Tuition Industry In Singapore Essay

The social phenomenon that I am about to elaborate on is the Singapore’s education system, specifically related to the tuition industry. Education as a phenomenon allows us to explore various perspectives across all aspects pertaining to personal troubles and public issues. It involves the interplay between man and the society. According to sociologist Max Weber, education cultivates current relationships within a society in a repetitive manner. Singapore’s education system is dubbed as ‘shadow education system’, where the tuition industry is the ‘shadow industry.’ Singapore, being an Asian country, passionately yet sincerely adopts strong Confucian traditions for learning meticulously. Even so, Singapore’s society is highly globalised and

Tuition industries help students who are ‘slower’ or less interactive in class so that they can cope with the pace of classes in their schools. More importantly, education is intended to alleviate socio-economic background differences through meritocracy and to integrate into the social life. The uniformity of values, attitudes, identities and beliefs instilled in the young people means that a collective society is holistically nurtured. The manifest function of education is that it ensures that the population is skilled, talented and knowledgeable to participate actively in a competitive and interdependent society, thus encouraging social mobility. This is because, there is an interconnection between education and social reality. The latent function of education provided by the tuition industry is to develop a sense of identity and self-worth in an individual so that he is passionate and useful in contributing back to the society, regardless of socio-economic differences. Education in this aspect, helps to build and develop the social

The existence of tuition leads to two possible negative micro-social consequences. From the children’s point of view, tuition is regarded is a ready substitute for formal public education in schools. Hence, students may not put in their best effort in inquisitive learning. From the teachers’ point of view, students may have a ‘backup’ for poor teaching or students’ lack of attention in class. Thus, teachers may not be driven to produce quality teaching for the students. Both results eventually lead parents to over-invest in tuition industry, regardless of private or public tuition. In all, parents spend about SGD840 million on private tuition, as reported by the Asian Development Bank in