Tutoring in Hong Kong

By Trevor (Age 14, Hong Kong International School)

In this lively metropolis of Hong Kong, there is one thing that almost all parents agree on: their child needs tutors. The richer the parents are, the more well-known their child's tutor is going to be. On the other hand, even slightly poor families may sacrifice one of their lesser necessities to allow their child to hire a tutor or to send their child to a tutoring center. What is it in the word tutor that makes all the parents think that they are important? One of the reasons is because tutors are private; they never teach large groups, which means that students get more personal help and attention when needed. Another reason for this is because tutors can give comments based on what is written instead of comparing it with another student's work, so the criticism, in a way, can be more original. Still, the question remains: why can't the student do it by him/herself?

My way of viewing this is that tutoring is not exactly essential for students to be able to excel academically. If students focus and take notes in class, then there would be no need for revision from tutors. Teachers in school should already be teaching students what is needed to obtain higher grades. If this were not so, then how do some of the world's most wealthy people earn their statuses without education? What about Lee Ka Shing? Not only did he not have tutors, but he also never received proper education before in his life. Where did he get his inspiration and ideas? Tutors? It is true, however, that tutors may be the spark that lights up the splinter, but this isn't the case for everyone.

Obviously, there are some students who do better with the help of tutors. As a rule of thumb for public school kids in Hong Kong, people with more tutors tend to receive higher grades. However, what people don't do is see things beyond these statistics. More tutors will mean that the families are wealthier; the wealthier a family, they have a propensity of being more knowledgeable. These rich parents may not be educated, but definitely smart one way or another. From the students with poor family backgrounds that still have a chance to have a tutor, almost all of them achieve better grades as well. Why? One reason is because these students usually do not get much attention or that their parents don't have enough proficiency on the subject in which their child needs help on. Thus, these students typically get better grades than those who do not have tutors, but not as well as those with many tutors - the rich kids. From this information, people then start to say that it is a generalization for everyone, which is really not true in many cases.

At my school, there is a guy that gets literally all A's. He's not a super genius though. Then you're probably thinking, "He probably takes a lot of tutoring lessons if he's not naturally smart." The answer is no, he doesn't have tutors of any sort. What makes him successful at school is the fact that he is hard working. If a school did not teach enough of what was necessary for students to succeed in school, then that'd be a pretty bad school.

In my perspective, greater numbers or hours with a tutor(s) does not equal better grades. If that were to be true, then every single pupil with wealthy family backgrounds would simply get good grades. Thinking about every single rich kid, I know most people would agree that they don't all get good grades. As the saying goes, "Work hard, work harder" can sometimes be the actual stimulus of all those "smart" kids.

Intent

By Trevor (Age 14, Hong Kong International School)

What does it mean to do something on purpose? What about by impulse? On September 22, Tyler Clementi committed suicide after a series of actions by two bullies. Three days earlier, Dharun and Molly uploaded a video of the boy making out with a guy on Youtube. One may ask, "What led to this?" but the more important question is "What was the intent?"

Almost for sure, Ravi had a suspicion that his roommate was homosexual. Not only did he suspect, but he thought about it, and decided that he was going to spy on his roommate through a webcam. Did he accidentally turn on the webcam or was it part of 'the plan'? Most likely, Ravi turned it on manually because Tyler himself would not risk his being exposed if he had asked for the dorm for three hours in the first place. Dharun had to have intended on somehow figuring out if his roommate matched his suspicions. The next step however was the most crucial determining factor of his sentence: was he an on-purpose exposer? Or was it a click in the head saying 'I'm just gonna do this.'?

In one perspective, one could say that it was all because the immature student felt that it was funny. However, looking at the case from the opposite perspective, would it not have all been planned if Ravi had turned on the webcam in the first place? Information on health.spreadit.org showed that this was not the first video to be captured. Both Ravi and Molly had planned to post their next video before Clementi had asked for the room. With this proof, it is affirmed that they had intended to rebroadcast such a video instead of getting a good laugh at it. Premeditation was a factor in this crime because without it, the video would never have been posted. As an addition to backup this statement, he had tweeted "Roommate asked for the room... went into molly's room and turned on my web-cam... making out with a dude. Yay." Notice the word "Yay" had strong emphasis to it because it was used as an effective short sentence. Inferring from the text, these three simple letters held the meaning of how Ravi had felt successful by accomplishing his goal. Without this word in the context, this would be a whole different story because it would not have shown accomplishment in Dharun's voice over Twitter.

It is extremely possible that the two of them would not have done so if they knew of the full consequence of Tyler jumping off the bridge. It is true that Tyler must have acted on the impulse of committing suicide before he thought about what he could have done to recover from this incident. Nevertheless, this does not change the fact that they did so. What is done is done. No matter how good the track records of Dharun and Molly are, it does not change the fact that they did something horrible to a person that they only knew for about a week. There is a great chance that Tyler would not have done so if were heterosexual because he would not be as afraid of being exposed to be dragged "out of the closet" by others.

More time to rationalize meant that they had more responsibility over the situation; more time to reflect meant less impulse - or even none - which shows that it was done based on premeditation and thoughts about consequences. Therefore, as a final statement, both Ravi and Wei should be sentenced to imprisonment because they had more than enough time to think before they had acted. Wei, though possibly not the main "brains", still participated and supported this idea, thereby saying, should be equal responsible as Ravi. It is only fair for them to learn a lesson of how powerful a small prank can be on to others. Not everyone views things with the same pair of eyes.