Shaping the Next Generation

Timothy Nguyen

Malcolm X once said that “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” In today’s world, millions of children go to school everyday to give themselves a chance at a better life. Education not only provides students a necessary foundation for college and careers; it also helps students to discover their identities and passions. But, with all that said, there are many students today who struggle with school work. Since everyone is different, everyone learns in a different way, and sometimes, a student struggles to learn from a teacher in a classroom. To solve this, we need to enact tutoring programs.

By definition, a tutor is someone who provides assistance on certain subject areas or skills. Today, there are many schools who do have some type of tutoring program. However, not every school has one, and sometimes, students are not even aware that there is a tutoring program available at their school. It is important that we can implement more tutoring programs in our schools so then every student has a better chance to succeed. Without them, many students will continue to fall behind on their school work and will remain lost on the material being taught.

With most tutoring programs out there, it is required that you must be over the age of 18 and have some type of college degree. However, this eliminates a huge population of potential tutors who could provide just as effective help to our students. That population is teenagers, specifically high school students. There are not many programs out there that allow high school students to tutor younger students. But, with more student tutors, younger students could receive many benefits. For example, they would be able to connect with someone who understands the challenges that they are going through. Then, for high school students, they would be able to practice helping people while also completing community service hours. For many kids, they are too shy to talk to older adults, so if they were able to receive help from someone a little younger, they would be more engaged in their learning.

Some may argue that since high school students do not have any certifications to tutor in any way, they are not qualified to tutor other students. However, these people fail to realize that high school students are more than qualified. There are many high school students out there who excel particularly in one subject area, and their help could be extremely beneficial to many younger students. In addition, high school students exactly understand the challenges of being a primary school student, and they would be able to relate to and sympathize with younger students. At the end of the day, tutoring is not just a job. Tutoring is a service activity that can benefit the community as a whole, and our communities should invest more time in it. As Benjamin Franklin once said, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”