We still have parents who are clueless as to the teacher with whom their children are taking private tuition. They have no idea when tuition begins and when it ends. They do not even know where the teacher lives. They leave it entirely to their children ? college students ? to make the decision. Either they have no time or they think that it is good to give their children some latitude.

One danger is that a handful of people are giving tuition without being teachers as such. They are employed full-time in companies or ministries but manage to find time to make some additional money from tuition. Students flock to such so called teachers without bothering to ask themselves questions. These teachers, in fact, have never set foot in a classroom, never known classroom realities, never set question papers or marked scripts. They have never been accountable to any head of department or rector.

It is the job of parents to make sure that their children are in good hands. Leaving the fate of children in amateurish hands is a big mistake.

During holidays or on Saturdays and Sundays, there are teachers who give tuition for three or four hours at a stretch in just one subject. Anybody can tell you that it is not pedagogical. This place undue pressure on young shoulders. Asking a student to concentrate for long hours in a lesson is demanding from him more than he is capable of providing. No wonder our students are stressed.

Students get easily bored and there is the possibility of suffering from severe backache in the future. Parents must open the eyes of their children to such dangers. It is not the quantity of work that a student does that will make him successful, it is the quality rather. Parents must insist on quality and refuse to condone exaggeration.

We have students who find themselves in large groups. The teacher is unable to give individual attention to certain students who need assistance. Students are not mature enough to see what they are missing for a service they are paying for. They gain nothing and their results remain chaotic term after term. Parents also do not realize the dangers that evolving in large groups represent. The teacher may be working in a star college. They therefore do not mind it.

Parents must get more involved in the education of their children and ensure that the latter are being coached in the best possible conditions. It is the future of their children that is at stake anyway. One teacher?s room is so full that the front desks are close to the whiteboard. Lack of space hinders him in his task. The students themselves find this comical.

A student may be present at school yet be absent in class for a particular subject. He bunks classes because he may already have covered the chapter or the lesson in tuition. Therefore he does not consider it essential to attend the class. Doing the same texts (a grammar texkbook for instance) in tuition as those prescribed at school can sometimes pose a few inconveniences. Because the student has already done certain exercises he does not follow the class. He may therefore lose his time in talking, eating, joking and so on. The irony is that the teacher has to answer, not to say pay, for this.

Duplication can mislead the teacher. A student who scores high marks in a comprehension passage or summary because he has already done the same thing in tuition may give a wrong impression to his teacher about his ability. Besides, the student brings to tuition what has already been covered at school. Instead of learning something new or something different he is doing the same lessons twice.

Learning becomes extremely dull when it should have been satifying in every way.

A lack of contact with teachers on the part of parents can open the door for certain students to do some silly things. It is a crushing experience for any parent to discover that his child, whom he thought trustworthy, is fooling him behind his back. A father goes at the place of the teacher who is coaching his Form II daughter. He wants to confirm whether she was present on a certain day. The girl ? she looks taller than her age ? is close to tears.

Before the teacher can answer, the girl says she wants to have a word in private with the teacher. The father has no objection. ?Tell my father I was present on that day,? she wailed.?You?re a very good person. I know you won?t refuse me. If you let him know I was absent, he?s going to kill me.? The teacher was aghast at the temerity of the girl. He wanted to be clear about why he should be lying. It appeared she had been seen loafing about in a distant place with her boyfriend. And the father had got wind of it and was furious.

Keeping an eye on children is essential. No parent knows what surprise is in store for him these days. With problems of law and order, and delinquency around, prudence and control are not vain words.

And there are teachers who do not give tuition during December but claim their fees together with a thirteenth month. Two month?s fees for no work at all: it is pure business, it is exploitation. Nothing else.

<B>Suresh RAMPHUL</B>