I have been thinking about something uncomfortable.

Tutoring may sometimes be solving the wrong problem.

Not because tutors are bad.

Not because parents are unreasonable.

Not because children do not need help.

But because adults can become very good at standing on a high throne and explaining the view from the top.

While the child is still crawling on the floor.

That difference matters.

A lot.

We Know Where the Child Is Supposed to Go

Adults have one enormous advantage over children.

We already know the road.

We know what multiplication is for.

We know fractions will matter later.

We know algebra is coming.

We know how paragraphs work.

We know why evidence matters in Science.

We know that examination technique becomes important.

We can see the staircase.

The child often cannot.

So we stand at the top and say:

Come up here.

And when the child struggles, we explain the staircase more clearly.

Then we explain it again.

Then perhaps we give more practice.

Then more homework.

Then another tutor.

But the child may not be struggling with the staircase we are pointing at.

The child may still be learning how to stand.

The High Throne

The experienced teacher knows too much.

That sounds strange, but I think it can become a real teaching problem.

When you have taught Mathematics for years, a question can look obvious.

You see the structure immediately.

You know which method belongs there.

You know which information matters and which information is decoration.

You may look at a problem and almost instantly compress it into:

Oh. This is just ratio.

But the child does not see “just ratio.”

The child sees:

words,

numbers,

a diagram,

a question,

perhaps something about three people sharing something,

and a frightening blank space underneath.

The expert sees the destination.

The beginner sees the terrain.

Those are not the same view.

Sometimes Our Explanation Starts Too High

Imagine trying to teach someone to climb.

The instructor is already standing comfortably on a ledge.

From there, the next handhold is obvious.

So the instructor says:

Put your right foot there.

But the learner is still trying to work out how to keep their body against the wall.

The advice may be completely correct.

And completely useless.

This happens in education all the time.

A tutor says:

You need to infer the author’s intention.

The student may still be decoding the sentence.

A Mathematics tutor says:

Factorise before simplifying.

The student may not yet have stable algebraic manipulation.

A Science tutor says:

Explain the relationship between the variables.

The student may not understand what the graph is showing.

The instruction is correct.

The level is wrong.

Correct Teaching Can Still Miss the Learner

This is one of the hardest things to accept.

A tutor can be knowledgeable.

Prepared.

Experienced.

Patient.

And still miss the child.

Because teaching is not only about the correctness of the explanation.

It is also about whether the explanation connects to the learner’s current state.

If I explain something beautifully at Level 8 and the learner is at Level 3, the problem is not that the explanation was inaccurate.

The problem is that there is no bridge.

			
TUTOR
LEVEL 8
↓
excellent explanation
↓
excellent example
↓
excellent method
       X
LEARNER
LEVEL 3

		

Nothing connects.

Then something dangerous can happen.

The tutor thinks:

I explained this very clearly.

The student thinks:

I still don’t understand.

And both can reach the wrong conclusion.

The tutor may think the student is weak.

The student may think they are stupid.

Perhaps neither is true.

Perhaps the connection simply landed in the wrong place.

Crawling Is Not Failed Walking

This is where the image keeps coming back to me.

A child crawling is not a failed adult.

Crawling is a developmental state.

It is appropriate to where the child is.

We would not stand above a crawling baby and say:

Your walking technique is terrible.

That would be absurd.

But education sometimes does something surprisingly similar.

A learner who cannot yet analyse may still be learning to understand.

A learner who cannot transfer may still be stabilising the basic method.

A learner who cannot write elegantly may still be struggling to construct a complete sentence.

A child who cannot solve the difficult word problem may still be trying to understand the underlying relationship.

Yet adults frequently assess the learner from the destination.

We say:

This is where you should be.

Instead of first asking:

Where are you actually?

Tuition Can Make This Worse

This is the uncomfortable part.

Tuition is supposed to help.

But sometimes tuition simply creates another high throne.

School teaches the topic.

The child struggles.

So we send the child to tuition.

Then tuition teaches the same topic again.

Perhaps faster.

Perhaps with better notes.

Perhaps with more tricks.

Perhaps one chapter ahead.

The child is now receiving more information.

But more information is not necessarily the missing thing.

If the learner’s problem is underneath the current topic, then tuition can accidentally increase the distance between adult and child.

School is at Level 6.

Tuition decides to prepare for Level 7.

The learner may still be at Level 4.

			
TUITION      LEVEL 7
SCHOOL       LEVEL 6
LEARNER      LEVEL 4

And then everyone wonders why the child is tired.

We Often Call This “Getting Ahead”

Getting ahead sounds good.

And sometimes it is useful.

Seeing material before school can reduce the shock of a new topic.

A confident learner can benefit from additional challenge.

But I think we have to distinguish two things:

being ahead of the syllabus

and

being ready for what comes next.

They are not the same.

A child can have completed next year’s worksheet and still lack this year’s foundation.

A child can memorise the method for algebra before truly understanding fractions.

A child can write a model composition using sophisticated vocabulary while still struggling to organise ideas independently.

That is not necessarily progress.

It may just be exposure.

Adults Like Visible Advancement

This may be part of the problem.

Forward movement is easy to see.

We can say:

My Primary 5 child is doing Primary 6 work.

That sounds impressive.

But it is much harder to say:

My Primary 5 child spent three weeks repairing multiplicative reasoning that should have been stable two years ago.

That sounds like going backwards.

Yet the second intervention may be far more important.

Education sometimes suffers because repair is less glamorous than acceleration.

The adult sees backward movement.

The learner may actually be rebuilding the road.

A Tutor Has to Be Willing to Come Down

I think this is one of the hardest disciplines in teaching.

The tutor has to be willing to leave the throne.

Come down.

Sit beside the learner.

Look at what the learner sees.

Not what the tutor sees.

Not what the syllabus says.

Not what the examination demands eventually.

What does the child see now?

What does this symbol mean to them?

What did they think the question was asking?

Which word confused them?

Where did the first wrong turn happen?

What are they holding in working memory?

What are they assuming?

What do they believe they understand?

That can be humbling.

Because sometimes the mistake is much lower down than the sophisticated lesson we prepared.

And then our beautiful lesson has to wait.

Sometimes the Child Needs Something Embarrassingly Basic

This can be difficult for everybody.

A Secondary student may have a Primary-level gap.

A Primary 6 student may still be insecure with multiplication.

A Secondary Mathematics student may be carrying weak fractions.

A child writing complex compositions may still have unstable sentence control.

Nobody likes hearing that.

It can feel like failure.

But I don’t think it should.

If a bridge has a damaged support, we do not insult the bridge.

We repair the support.

The embarrassing part would be noticing the damage and deciding not to repair it because we would rather keep painting the upper deck.

The Tutor Can Become Addicted to Sophistication

There is another danger.

Teachers like interesting teaching.

We like elegant methods.

Advanced questions.

Beautiful explanations.

Clever shortcuts.

Higher-order thinking.

These things are enjoyable.

They also make us feel like experts.

But the child may not need our most sophisticated idea.

The child may need us to explain something simple very carefully.

Again.

That can be less exciting.

But perhaps that is teaching.

Not performing expertise.

Deploying the amount of expertise the learner can actually use.

There Is a Difference Between Showing and Building

A tutor can show a student an excellent solution.

That is useful.

But showing the solution and building the learner are not the same task.

I can show:

			
QUESTION
↓
METHOD
↓
ANSWER

		

The learner watches.

Understands.

Nods.

Then I remove myself.

Now:

			
QUESTION
↓
?

The bridge was in the tutor.

Not yet in the learner.

This is why teaching can look successful while learning remains fragile.

The lesson went well.

The student followed everything.

But the capability did not transfer ownership.

Perhaps We Tutor the Answer Too Much

This is something I worry about.

Tutoring can become very efficient at producing answers.

Here is the method.

Here is the structure.

Here is the model composition.

Here is the keyword.

Here is the exam technique.

Here is the shortcut.

And because examinations reward correct output, this can work.

But if we keep supplying the route, the student may become excellent at travelling only when somebody else lays the road.

That is not the same as becoming a navigator.

Eventually, we have to remove ourselves.

The Goal Cannot Be Permanent Dependence

This is where I think tutoring sometimes gets philosophically confused.

A business benefits when a customer stays.

Education succeeds when the learner needs less of us.

Those incentives do not automatically align.

That is worth being honest about.

If a student spends ten years in tuition and becomes incapable of learning without tuition, what exactly have we built?

Perhaps strong grades.

Perhaps also dependency.

I don’t think the goal should be:

How do we keep this student in tuition?

The better question is:

How do we make this student increasingly capable of operating without us?

That does not mean tuition ends immediately.

It means the direction of travel matters.

			
TUTOR DOES
↓
TUTOR + STUDENT DO
↓
STUDENT DOES, TUTOR CHECKS
↓
STUDENT DOES AND CHECKS
↓
STUDENT KNOWS WHEN HELP IS NEEDED

		

That is a much healthier trajectory.

But Independence Cannot Be Forced Either

There is another trap here.

Once we decide independence is good, we can stand on another throne and say:

Figure it out yourself.

That can be just as bad.

A child without the necessary capability is not becoming independent.

They are being abandoned.

So teaching has to calibrate.

Too much support:

dependency.

Too little support:

failure.

The useful zone keeps moving.

That is why the learner has to be observed continuously.

There is no permanent formula.

The Child Changes During the Lesson

This is something I think tutoring should take more seriously.

The learner at 4:00 pm is not necessarily the same learner at 4:45 pm.

Perhaps an idea finally connects.

Perhaps fatigue appears.

Perhaps confidence rises.

Perhaps one repaired foundation suddenly unlocks three other questions.

A lesson is not just content being delivered across ninety minutes.

The receiver is changing while we teach.

So the teaching should be able to change too.

That is one reason I value a very small group.

It gives us enough resolution to notice those changes.

Not perfectly.

But better.

We May Have Been Asking the Wrong Question

A lot of tutoring asks:

How do we teach this topic better?

That is a useful question.

But perhaps the first question should be:

Should we even be teaching this topic right now?

Maybe yes.

Maybe the learner is ready.

Maybe the child needs stretch.

But perhaps the visible topic is only where the failure appeared.

The actual repair belongs somewhere else.

That changes everything.

From Curriculum-Centred to Learner-Centred

The curriculum has to be organised around content.

That is unavoidable.

But tutoring has the luxury of being more responsive.

So perhaps tutoring should not simply mirror the curriculum at smaller scale.

It should perform a different job.

School says:

Here is where the cohort is going.

Tutoring can ask:

Where is this learner relative to that journey?

Then:

			
AHEAD?
↓
stretch
ALIGNED?
↓
strengthen
UNSTABLE?
↓
practise
GAP?
↓
repair
LOST?
↓
reconstruct

		

That feels much more useful than simply teaching the next worksheet.

This Is Why I Keep Returning to Diagnosis

I don’t think diagnosis means giving a child one big placement test and assigning a level.

Learning is too dynamic for that.

Diagnosis is ongoing.

Watch the child.

Change the question.

See what survives.

Remove a prompt.

Come back later.

Ask for an explanation.

Put the idea into another context.

A capability that survives these changes is different from one that only works under the original conditions.

So the tutor is constantly asking:

What is actually here?

That is a much more humble position than the throne.

Maybe Good Tutoring Looks Less Impressive

This is another uncomfortable thought.

Good tutoring may sometimes look surprisingly ordinary.

A tutor sitting quietly while a child thinks.

Asking one question.

Waiting.

Returning to something from last year.

Making the child explain.

Changing one number.

Removing one hint.

Doing fewer questions but understanding the mistakes more carefully.

That may look less impressive than a whiteboard full of advanced material.

But perhaps the quieter room is where the actual construction is happening.

We Have to Be Careful With Our Expertise

Expertise is necessary.

A tutor should know the subject deeply.

But expertise can become dangerous when it makes the beginner’s state invisible.

The better we become at something, the harder it can be to remember what it felt like not to know it.

So perhaps one of the disciplines of teaching is repeatedly reconstructing ignorance.

What would this look like if I did not already know the answer?

Which step am I silently skipping?

Which representation am I assuming?

Which relationship feels obvious only because I have seen it thousands of times?

That is not dumbing things down.

It is rebuilding the bridge.

The Throne Has a Purpose

I don’t think the teacher should throw away expertise.

Sometimes the learner needs someone who can see farther.

The adult needs to know where the road goes.

The tutor needs to anticipate what becomes important later.

The throne is useful because it gives perspective.

The mistake is teaching only from there.

Perhaps good teaching requires movement:

			
GO UP
see the larger route
COME DOWN
see the learner's current state
GO UP
choose direction
COME DOWN
build the next step
GO UP
check where this is leading
COME DOWN
observe what actually happened

		

The teacher needs both views.

That may be the real skill.

So Is Tutoring On The Wrong Track?

Not all tutoring.

And not always.

But I think tutoring goes wrong when it becomes:

more school after school.

What I Think Tuition Should Be

I am increasingly thinking about tuition this way:

A small place where we can slow the system down enough to see one learner properly.

Where we can ask:

What is working?

What is missing?

What is unstable?

What is merely memorised?

What can transfer?

What should we repair?

What should we leave alone?

When should we help?

When should we stop helping?

And when is the child ready to move?

That does not sound as impressive as:

Elite accelerated learning.

But I think it is much closer to what children actually need.

Coming Down From The Throne

Perhaps that is the image I want to keep.

The tutor starts with a better view.

That is part of the job.

But then we come down.

Not because the child is in charge of the curriculum.

Not because standards disappear.

Not because difficult things should become easy.

We come down because that is where the learner is.

And teaching has to make contact before it can create movement.

The child may be crawling.

That is okay.

First find out why.

Then perhaps help them stand.

Then balance.

Then walk.

Then run.

And one day, if we have done the job properly, the learner may climb high enough to see a view we never could.

That would be a much better reason to have been on the throne in the first place.