6th July 2013 9:00
By Daniel Treger
Human beings are fundamentally and incredibly curious creatures. All day every day we are constantly learning; updating information on our environments, adding new criteria to our lists of what happens under certain circumstances and learning about all the little things that make life so very interesting. For the vast, vast, majority of information out there very little outside help is required. When you watch a bee land on a certain flower as opposed to another then drawing the conclusion that the flower the bee landed on is more attractive to the bee than the one it did not land on seems common sense. When you witness a bus stop at a certain bus-stop as opposed to another then you know that that particular bus-stop is where that bus stops. Adding information to your repertoire is relatively simple in a lot of cases. So what do we require tuition for if the vast amount of knowledge can be gained relatively simply?
There are two formal answers and an informal answer to this. The formal answers are - tuition is required to learn especially complicated pieces of information and furthermore to learn how to learn especially complicated pieces of information. In my experience a lot of people, both tutors and clients, expect simply the mere partition of knowledge from a tutor to a tutee. The old adage of teaching a man to fish as opposing to giving him a fish must certainly apply here though! Learning how to learn is as important as learning itself and the ways people learn is as vibrant and varied as the people themselves. It is not a matter of simply visual, audio or kinetic preference for the presentation of information, it is about a textured and bespoke attempt for each individual to help them realise both the information and the best in themselves.
As I noted earlier however there is an informal answer to the question of what tutors are for. Tutors are there to instil a love of learning, a thirst for knowledge, which will never be satiated. Even learning how to learn can be treated in a surgical, abstract, way – something you need to do as a means to an end. Although, arguably, our current education system suffers from this kind of “means to an end” thinking, education in its most Platonic of conceptions must be a quest to discover how wonderful it is to learn. Most people remember that one great teacher, that teacher at school who really inspired you about the subject and challenged you so that you enjoyed it. That teacher did not just impart you with tools or information; they imparted you with motivation – with a desire to know more. It is not simply about learning per se or learning how to learn, these are just tools. Tutoring and education in general is about awakening that most genuine of human features – the thirst for knowledge – which serves as the motivation to employ the tools.
A good tutor will teach you how to learn but a great tutor will teach you why you should learn.