Coaching Classes – Pros and Cons

The idea came to my mind today when my little cousin brother called me and asked, “Brother, Can you come with me to coaching classes? I want to take admission for XI^th standard Maths and Physics before it closes.” 

I went with him but this made me think once more about coaching classes. Anywhere you go in India, especially in big cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Madras, Pune, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Kota, Jaipur you will find coaching classes flooded near schools, colleges, posh societies. 

I personally think they are spreading like a virus for current generation of students. Today, students can’t even think without coaching classes. It has become a ritual to join a coaching class in every grade or standard as if spending some extra money would fill their brains with some extra knowledge. Students cannot even imagine their life without coaching classes particularly in board standards like 5^th, 8^th, 10^th and 12^th (depends on which city you live in India) and during exams. 

Most of the coaching classes provide extra tuitions during examinations and they call it crash courses, or refreshers. This is like boosting your blog traffic for a temporary span by writing a post on a current event which is flooding Google trends. They make a lot of money with refreshers and crash courses than they normally do with regular tuitions.

Coaching classes is one of the business kinds where teachers don’t need a money investment except for the initial setup, and they can continue earning as long as they can spare some time to teach. On the contrary, the more experience you earn as a teacher, the more number of students you attract, and hence more money you earn.  The coaching trend has grown to the level that now college teachers feel reluctant to explain the syllabus topics with appropriate details during college classes feeling that the student could grip the same at the evening coaching classes by the same teacher or elsewhere. 

I don’t want to say anything against coaching classes but I personally don’t like the idea of rusting your brains and getting dependent on others for your studies. I would rather demand some extra labour from my brain to keep it functional and not become a stagnant pool filled with garbage. During my academic career, I have hardly taken any extra classes apart from my school and college lectures. 

Some cons: 

1. Wastage of money which could well be invested in buying your child some extra books or games or whatever he likes.
2. Wastage of time, which could be saved from already hectic schedules of today’s generation students.
3. Development of habit of thinking only when somebody tells you too.
4. Development of dependency on others to make you read and pass in the exams. This increases pressure and anxiety during exams.
5. Rusting of brain for not letting it think and everything being explained by teachers everywhere. If something taught in the school class doesn’t make sense, the child is always motivated to ask it during coaching classes and not letting him think and solve it on his own.
6. Development of shyness and nervousness in children for not asking enough questions in the class for they have an extra support of coaching classes.
7. Less self confidence in children. 

Some pros:

1. A more or less repetition of the school syllabus, although sometimes in a different style.
2. More exposure for children to get their problems solved by various teachers.
3. For some specific competitive examinations like IIT or CAT, coaching classes really help students reach their goals by providing smart and correct guidance.
4. Coaching classes help students to grab private attention from teachers compared to schools as school classes normally have higher strength.
5. Some not so intelligent children start getting good grades because of extra coaching classes. This is not because they start thinking on their own but the subject is repeated too many times for them to understand.

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