Later in the evening, she would give tuitions to the neighborhood ‘kids’ in her large sprawling Balcao. To the best of my knowledge, nobody paid her money but Teacher Lucy was smart enough to get most of the household chores and errands done through her students. And fortunately for her, the dullest of all students were also the brawniest ones who were only too happy to engage themselves in odd jobs just to escape the torture of sitting with books. Crawling inside the low roofed henhouse to collect eggs was specialized job entrusted to an intrepid few, on a rotation basis since it involved the soiling of clothes.
Punishment for indiscipline was swift, severe and exemplary with a brand new stick. Nobody complained, and the happy parents in turn would gift Teacher Lucy with home grown fruits & vegetables, fish, sweets and occasionally even foreign stuff. This was in the nineteen sixties and seventies when most parents were illiterate or ‘Portuguese educated’ and sending primary school kids for tuitions was the only way of ensuring that they did their homework. In higher classes only those who could not cope up in school were recommended for tuitions.
As the schooling system became increasingly competitive, tuitions started becoming a fashion- more of a norm rather than an exception. Today this fashion is slowly turning into a near madness with even the brightest students attending multiply coaching classes where the number of students is often more than that in the school. And after all this senseless running around, at the end of the day it’s usually the parents who are left struggling to complete the homework assigned to their weary wards! With the coaching class madness threatening to affect the physical and mental wellbeing of our young student community, Education as a natural process of learning is fast losing its relevance, discipline and values have gone for a toss – the key word is good grades!
Times are changing but our rules and regulations are certainly not keeping pace… If education is all about getting good grades and admission to professional colleges then why can’t the Govt increase the number of seats in professional colleges and stop this 3rd degree methods used on the students? Better still, why can’t the Govt just open up the universities so that students can prepare for exams only by attending coaching classes if they wish to? It is rightly said that great things happen only when man and mountain meet; when will the students get quality time to apply their minds to the subjects in this sorry scenario? When will our youngsters get time for some physical exercise and other activities required for their all round development?
