Public face of a private profession

Be it in ancient Greece or in ancient India, there was no royal road to learning. Pupil would care to walk down the distance to his preceptor’s home for a bit of knowledge. Sounds tiresome, but logical. But these days, society has only succeeded in putting the matter the other way round.

Nowadays, a tutor, as a preceptor is now called, goes to the student’s place to teach him whatever he lacks in. It’s money behind the matter that matters.

What sets the two ears of history apart is that in ancient days, bot the poor and the rich had to traverse the same distance for knowledge, but now, the rich has figured a short-cut out. They employ private tutors to help ease the burden of learning. Only well-off students can do it, and the financially unstable people play the role of tutors.

Looking through another glass, we find some other differences existing between the old and the news. The state of teachers and students have dramatically changed. Only the learned people would then become teachers; now in the main, the unemployed or the under-employed people teach, in most cases, average or below-average students.

In recent times, private tuition has turned out to be the occupation of the students, still studying or recently through with the studies. They do not engage themselves in the private tuition out of fancy or noble intents; financial constraints have got a lot to do with it. During the studentship, they earn some more money to add to their purse and once the studies are over, they earn their keeps until they are on good jobs.

Most of the middle- or the lower middle-class students, who are fortunate enough to enter the city’s universities, get on with it because their parents cannot afford full expenses of half a dozen years. Or, some do this only to meet their dating expenditure, or to smarten up a little heir life styles.

It seems quite innocent especially when there’re no part-time job facilities and when students have to hinge entirely on their parents. Some sort of reservations also works in some of the students’ minds; they think it looks odd to ask for money from their parents at their age.

This is not the end of the story. The status of a private tutor in the student’s family is a mixed one. In some families, private tutors are respected; in some, they’re in the middle of nowhere; and in others, they’re even treated as employed people to do shopping and other household chores. The latter, however, is the case of the lodgers.

Kings in the West had a tradition of housing people for which they did sort of hack writings. During the British reign in India, it gradually tickled into our society, in cases of monarchs or kings and later zeminders. They did the same thing but with a slightly different view. The lodgers would teach the children at the palaces. And they got lodging and fooding for that. This sort of people were more often than not asked to do the shopping and the likes.

But both sides reap the profit of trade if nothing goes wrong, of course, not in all cases. Because more often than not, this turns out to be a good way to marry off students, girls, to the private tutors. It’s better, no doubt, in the sense that the men and the women get enough space to go on a sound understanding; a few dates would surely add a lot to the charm.

Some guardians even find a prospective employee for their companies, once the tutors have finished their studies.

The other side of the story is no less intriguing. If you browse through the classified ads on the news dailies in the morning, Tuition Offered cannot possibly go unnoticed. They say that they’ve efficient tutors for any subject in the word; they are by every means brilliant, and are from the prestigious educational institutions of the city.

Some people have floated agencies for providing the willing people with better tuition, “better” because here the money weighs heavy.

They are mostly advertised in the Bengali dailies, because of a large readership; but the English dailies are not far off the mark in printing such ads; some people are interested in advertising in the English language dailies to get better students with heavier purse; because in the country, it is taken for granted that the readers of the English newspapers are comparatively affluent than those who read the native language ones.

Pratyasha, Educare. The Scholars, Talents, Zenith International and Crescent International are a few among the names in this month’s newspapers.

{\textbifont Tuition Offered. For all subjects of Bengali and English medium. Scholastica, Saint Jude’s, Maple Leaf, Manarat, Saint Joseph’s, Willes Little Flowers, South Breeze, Agrani, Ideal, Laboratory, Notre Dame, Viquarunnessa, O-A level, from nursery to graduation. (Computer training also offered). The Pedagogue — 909090.

They may have office phone numbers of different city areas or a house one; but they don’t have any address. They all maintain a register for all the tutors they have provided with any jobs. They have developed systems for non-refundable enlistment fees, varying from fifty to one hundred taka. and they get a percentage of the first month’s salary from the people they provide with any job; the percentage is a variable figure, commensurate with the salary. Educare is at the Azimpur Super Market, it takes fifty taka as registration fee and a half of the first month’s salary from the tutor. But they don’t have any provision for setting things right if the tutor fails to impress the student’s family, be it for the tutor himself, or for the student’s calibre. The tutor has to look into the matter before he leaps.

The Crescent International is another agency of the kind, ever ready to serve its clientele. The Crescent readily came up with an offer of teaching a Green Herald Class VI English medium student when contacted over telephone. The office of the agency is situated in Bara Maghbazaar area.

They all have more or less the same rules and regulations in offering tuition. Some of them even promise to change the students or the teachers if mutual impression is disrupted, provided the tutors or the students’ families let them know of the discord within seven days.

Pratyasha, another newly-floated agency, failed to produce facts and figures about the business. But the director said there had not been any association of the tuition-offering agencies in the country as yet. He may have a good business at the beginning of the academic years in the schools and colleges, but these days going is really tough.

He expresses a grudge against the tution-seekers, saying that he doesn’t understand why a man okays everything with him and them phones only say that he has been offered another tuition by another agency. This maybe the go in the market-oriented economy; but definitely it harms their business.

A teacher of accounting of the Fazlul Huq College of the city runs an agency at his house. He says he can provide eight to ten willing people with tuition in the “season” — December to January, he meant — through an ad in the newspaper while things get dull during the off-season. He puts an ad in the dailies every three days. But there’re some days when he receives no call at all.

He says, he has experiences of tackling guardians who do not pay the tutors regularly. And if any tutor complains, of course, he has to take up the case because of the registration which provides security for the tutors.

Asked why he runs the agency, he answered he’s doing a favour to the students. Because, there’re many whose families fail to give them the money required too meet up educational expenses. And they can get on it well with a tuition.

But none of them felt the necessity of forming an association in order to cut the knots of the business, or to facilitate smooth operation. When asked how many agencies of the like are there in the city, all what they could say was a short and simple ‘sorry.’

Some students, doing this job, have statements slightly differing from the versions of the agencies. Even after enlistment, some of the agencies do not come up with an offer within a considerable span of time. Simply frustrating for the students who don’t have the extra money to inquire of the matter of the phone or in person.

One of the medical students trying to get on this has a startling experience. When he reached the student’s place, the girl’s mother told him that she had been looking for an ex-cadet college students from the engineering university; and he must have full command over spoken English. It leaves anyone on earth wondering whether she was looking for a tutor or a husband for her daughter.

Another student, already in the occupation, said, he quit tutoring a girl only because the mother of the girl was offended and subsequently terminated another teacher on the ground that the man once indulged in private conversation, which she overheard, with her daughter; but she does not mind if the girl plays footsie with this student. Certainly, the good-looking face and a bright future of the engineering university student has the right to enjoy some erratic behaviour on the student’s part, in this case, a girl.

Akkas, Abu Jar M. (1995 Aug. 18). Public face of a private profession. Weekend Independent. 6–7

Rev.: vi·vi·mmxxiii