Private tutoring

“ These institutions do not differ essentially from those of a private nature in similar situations in other parts of the United States, where common schools are not established by law.
43. In the Southern states, wealthy families often employ private tutors. Sometimes two, three, or more families, and even a whole neighborhood, unite for the purpose of forming a school; and, to induce a teacher to commence or continue his labors among them, an adequate amount is made up beforehand by subscription. ”

“ The whole system is based on individualism—on a free and easy relationship between Tutor and taught. It is conscientious individual effort under capable and sympathetic supervision that leads to success in the final examinations—‘the Schools’. The Tutor advises the student to attend certain lecture courses; he suggests certain books for private reading, the result of which is generally embodied in the form of an essay, or essays, to be read to the Tutor once or twice a week. ”

“ It would be a shocking and insupportable degradation to send a sprig of fashion to school among common boys, where probably he might learn something really useful. No, no,—he must have a private tutor, who is previously instructed to teach him nothing more than what will enable him to pass muster, as not quite a fool. ”

“ The professors, on the other hand, are public functionaries, not connected (as respects the exercise of their duties) with any college whatsoever—not even with their own—but altogether and exclusively with the whole university. Besides the public tutors appointed in each college, on the scale of one to each dozen or score of students, there are also tutors strictly private, who attend any students in search of special and extraordinary aid, on terms settled privately by themselves. Of these persons, or their existence, the college takes no cognizance ”

“ What are some of the limitations in the training of a child who gets his education from a private tutor rather than as a member of a class? Show that the most satisfactory size for a class depends in large measure on the subject of instruction. In certain subjects, such as typewriting and bookkeeping, instruction often becomes almost purely individual instruction. ”

“ All the teaching is done out of school, in the private houses of the tutors, and the boys only go into school to repeat what they have previously learnt, and to exhibit exercises that have been already examined and corrected. Therefore, as each master has a few pupils in every class in the school, each master is compelled every day to go through the entire business of every class in the school; and some of them undertake single-handed the private tuition of as many as seventy boys!
It seems absolutely impossible, under such conditions, that nineteen masters can do justice to 800 or 900 boys ”

“ The Lecturers to choose yearly a Public Tutor, and to reprehend or displace him if there be reason. This Tutor without a new election to take none but those admitted in his year of office until their course of lectures be gone through. No Private Tutor to take two years together. All [248] sizars, poor scholars, and scholars of the House to be under Public Tutors, except Westminster scholars of Trinity College when the Tutor is of another school. ”

“ In wealthy English families of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the education of young men was largely in the hands of private tutors. A few great public schools, like Eton and Winchester and Westminster, were famous, but for a variety of reasons many parents preferred to keep their sons under their own eyes and engaged private teachers for home training. And even after a youth had gone through a public school and the university, the tutor was felt to be the most suitable companion for the Continental tour, the importance of which was taken for granted. ”

“ The goal for the student who wants to advance is not the diploma of graduation, but preparation for the entrance examinations which are next higher. This preparation can perhaps be obtained more thoroughly, more quickly, and under more fortunate social conditions, in a private school, which charges a high tuition, but in this way is able to engage the very best teachers, and able perhaps to have smaller classes than the public schools. And such a private school will be able to extend its influence over all education. ”

“ Unless the student is tolerably wealthy, he is deprived of the advantages which his richer companions enjoy. The brief lectures—of one hour's duration only—delivered daily by the college tutors to a crowd of undergraduates, are ill calculated to benefit the striving individual student. As far as the college is concerned, the youth is left to himself. If he cannot afford the expense of a private tutor, his attainments are due to solitary application, and he is self taught within the very walls of a college. ”

“ Often several families will unite and employ a tutor; constructing, for the purpose, a school-house, in a central position among their plantations. But those who look forward to a high rank in American and European society for their children, employ private tutors in their own houses, even if they have but one child. ”

“ It will permit the nearest practicable approach to individual teaching. The supreme difficulty in the way of individual teaching is the cost. Some day one or two of our richer colleges may hope to have a staff of mature men large enough to give every student a faculty adviser and a private tutor; but most schools must resign that prospect. The next best thing, however, is the small class with closely supervised instructors who are teaching without pay (or on small scholarships) in the hope of an advanced degree and preferment. ”

“ The young men whom I knew at the time they went in for their final examination, were certainly well grounded in classics, and what they knew they knew thoroughly.
The personal relations existing between undergraduates and their tutors were very intimate. A tutor took a pride in his pupils, and often became their friend for life. The teaching was almost private teaching, and the idea of reading a written lecture to a class in college did not exist as yet. It was real teaching with questions and answers ”

“ Their duties are such as they themselves have chosen to assume, in relation to a fund created by private benefaction, for charitable uses. These duties relate to the instruction of youth; but instructors of youth are not public officers. ”

“ At length it was thought desirable that these flowery pursuits should give way to more serious occupations, and he was committed to the charge of a private tutor, whom he calls “a passionate and morose man, better calculated for extinguishing a youth’s talents than for improving them.” ”

“ So far as school learning is concerned, he might go to college at once, and with the certainty of distinction provided he chose to exert himself. But if I may venture to offer an advice, I should say employ the next two years in letting him see a little more of real life and acquire a due sense of its practical objects. Send him to a private tutor who is not a pedant, but a man of letters or a man of the world, and if in the metropolis so much the better. In a word, my young friend is unlike other people ”

“ And more so, if this servant has any direction of the child's education; and still much more so, if it be his tutor, though Mr. Locke says, there is no doubt, if there be a tutor, that it should be done by him.
For, dear Sir, is there no doubt, that the tutor should lay himself open to the aversion of the child, whose manners he is to form? Is not the best method a tutor can take, in order to enforce the lessons he would inculcate, to try to attract the love and attention of his pupil by the most winning ways he can possibly think of? ”

“ The Cambridge private tutor is also a graduate, who takes pupils at his rooms in numbers proportionate to his reputation and ability. And although while the German professor is regularly licensed as such by his university, and the existence of the private tutor as such is not even officially recognized by his, still this difference is more apparent than real; for the English university has virtually licensed the tutor to instruct in a particular branch by the standing she has given him in her examinations." "Students come up to the University with all degrees of preparation.... ”

“ The undergraduates were fee-paying members of the college or poor scholars. Some of the fee-paying members or gentlemen-commoners or fellow-commoners were the sons of the nobility and gentry and even shared the fellows' table. The undergraduate students were required to have a particular tutors, who were responsible for their moral behavior as well as their academic studies. It was through the tutors that modern studies fit for the education of a Renaissance gentleman became the norm. Those students not seeking a degree could devise their own courses of study with their tutors permission. ”

“ The usual practice adopted for the education of these young people, as we have shown, was either by sending them to a great household or, at a later date, by having a private tutor in the house. Evidence may also be adduced to show that youths of good social standing rarely proceeded to the universities at this time. ”

“ Hence the instruction that falls legitimately under the hand of the university man is necessarily subsidiary and incidental to the work of inquiry, and it can effectually be carried on only by such a teacher as is himself occupied with the scrutiny of what knowledge is already in hand and with pushing the inquiry to further gains. And it can be carried on by such a teacher only by drawing his students into his own work of inquiry. The student's relation to his teacher necessarily becomes that of an apprentice to his master, rather than that of a pupil to his schoolmaster. ”

“ The State—
(1) shall ensure that each local educational agency receiving an award to provide public school choice can provide a sufficient number of options to provide a meaningful choice for parents; (2) shall compile a list of State-approved high-quality academic tutoring providers that includes online, on campus, and other models of tutoring; and (3) shall ensure that each local educational agency receiving an award will provide an adequate number of high-quality academic tutoring options to ensure parents have a meaningful choice of services.. ”

“ Prohibition of private tuition by teacher. 28. No teacher shall engage himself or herself in private tuition or private teaching activity.
CHAPTER V
Curriculum and completion of elementary education
Curriculum and evaluation procedure. 29. (1) The curriculum and the evaluation procedure for elementary education shall be laid down by an academic authority to be specified by the appropriate Government, by notification. ”

“ In the light of these adverse criticisms it is interesting to note the statutorial view as to the ideal tutor. According to Amhurst, who quoted statute (d) , it was ordained that “no person shall be a tutor who has not taken a degree in some faculty, and is not (in the judgment in the head of the college or hall to which he belongs) a man of approv’d learning, probity and sincere religion.” But can these requirements be called sufficient if the hundreds of tutors against whom their pupils flung accusations of slackness, drunkenness, and other hobbies, all satisfied them? ”

“ Between the men and the women students of Cambridge, however, there is one marked point of difference. With the growth of Harvard the profession of tutor is of increasing importance. Young men of small money and large ability after their Freshman year often defray the greater part of their expenses by tutoring. Many, indeed, of the youths who seek the aid of tutors have never even tried to keep up with the regular lectures. By some occult reasoning they calculate that it requires less mental effort to wait until the approach of the examinations for their great spurt. ”

“ A new edition, with numerous Illustrations; price 1s., bound in cloth.
GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY; Selected by a Lady for the Use of her own Children. Revised and augmented by Samuel Maunder. 21st edition, with Maps and Plates, 12mo, cloth, 4s. 6d.
THE FAMILY TUTOR AND SCHOOL COMPANION. The “Family Tutor,” as its name implies, is a Work of a highly instructive character, and realizes, as far as can be accomplished in print, the advantages of a Private Tutor to every reader; a Tutor whose teachings are lively, kind, and comprehensible: making the acquirement of knowledge a pleasure, not a task. ”

“ A private education, upon a calm survey of the advantages of both systems, we prefer, because more is in the power of the private than of the public instructer. One uniform course of experience may be preserved, and no examples, but those which we wish to have followed, need be seen by those children who are brought up at home. When we give our opinion in favour of private education, we hope that all we have said on servants and on acquaintance will be full in the reader's recollection. ”

“ The student who comes up to the university for the pursuit of knowledge is expected to know what he wants and to want it, without compulsion. If he falls short in these respects, if he has not the requisite interest and initiative, it is his own misfortune, not the fault of his teacher. What he has a legitimate claim to is an opportunity for such personal contact and guidance as will give him familiarity with the ways and means of the higher learning, -- any information imparted to him being incidental to this main work of habituation. ”

“ Dependence so extreme is perhaps better suited to an infant school than to an American college; and even in England, where respectful subservience on the part of the young has been cultivated for generations, the system is losing ground. Since the tutors were allowed to marry and to leave the 252 college home, tutorial influence has been changing. In most American colleges twenty-five years ago there were officers known as class tutors, to whom, in case of need, a student might turn. ”