these so-called "semi-god" teachers .Parents love them and other teachers worship them. From my personal experience I have only one word for these individuals "escroc" !

There is no such thing as mass teaching with a small room filled with knowledge hungry teenagers. Come on tuition are meant to be given to help a student in a specific area where he or she requires more attention. Now how can an idiot with 30 students in his room be able to achieve that in 1hr every week ?

On top of that some of these "teachers" are so unreachable that you actually need to book an interview for your child with him. I know of one star (etoile filant) which used to give GP tuitions in my days...and apparently still does. The guy was on every parent's tuition wish list for their kids. Kids who were unable to squeeze into his tuition used to feel as if they would never pass the General Paper exam. I got the "privilege" to be in his class at school .... guess what he did to make pupils learn to write essays ... well he gave them the essays to learn ..pre-mache.. the ones where he has already thought about what should be written.. so dumb.. I would say its a sacrilege to our freedom of thinking.. come on make your pupils creative and make them think for themselves.

I got the incredible chance to have a great GP tuition teacher on the other hand ,called Mr. Kudrath ,which I respect a lot . I never got the chance to thank him for allowing me to express my gratitude and thankfulness for helping me develop a creative and scientific approach into writing essays and in other every day life situations.

Mr. Kudrath instead of having a room of 30 students would have only around 5-6 people at max and he would take the time to talk about different subjects and allow you to express your feelings and opinions. I really enjoyed going to his tuitions that was something really worthwhile in my teenage life.

Thanks also to Mr Luximon and Mr Payandee for maths and physics if it wasn't for these two people I would not have developed a love for solving problems . Parents if you are reading this don't go for the teacher with the most students go for the teacher with the teaching vocation.

6 comments:

Ashvin Gunga said...

Hey bro,

Brilliant post! I think there are indeed a couple of teachers who have very good reputation and many parents and/or students want to take tuition to them..but they always forget that it's not the reputation of their private tuition teachers that will make them pass the exams but it's only the amount of effort that they (i mean the students) put in their work, it's only hardwork that will make them successful in the exams...

Ashvin

Ashvin

Unknown said...

exactly little bro !

Carine said...

HAHAHA, I used to take one of those mass teaching private tuition for accounting and to this day I still wonder how I could bear that.

Used to sit 4 hrs in a classroom packed with about 50 students next to another classroom packed with 50 students, so yes, that guy was teaching 100 students at the same time. He would explain something in our class, then run to the other classroom and come back 15-30 mins later. In addition to that, he worked as an accountant too and every other Saturday, he had to go to work for 1 hr, so he was only there for 3 hrs which he divided between 2 classes. That private tuition involved a lot of waiting, so guess what, it was good that there were a few cool people there.

The teacher himself was brilliant, but come on, if it wasn't for my own hard work and dedication, no way he could have taught me anything worth while he's busy running from one class to another!

Anonymous said...

I stopped most of my private tuitions in HSC because I did not think I was getting value for money. At that stage, if you were behind the "elite" in class, you kept falling further and further behind.

By the time the HSC exams came, I had only one private tuition with a teacher from London College. And, I did not even have to pay him although I was the only one he was teaching -- the other students who started the year with him deserted after a few lessons, claiming that he was not good enough. Anyway, thanks to him I moved from an O in Math Statistics to an A; the only A in my HSC results.


I had a math teacher called Luximon and a physics teacher called Payandee at RCPL. Are you referring to them in your post?

Unknown said...

Yes we are talking about the same persons Eddy although Mr Luximon was deputy rector and Mr Payandee had left the college when I was at RCPL.

So I took private tutions from them :). I didnt know you were from RCPL too thats cool.

Ashvin Gunga said...

I just came across an article published on the L'express newspaper that relates to this post.

http://www.lexpress.mu/display_article_sup.php?news_id=79609

Cheers