Back to school is in full swing with its share of promises and frustrations! And the inevitable question of private lessons resurfaced with the promise of the Minister of Education to eradicate this phenomenon, the same as his predecessors had done without managing to keep it.
In fact, private lessons (CP) have become, in recent years, the essential counterpart of an education system in distress. And it starts earlier and earlier. Hold on tight! From the first year of primary school, that is to say when the child thinks more about playing than knowing what grade he has been awarded in each of the twenty or so subjects that he is supposed to have been taught.
No, don’t pinch yourself! It’s not a nightmare. This is the Tunisian education system where to avoid or remedy bad grades, CPs are used, even for children of 6, 7 or 8 years old.
This phenomenon continues throughout the student’s schooling and reaches its peak at the approach of the baccalaureate. And there, it becomes much more serious and more expensive. And if math and physics teachers are the stars of the system, other subjects are also beginning to shine in the dark sky of this ignorance of the true springs of success. Thus, there are now even private lessons in philosophy! Worse still, the addiction to private lessons accompanies some in their transition to university. It even happens that students in “renowned” universities resolve to do so…
Why the CP rush
This is the key question. I give pell-mell the possible reasons and it’s up to you to sort them out! Knowing that there can be a conjunction of two or more reasons! I would put in the first place the visceral attachment of the Tunisian to the academic success of his children. Without having statistics in this direction, we can advance without much risk of being mistaken that more than 80% of Tunisians consider that the academic success of their children is their first priority and that they are ready to make all the sacrifices to see them succeed and stand out. From where their predisposition to offer them CP, believing thus to guarantee the aimed objective.
This call from parents responds to the need for teachers whose salaries are insufficient and who find in CPs the appropriate solution to improve their income.
In addition to these two main reasons, there are others such as the orientation system for the pursuit of university studies in public institutions of higher education. In fact, this system is essentially based on the averages obtained in the baccalaureate and during the last year of secondary education. To be able to reach the most popular courses such as medicine, engineering or architecture schools or even certain renowned business schools, you must have good grades in certain subjects. What pushes students towards CP…
The harms of CP
The Minister of Education has just given alarming figures on school drop-outs and even more alarming percentages on the level of pupils at the end of basic school, since he says that 75% of them are almost illiterate. Illiterate after 9 years of school! And we know, moreover, what is the catastrophic level in understanding of mathematical problems of pupils of about 15 years (that is to say after basic school) measured by the European program Pisa(*), from which Tunisia withdrew by decision of the Minister of Education in 2018. It is this catastrophic level that prompted the minister to no longer submit our education system to the Pisa evaluation under the pretext that it had not useless as if the thermometer was used to lower the fever!
In fact, poor parents find in CP the illusion of improving both the level and the grades of pupils to whom the school is no longer capable of providing the minimum level of knowledge required.
Concretely, the beneficial effect on the level of the pupils is very debatable. We can even argue that its negative effect far exceeds its benefits. And especially from a psychological point of view.
Indeed, recourse to CP kills the learner’s ability to learn by himself, to identify and seek the information he needs, and to face the difficulties of solving a problem until the issue by reaching the solution. It kills all the fun of learning on your own, understanding problems, and solving them. He creates helpers. diminished beings.
What to do?
We should never expose a problem without proposing solutions! Unfortunately, the solutions to this CP problem cannot be proposed without placing them in the general context of the reform of the education system which generated them. In fact, they are one of the manifestations of the evil that plagues this system. And we can bet that the CP will disappear by themselves as soon as the national education system shows signs of recovery. And it is urgent to get to work.
The main axes of the reform relate to the material conditions of learning (dilapidated state of most schools and high schools, lack of teaching equipment, etc.), the low level of teachers from a system that is itself dilapidated ( specific training, recruitment criteria, etc.), obsolete and pedagogically outdated content and the general environment of the education system (parental commitment, media support, social support, etc.)
In short, it’s a whole project that we’ve been talking about for at least twenty years with a lot of reports, studies, and promises, but which continues to stand still.
* University.
** Program for International Student Assessment is a set of studies conducted every three years by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) aimed at measuring the performance of the education systems of member and non-member countries. Tunisia adhered to this evaluation before the decision, in 2018, of the Minister of Education to withdraw from it.
