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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: April 16, 2004
Latest Update: April 16, 2004
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Privatization of Tutoring

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, April 2004.
"Fair use" encouraged.

This essay is based on two primary sources, one an article in the NY times on the federal government's support of privatized tutoring: For Children Being Left Behind, Private Tutors Face Rocky Start, NYTimes, April 16, 2004. Backup . The other, a web site, Listen Up: Youth Media Network.

For me, these represent two extremes in the way we are facing up to our failure in educating the populace of this country. Education, like children, is a state interest. That means that society cannot go on, cannot reproduce its mores, laws, and institutions, unless it successfully satisfies this interest. Education of our young matters to the continued interests of our society, not just to the children themselves and their parents. This is one reason that the state claims a right to meddle in private schooling and rearing of children, and this is a good reason for the state putting resources into the education of the young, or, at this stage of global development, into the re-education and the re-education and the re-education that many of our citizens face in order to maintain employment.

Discussion Questions

Now, how shall we tackle this state interest in educating our citizens for the future and the cost such education incurs? The federal government is currently continuing its focus on privatization. For the discussion questions consult For Children Being Left Behind, Private Tutors Face Rocky Start and Listen Up: Youth Media Network.

1. In the NY elementary school are the tutors trained in classroom management and learning theory?

   Anybody's guess. The tutors are recruited and sent out by private companies:

   • Principal's dismay

2. How was this privatized tutoring program financed?

   If the government pays a private group to do what it would have done, or was doing, is that privatization? Follow the money.

   • Money Source

3. Is this privatized tutoring effective? Is it working?

   • Some Improvement
   • The Hawthorne Effect - not supported
   • The Hawthorne Effect - supported.

   Consider that the Hawthorne Effect, which says that production will improve just because you pay attention to workers, nevermind what the attention involves, was never fully investigated, but became part of the unstated assumptions that make our specific cultural biases. However, the second study above, which supports that the effect is real, is more recent, and draws on the theory that humans need interpersonal relationships and will die without them. (Durkheim's anomic suicide and the unethical experiment with leaving babies untouched and alone except for essential feeding and clearning. Many of those babies died.)

   Will "tutoring" work no matter what you do and no matter how disorganized it is because you are giving nurturing where there was none. If nurturing is essential to healthy survival, will children not to whatever it takes to get that nurturing? If we take the results to mean that "tutoring" worked, may it not be that "nurturing" helped? And may the conclusion that tutoring "worked" not be spurious? Social research is complicated and operates on numerous unstated cultural assumptions.