It is my contention, as presented in previous articles, that a distortion presently exists in the role tutors traditionally held.  Furthermore, I would suggest that this distortion has been caused due to the watering down of American educational system (but lets save that discussion for another time), and the generalization of the tutoring profession.  Tutors need to refocus and become more specialized for education to stop its downward spiral.¹

Before continuing with where I see the future of tutoring going, I would first like to point out a few aspects of contemporary American life.  First, the American mentality in practically everything is pragmatic; the notion of “it works for me.”  The goal of our pragmatic culture is to find the fastest and least expensive way of producing a product or getting something done.² The profession of education has similarly been subject to this direction.³ Specifically for tutors, and as briefly discussed in the previous article, the specific topics that they once taught has now been replaced by generalized efficiency; hence the pragmatic tutor.  The problem is that all of our advancements have been achieved at a significant cost!  Quality has been smothered by quantity, craftsmanship has been undermined by volume, and beauty has gone the way of affordability.  In the same way, the quality of a specialized tutor has been replaced by a multitude of generalized ones.⁴

It is my contention that education is beginning to see the folly of its pragmatic ways.  The purpose of an educational institution is not to produce a Model-T, but a living and breathing individual who is to function within society.  The key word in that last sentence was “individual.”  Pragmatism does not work in education for we are all unique: our learning style; our personal passions; our desires and dreams; and our personality (just to name a few) are all unique to us.  Streamlining education has been the wrong course of action since the early 1920s.  Along with everything else, the pendulum is swinging back to personalization and individualism.  For tutors, especially when coupled with the advancement of Web 2.0, a move back to their traditional role will inevitably occur.

Web 2.0 is bringing people closer together and allows these individuals to personalize practically everything.  Those who have a specific and specified knowledge will quickly become a commodity.  For anyone specialized in a field of study transferring from the “field” to a classroom is always an option.  However, in a Web 2.0 society the classroom can be the world, and the “field“ never has to be left.  Harkening back to the traditional definition of a tutor as someone who teaches or guides an individual in a special subject or for a specific purpose, individuals within specialized subjects will have the opportunity to provide their knowledge to anyone anywhere.

This shift back to traditional individualized tutoring in my opinion is necessary and eminent.

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1. This is not to say that tutors are the magic bullet able to fix the American educational system; they are only part of the problem.  It’s important to understand that the watering down of education in America caused tutors to move from their specific and specialized fields to a generalized person able to teach anything at a basic to intermediate level.  It is this generalization and creation of the “pragmatic tutor” which this author is writing against.
2. To understanding of the current political and cultural climate please read Mitchell Aboulafia’s recent article on the Pragmatism of President Elect Obama: Obama’s Pragmatism (or Move over Culture Wars, Hello Political Philosophy).
3. For a brief introduction to pragmatism in education see, http://dewey.pragmatism.org/
4. For example, my sister is a student at a prominent university.  A few years back she attempted to find a tutor for a college math class she was taking.  Every tutor she was in contact with (even ones supplied through the university) could not teach her the information she needed.  Eventually she was able to find one (and at a significant cost at that).  This is not an isolated problem, this issue happens often, especially in the sciences.

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