1st December 2010 9:00
By Blue Tutors
In a recent report on the Economist website, we’re told how, despite the current government obsession with the ‘big society’ (local communities helping everyone within them), online tuition from the other side of the world is becoming increasingly popular.
A tutor in India, Manish Kumar explains how British and American school children make up a large proportion of his income as an online tutor while working from Ludhiana in the Punjab. Comparing the students he teaches, Kumar said that the British are sparkier, and more keen to learn than American pupils. However, he adds that both sets of students are left in the shadows by their Indian peers, who work harder to understand more difficult concepts at a younger age. He believes that the reason is obvious; in India, students know that to survive they must study harder than the majority of their school friends.
Online tuition from India is becoming more widespread in the UK. It helps community projects for adults who have always struggled to cope with mathematical concepts, in the hope that it may improve their career prospects.
Young children are also being given the opportunity to be tutored online, and it’s suggested that it’s a great way for children to learn because they see anything on a computer as exciting, and are more willing to tackle sums than they would be in class. Children all over the world are very familiar with online programs, such as using Skype to speak with distant relatives. Distance matters little to the younger generation, and the idea of ‘big society’ may be lost when one can be tutored in their own living room, even though the tutor is thousands of miles away.