On the Road to Education

Every evening, I find my neighbor waiting outside the apartment for her two children from their evening tuition. And my neighbor has been doing that as long as I can remember. As a young parent myself I can understand how concerned she is of her children. It is jungle out there. Any rushing cars can make our children no more. Doing well and performing exceptionally beyond what is expected is becoming a trend in Bhutan today. Time was different when we were students.

By the way tuition is illegal in Bhutan. That’s the way it is here. Many things are illegal and yet we see them everywhere. Only this afternoon, we passively smoked in a restaurant – that lady, I think she was unaware of the fact that one is prohibited of smoking in a public place. She did it just before our eyes and so proudly too.

Anyway, you see tuition is illegal in Bhutan. And I am really encouraged by the reason our authorities give to defend their decision on the prohibition of tuitions in the country. They think that if tuition centers are legalized in the country then it would create differences between the students from the rich and the poor and urban and rural family backgrounds. Isn’t that heartening? We should not have differential treatments in an equitable society - no doubt we are a happy country! How nice of the authorities to recognize this!

But our experience tells us that there are already differences between the rich and the poor students – for the same reason we have phrases like ‘haves’ and ‘have not’s’. We can never compare a remote school with a school in urban centers, you see. And for the same reason, differences already exist. Even if tuitions are illegal, rich parents can still afford to send their children to private homes for regular tuitions or better still they can invite private tutors in their houses. Isn’t that a difference?

Since it is the wish of every parent to make their children learn their lessons inside out, it is only fitting that we allow private tuition centers to come in. Authorities should monitor such centers and tutors with proper qualification and training should run them. But no schoolteachers if they are still in the teaching profession should be allowed. As result there won’t be conflict of interest. Teachers do not delve deeper into a topic so that they would have more students gathering in their houses in the evening. I don’t know how true it is, but I am sure most our teachers’ conscience would be clear with this accusation.

Knowing that difference between the rural and the urban, the rich and the poor, exists, it is high time that we do something about this bugging issue of tuitions. We should come up with uniform set of guidelines, rules and regulations and allow tuition centers to operate.