3 ms·

I would say go and have a look at a well run martial arts school. Ever wonder how a single "master" can teach a class of 30 people at different levels and ages

• bmelton 11y ago
  I was on the fence for this argument, but your dojo analogy solidifies my complete agreement. Moreover, parents with lagging children often turn to tutors, many of whom (last I checked) are just slightly older children -- older enough that they know the material, and young enough that it's still fresh in their minds, educationally. Offtopic, I can't help but wonder how much the tutoring reinforces what they were probably certain to forget anyway. In the same way that blogging about a subject reinforces your understanding of it (e.g., if you can't explain it, you don't know it), I suspect that tutoring a younger generation would help those tutors cement that knowledge more deeply into their minds than just retaining it long enough to pass whatever tests they're given in the short term. At the end of the day though, your dojo analogy is most precise -- senseis don't just promote every student to assistant instructor. They carefully curate based on knowledge, discipline and behavior. Having every older child tutor the younger is probably unnecessary, and would likely lead to chaos, but if teachers chose only those students capable of helping out the younger children, even assuming some failure rate in selection, it would probably be a dramatic improvement over the current situation.