School Teacher Vs. Home Tutor

From a forum discussion in Nov 08 :

>>> H1 student: Teacher, why is it that ?

trollteacher: This is in H2 syllabus. You dont need to know.

H1 student: But teacher, i want to gain more knowledge.

trollteacher: You cant even do well in simple h1 syllabus. Wake up your idea and stop asking so many irrelevant questions.

H1 student drops out. <<<

 
That’s a very accurate picture of what happens in every JC. Which is why a supportive tutor who is willing to encourage the student to truly understand and appreciate the science for what it really is (regardless of silly syllabus limitations) can be tremendously helpful to the student’s enjoyment.

Of course, not everyone has the time or money or opportunity for tuition. But how it goes on in schools, both secondary schools and JCs, doesn’t look like it’s going to ever be changing for several reasons:

1) MOE teachers are severely overworked (but again, ‘tong ren bu tong ming’, just like in the SAF, for instance, some people slack, some people overwork all the way. So it’s fair to say that *many*, not all, MOE teachers are severely overworked). So they won’t have the time or energy to give every student full support, like a private tutor can.

2) The syllabus, curriculum and system, is superficially results oriented, rather than true results oriented. True results, includes the student truly understanding and enjoying the process, so that he/she may have the motivation to contribute to humanity with his/her own unique insights, research and exploration. But being superficially results oriented, the JC teachers feel their priority is just to get students to blindly memorize to get marks. A good tutor has the time and opportunity to help students to understand and enjoy at the same time as also memorizing to get full marks. 

3) There are many teachers out there (both Sec sch and JCs), who do not themselves have a healthy mindset or attitude towards teaching and the students’ learning. Every teacher, like every human being on this planet, is unique. There are all kinds of teachers (just as they’re all kinds of doctors, psychologists, philosophers, religious people, etc), it’s erroneous to overgeneralize to say most MOE teachers are ‘horrible’, or most MOE teachers are ‘wonderful’. They are individuals, with all individual kinds possible.)