You may think you've met the most overbearing parents in the world at playgroup, but here's betting they have nothing on the parents currently advertising for a $235,000 a yeartutor for their 9-year-old daughter. OK, a liiiiiiittle pricey, but what's wrong with a tutor, you ask? There's no shame in asking for a little extra help for a kiddo who's falling behind!
True enough, but just wait until you hear HOW MUCH tutoring this little girl is in for! These parents want their little girl to come home from school and spend three hours a day with the tutor. And that's not all! She needs five hours of tutoring on Saturdays AND five more hours on Sundays!
Seven days of tutoring a week?
According to the parents' listing, the little girl is in year five (they're British ... and they're actually offering 144,000 pounds, which translates to about $235,000) where she started out in the top five of the class, but slid over time to the point where she is "behind her peers across the board, and is consistently scoring in the bottom quartile, often more than 20 per cent under the median."
Tutoring may be in order here, but can you say overkill?
I'm all for education, folks. I am one of those parents who checks her kid's homework every night and makes her correct the wrong answers. We practice the multiplication tables and her spelling words. If she's struggling with something, we work on it, and I would have no problem hiring a tutor if things got really bad.
But I also believe wholeheartedly that kids should be kids. There is time for learning, and then there is time for playing. If I had to pick one over the other, it would be the latter, at least when it comes to home time.
Remember when you were a kid? The best teachers were always those who made a lesson fun. Kids should enjoy learning, at least as much as they can.
Not ever algebra lesson will be like playing video games, but at the very least you should avoid turning it into drudgery. Which is what studying every night after school from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. and for five hours each on Saturday and Sunday mornings sounds like.
It sounds like torture. Pure and simple.
And it's likely to have the very opposite effect of what the parents intend. Instead of making their daughter a better student, they're about to cure her of ever wanting to do schoolwork again!
It may not be recorded in a scientific study somewhere, but I think there's at least enough anecdotal evidence to call this a fact: too much education isn't better, it's just too much education!
Where do you draw the line on pushing kids to learn? If you had the money, would you follow these parents' route?
Image via spiritinme/Flickr