What I like most about tutoring is that it is not teaching, to put it in simple words. Now, words are just words, so let me explain further. Here I mean teaching as that flow of knowledge in a single direction, like in a river, from the One Who Knows (the Teacher) to the one who doesn’t (the taught). When I say tutoring, I mean a lake whose waters can go in multiple directions and come back when they hit the shore and tremble when strong winds blow and, sometimes, just rest. This is knowledge shared between a tutor and a student.
In tutoring, the way I see it, the Teacher/pupil hierarchy is dropped and that has a nice positive impact on the student. She feels more free, he can asks more questions, they can disagree, they can speak up. “That doesn’t make sense!”, I love it when I hear those words.
Many times, and parents know this, the relative poor performance of their children in schools is due to lack of confidence in themselves and therefore it is important to create for the student an environment where there is a democracy, where “my thoughts and your thoughts are equally worth”. I think that tutoring is a practical way of creating this environment, of ending the hierarchy, and I think this is one of the tutor’s most important tasks.
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