In the first article a tutor was defined as, someone who teaches or guides an individual in a special subject or for a specific purpose.  This particular role in education, until recently, was filled by governesses and those who taught specific subjects.  Presently, I would argue that this role has been distorted.

These days tutors are a dime a dozen.  Just head on down to your local coffee shop, and on their communal cork-board you will find a good number of the business cards belonging to tutors.  Just google the word tutor and skimming over the first page one can apparently find help just about anywhere.  The thing is, these tutors specialize in nothing and their purpose generalized.  In the strictest sense of the word, they are anti-tutors; one who comes in the place of a tutor, but in essence functions opposite thereof.  You see, since tutoring has moved from substituting classroom education to an often necessary complement, the traditional role filled by a tutor erodes away.

While numerous articles and research can be found showing that tutoring helps improve student achievement (and this author is in complete agreement with those findings), it is due to this erosion of roles that education suffers.  Tutoring has moved from a specialized person guiding an individual in a specific area of study, to a jack-of-all trades showing one how to memorize a multiplication table, or a little catch phrase allowing a student to regurgitate the notes on a music staff.  I am not saying these tools are not useful, what I’m saying is that a tutor should function more than just a glorified flash card.

What is needed is a call back to the traditional role held by the tutor.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, January 11th, 2009 at 1:52 am and is filed under Education, Tutoring. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.