Recently when I was hearing one of my relatives engaging as many as four tutors for his mediocre son who has pursuing honours in mathematics then could I realize how our education system has been distancing itself from the poor section of our society. And I am absolutely sure that I am not the only person who possess this piece of information. There are instances where parents engage as many as ten tutors for school students. Apart from the financial involvement, just think of the sheer energy that it demands from the students to hop from one tutor to another and in the process he is left with very precious little time for self-study.

The present system of preparation is very novel. The text books are given lesser importance and lectures and notes prepared by the tutors are a much sought-after thing. The whole preparation is examination-oriented or rather marks-oriented. Thus a student scoring very high may impress one but not his mastery of the subject. There was an interesting incident in a quiz programme beamed by a TV channel on the famous Bengali novelist Sarat Chandra Chatterjee's works many of which are classics and some superhit Hindi films like Devdas, Pareenita have been made, one of the participants in this programme simply bowled over the judges by giving 100 per cent correct answer and he was asked to explain his remarkable success , he nonchalantly replied that he got all the answers by reading a book of general knowledge! Spoon-feeding is the name of the game!

Professor Amartya Sen , the Nobel Laureate while releasing the Pratichi Education Report has made an interesting observation . He maintained that private tuition is creating a discriminatory environment for the students coming from the economically weaker families as these families are not in a position to pay tutors and thus lagging behind. He advocated abolition of homework and emphasized the need to complete all studies within school hours as is the practice in the USA and other European countries. He remarked :” If private tuitions are encouraged , class distinction in society will continue and it will be difficult to bridge the gap between the privileged and the underprivileged.”