Can online tutoring solve the educational woes of the globalized world?

Education, or more precisely, good quality education, is a challenge that almost all developed, developing and underdeveloped nations face today—even at the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century. While formal education starts from the nursery school till the end of the university degree programs, it is during a child’s school years that education makes the finest imprint—and by school we mean as in British English, i.e. children’s schools, rather than the American English usage which includes colleges and universities in the definition. Learning abilities are not genetic, despite today’s “blame it on the genes” generation’s claims, most of whom can’t even name the four bases that constitute the genetic DNA molecules. Although an exception can be made for some well-studied and scientifically proven learning disabilities like Dyslexia, in general, there is no scientific proof that a person is intelligent or unintelligent because of his or her genetic makeup. As far as the statistics-based researches are concerned, which often claim otherwise, we must always keep in mind the fact that Statistics is not Natural Science, but like its superset Mathematics, is one of the deductive methodologies.

The advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web has radically changed the outlook of modern education from the Old Victorian Style to the 21st century one. However, the Internet is not an end or a goal, but rather a tool to achieve such goals. Private tutoring, which is often required by schoolchildren due to various circumstances, has started becoming accessible through the Internet. Both Internet tutoring and conventional tutoring have their own advantages and disadvantages. While conventional tutoring is a face-to-face activity, personal interactions are much more limited in Internet tutoring. However, the latter has the plus point of being accessible from the child’s home, rather than the need for him or her to go to a second physical school every evening, which in big cities can be quite far from the home. Of course, one can always have a tutor who comes to the home for tutoring, but this is becoming increasingly expensive even for parents in developing countries.

Before delving further deep into the new world of Internet tutoring, let us take a closer look at some of the specific challenges that the world faces today regarding education. Developing countries like India still have the one of the worst levels of literacy in the world. The official literacy rate in India is about 65 % (2001 Census), but India’s own educationists, like Brij Kothari, ex-professor at IIM Ahmedabad, have pointed out that the real, functional literacy rate could well be about 10 % lower than this, mainly due to the methodology of how literacy is assessed by India’s census officials. The census officials consider anyone who has studied or is studying in or above Class II (2nd grade) as literate; if not, they give a very simple and small piece of text in Hindi or state official language to the individual in question, and if he or she can read clumsily even a half of it, with or without fully understanding the language, he or sheis considered literate and counted as such in the census. This could easily mean that about half of India’s population is actually illiterate. In neighboring Pakistan, the situation is even worse, because there a person is officially considered literate if he or she can sign his or her name—a very simple task which can be learnt by heart without actually going into the hassle of literacy.

Successive federal governments in India claim that child “enrollment” in schools has increased over the decades, and that now almost all kids are “enrolled”. But how many of such kids actually go to the school? Enrollment sheet is merely a piece of signed paper upon which too much trust should not be placed, because Indian society, and in general the Eastern civilizations, do not follow the Rule of Law in the first place, but rather adhere to the Observance of Traditions. Hats off to the Indian society’s claims that “Indians speak English”, when the estimates of such Indians are only from 10 to 15 % of the population!

While many other developing countries like China, Indochina and even parts of the Arab World have literacy rates better than India, due to reasons including lower population (except for China), absence of the Hindu caste system and better policy implementation by their governments, even these countries cannot compare themselves to the Western civilization, which is practically 100 % literate. For instance, Britain was almost fully literate at the time of the Indian Independence in 1947, while India had a humble rate of only 12 %. True, the West does not face the challenge of literacy, but they still have significant educational ones. Over the recent decades, there has been a toning down of school curricula to such low and poor levels that many of their high school children can’t even read! Meaning, they can’t even read and understand their own native language. The situation of mathematics and natural science is even worse. The United States suffers from these problems most, and the US (children’s) schools have consistently ranked near the worst amongst all Western countries’ schools. No wonder the reform and improvement of US schooling is a recurring theme of the current Obama administration.

It is very surprising why the US schools have such poor quality education, as compared to developing countries like India and China, despite the fact that the United States is a developed country. We believe elements from both the Republican and Democrat politics are responsible for it, at least in part. The center-right, i.e. the Republicans, sees things only from the American perspective and considers the knowledge about America to be necessary as well as sufficient for the schoolchildren. The rest of the world is none of their concern. So while the Indian schoolchild takes great pains to learn about World history and World geography in addition to Indian history and geography, ranging from the Greco-Roman civilization to the French and American Revolution and from the maritime climate in Japan to the vegetation of the Prairies of the United States and Canada, the US schoolchild takes no such trouble to gain knowledge of the world outside the United States. History for these children starts with the setting for the American Revolution in the 1700’s, and is of course, painfully limited to America. While the Indian child learns three languages at the school, viz. English, Hindi and his/her state official language, or else Sanskrit, the US child is required to learn only English. As a result, the Indian child has grown up with sufficient knowledge of the globalized world and is well-prepared to take up his/her role herein, unlike his/her American counterpart. To add to the American woes, the center-left, i.e. the Democrats, has watered down even reasonable difficulties and challenges in their educational system in the name of child rights and freedom from the burden of study, effectively reducing the math-science levels of a US 10th grader to those of the Indian 7th grader.

These problems need to be tackled at all levels: the child, the parents, the teachers, the society, the states under whose jurisdiction these schools fall, the federal administration and finally the global community. It would be naïve to assume that online tutoring can remove them all at once. However, online tutoring can solve some specific problems, like providing extra help in math, science and languages. While it is true that many self-help websites are available on the Web, nevertheless, it is difficult and time consuming to gleam through the humungous pile of such sites and get the required information and help at one place. Online tutoring can help a child without any major assistance from his/her parents—who usually have less and less time for their children, often due to circumstances out of their control. A child would need to learn some simple steps of switching on a computer, opening a browser and logging on to a website. After that, the child can continue on his/her own.

Math is expected to remain the top priority for online tutoring and other forms of Web and CD based education in countries like the United States. Reading skills are another area of concern which can be addressed likewise. As far as the globalized knowledge of the world is concerned, the scope is a bit limited, because the American child’ curriculum and homework do not currently feature these things in the first place, so only very inquisitive children might be inclined to learn about them.

In a developing country like India, the quality of math is usually good in the schools, for the most part. For the rest, online tutoring can be of great help. More opportunities lie in the domain of language learning, especially English—the subsidiary official language of India, which is irreplaceable in science and technology fields. Since Indians are not the native speakers of English, neither the Indian kids nor their English teachers have decent English phonology. The phonology (or accent) of any language is determined by the native speakers of that language, and this rule must be followed in order to promote effective communication—which is the main goal of language. Rather than improving their English phonology to attain the levels of the native speakers of English, whether the US General American accent or the British Received Pronunciation accent, many Indians want to “Indianize” English, to make the idea of using the foreign-origin English compatible with their patriotic-nationalistic feelings. In some cases, Indians attempting to speak English with the phonology of native speakers are seen as very negative by their fellow Indians. But the fact remains that phonology is an integral part of a language’s grammar, and it has to be mastered for effective communication. If they can understand it in the first place, the native speakers of English consider Indian English to be highly amusing, or else highly offensive, mainly due to phonological reasons, like the use of the retroflex plosives instead of the alveolar plosives /t/ and /d/, non-aspiration of /p/, /t/ and /k/, and placement of stresses at wrong syllables. Here is where online tutoring can help, by bringing together the best teachers, including native speakers of English, at one single place for the disposal of the Indian student. The Indian child also wants to learn Hindi and other Indian regional languages effectively, especially if he/she is not its native speaker. Apart from languages, online tutoring can also help reforming the Old Victorian system of education, consisting of books with pages and pages of text, by replacing it with sounds, songs, nursery rhymes, pictures, maps, videos and interactive learning games.

Most sites of online tutoring, whether existing for homework help or otherwise, are expected to be paid service, unless sufficient number of volunteers can be found. The free market as well as the minimum hourly wages in the tutor’s country will determine the fee. Nevertheless, it is important for the society, or at least for those who can afford, to invest in their children’s future, so that rather than creating a future filled with terrorism, religious extremism, racial tensions, unemployment and narrow-mindedness, we can construct a world full of knowledge, prosperity, democracy, liberty, equality and fraternity.