Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 2

Being able to connect with another teacher from another country have been great experiences.Some times we don't realize how lucky we are. Many children in Egypt are not able to return to class today because of  their country political problem. They have to be privately tutor in order to finsih their education. Many of the schools condition are in poor condition because at this time there are no budget. The classes are at teh max and many children are sitting on the floor. Parents are advise to home school their childre or have them go to a American private school school in which it may cost a lot of money. Mai explains Teachers often write their own learner guides, which are not always better than state allocated books, but help students prepare for exams. They sell the books to students to make extra money.  However, as time goes on we all know that the children need a education. What are the parents suppose to do?The excessive use of private tutoring also suggests that the education clause of the social contract has long been broken. Other indicators, like the consistent under-education of Egypt’s poor also point to the same. In Egypt, many children receive private lessons from the very same teachers who are paid, albeit rather poorly, to teach them in school. But since correct work incentives and performance monitoring have basically been absent, and teachers are so underpaid, over time, the system of private tutoring became a regular feature in education. Rather than interfere, decades of education ministers turned a blind eye and, in effect, openly admitted to the disregard of this element of the social contract.
All together, the expense and pervasiveness of private tutoring in Egypt seems to be a vote of no confidence in the education system’s ability to adequately deliver quality education. More importantly, one could argue that the education system fulfils neither the need for nor the right to education. The system is broken. We hear this all the time.