Back to School is in full swing in the geographies where this abomination is inflicted on innocent children in September.
And with BTS
another phenomenon rears its head. Private tuitions. Born out of a mismatch
between expectations of a service and its delivery. The service here being
teaching.
The word
“private” before a service usually implies exclusivity. The kind that money can
buy. Personal attention. In your face. By your side. Private tuitions deliver
some of this. Exclusivity? Yes – many are one on one between tutor and tutee
(does that even exist?). Expensive? Depends on the subject, the tutor’s
pedigree and the depth of the parents’ wallet. Discreet? Not anymore.
As a wee
school-going student, I reached a stage in mathematics where my ability to add
and subtract was subsumed by more theoretical concepts. Such as the Pythagoras
Theorem. Or Euclid’s Postulates (I was asked to leave the class because I dared
to correct the teacher’s pronunciation of the gent’s name). Tail-lashing,
slavering-at-the-mouth devils such as algebra and geometry entered my peaceful
world. Then came the holy trinity of doom – physics, chemistry, and biology. These
were the Five Rings of Hell.
My school,
such as it was, had a stellar group of humans masquerading as teachers. With an
average student-to-teacher ratio of 70-1 it was a miracle they managed roll
call. Their focus naturally was on the gifted. I was a leading chorus member of
the “others”.
I therefore had
to be handed over to private tutors. Over a period of six years, I went through
a series of personal and group tutors who waged pitched battles to save me from
the dragons maths and science. Weapons ancient and modern were brought into
play, from motivational talks to loud yelling to the waving of a foot ruler
under one’s nose, to threats of withholding food and drink. Thankfully corporal
punishment was not on the agenda.
I managed to
clear the first five years. Little did I know that the ultimate pressure test
was yet to come.
In the final
year of school, I not only had to suffer maths tuitions at the hands of Medusa
(in actual fact the principal of a well-known school known for churning out Bright
Minds) but also had to attend private tuitions for French. A subject I knew
well and loved, but needed the mindset to score at the board exams.
The classes were
held in a cavernous dining room in one of those old houses of Mumbai. The room
was full of portraits of faintly Victorian mien. The presiding deity was a quaintly
eccentric lady with a ferocious command of the intricacies of this most
romantic of languages. And who knew most of my siblings and aunts who had
studied in her school in years past.
And I was the
only boy in a room full of girls. All from the same school. All pigtails and
giggles as the deity gravely made me sit in the seat of honour next to her, and
introduced me as the last of a distinguished family to have passed through her doors.
I, bespectacled, with a stammer, and a nose that seemed to be suspiciously
bulbous at the best of times, wished for the floor to swallow me. And spit me
out in Timbuctoo.
This turned out
to be the best tuition experience I had. Not only did my grasp of the language improve;
I also made a couple of friends who continue to honour me with their company
even today, 4 decades down.
My parents spent
vast quantities of dinero on burnishing my education. I am not entirely
convinced they got a decent ROI on their investment. But they did what they had
to do as parents.
They helped me
start the car; where I drove it was not their problem.
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