Mohammad Abdul Halim
Assistant Professor
Kennesaw State University
Every semester, there are some students in my General Chemistry class who cannot keep up with what is being taught.
Many of these students have never taken a chemistry course in high school and have no prior experience with the subject. Some students, even if they had chemistry from ninth to twelfth grade, have forgotten much by the time they reach university.
These students face various problems in class.
I teach three 50-minute General Chemistry classes or two 75-minute classes per week. I have 72 students in my class. Apart from class, I have office hours when students can come to my office and clarify their problems.
In addition, I have a teaching assistant for my class.
The teaching assistant holds two one-hour sessions every week where students bring their conceptual or homework-related problems to discuss. Furthermore, students can seek help from tutors. My university has a tutoring center for science subjects (such as math, physics, biology, and chemistry). There, students can book hourly sessions with a tutor. Besides this, junior and senior undergraduate students on campus also offer personal, hourly tutoring services (similar to private tuition in our country). In these cases, tutors charge $20 to $30/35 per hour. There is a high demand for good math and physics tutors at the university.
Now, let’s talk about high school students.
When I was in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I used to work part-time as a chemistry tutor at a tutoring center. The organization was private and offered subject-based and SAT/ACT tutoring services for high school students. University students as well as former and current high school teachers worked as tutors. They offered both one-to-one and group tutoring sessions. The owner of the center took a portion of the students’ fees and paid the tutors well, according to their experience and the sessions they held.
In addition, online tutoring services are now extremely popular in America.
There are numerous online tutoring services such as TutorChase, Varsity Tutors, Kaplan, Tutorcom, TutorMe, eTutorWorld, Wyzant, Skooli, Chegg Tutors, and more, from which high school and undergraduate students can receive services. Many people from countries like India and Pakistan, as well as other countries, also work as tutors on these and similar sites. Many freelancers also work as teachers or tutors.
So, if students in America are unable to learn from classroom teaching at school or university
(for whatever reason), the institution provides tutoring services or the students seek help from tutors online or offline, personally.
In Bangladesh, due to an acute shortage of good teachers in schools and colleges, in many cases students cannot learn from the classroom.
On top of that, many teachers spend less time at school because they teach privately at home. Since teachers’ salaries are very low, they must do extra work outside school or college to support their families. Also, even where teachers teach well at school, their students come to their homes for private lessons. Apart from school or college teachers, there are many coaching centers where students go for assistance.
Without plans to hire good teachers
and raise their salaries with special pay scales, simply changing the curriculum cannot discourage students from seeking coaching. Moreover, due to the lower quality of the curriculum, students are likely to become even more reliant on coaching to receive the standard of education they once had.
The demand for anything creates its existence. To regulate or limit that existence, it is essential to deeply understand and examine the scope and extent of the demand.
Note: Collected from Facebook:——–
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/15fa7ccFbC
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