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BY JENNIFER 11 Mar 2010 02:03
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With live in tutors back in vogue Susan Robinson explores this modern twist on a very old school profession...
Although I’ve always admired the work of Mary Poppins and truly believe that no can solve a problem like Maria, (‘what do you mean, nothing to wear? I can knit all seven of you out with one pair of curtains.’) I think it might require more than a spoonful of sugar to stop a new trend getting stuck in my craw. Governesses, or “live-in tutors” as they and the families involved prefer to call them, are experiencing a revival among the affluent.
Parents concerned about the academic achievement of their children can go to tutoring agencies such as Bonas MacFarlane (who have 40 such live-in tutors on their books) and hire graduates from top universities to provide one-to-one learning. This intense education will typically be during the school holidays and in a secluded retreat such as the family’s summer house. Company director Charles Bonas claims: “Our tutors go to places in London, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall. A lot of people have holiday homes on the Continent as well, and it’s quite normal for the tutor to fly out along with them. One family took a tutor to the Olympics over the summer.”
These tutors are not merely expected to be educators but members of their host families: “As a mentor, you are seen as a sort of sisterly figure to study with them, encourage and advise them.” This sort of education is clearly an advantage when it comes to bagging those A’s for admittance into Cambridge but what happens after the entrance exams? The ability to learn independently is essential to university, as for the workplace…no boss is going to hold your hand, make sure you’re completely comfortable and hope you’re having FUN because your parents won’t be paying their wages. Or maybe they will, if they, like one client on Tutors International’s books can afford to: “employ two tutors and pay them £108,000 a year each, while giving them their own apartment and car and travelling with the family on their private jet”. Company boss Adam Caller adds, “For that post we are putting forward someone who has graduated from Oxford and Harvard and who currently works at Yale.”
Just how qualified do you have to be? Just how intelligent are these children? I’m reminded of a documentary I saw a few years ago about a woman who was inseminated with the donated sperm of an anonymous astrophysicist-maestro-conductor-Olympic-athlete-Pulitzer-prize-winning-author-and-multilinguist. She breastfed the resulting child until the age of five, nurtured his talent and, unsurprisingly, he turned out to be highly gifted. An all-rounder as well, that is, an all round arrogant and ill-adapted individual. My point is, you can take these things too far. Education and intelligence are important but what about being a well rounded individual?
Isolation from other children may fast-track the learning process but a child who is used to being the sole focus is going to struggle when it comes to tolerating others. Concerns were raised by Dr Carol Craig (executive of Scotland’s centre for confidence and well-being) last week that schools are breeding a generation of narcissists by over-praising pupils and developing an “it’s all about me” mentality. If this is a concern in schools, then a child who resists learning in the presence of peers and requires the attentions of a governess to achieve anything will probably develop an ego more inflated than Richard Branson filled with helium.
There is also the question of individual merit, such dedicated tuition renders exam results less a confirmation of intellectual ability but more like a statement of the parental bank balance. Last week, newly appointed rector of St. Andrews, Louise Richardson, told The Guardian her perspective on admissions: "If someone comes from a background where there are no books in the house and they achieve a degree of academic excellence comparable to my children, who grew up with professional parents, surrounded by books, then the potential of that person to succeed academically might be even greater. You have to look at the context in which the academic success was achieved." As a former Harvard academic and the first in her family to go to university, Richardson is living proof that success and Oxbridge or Ivy League approved tutors are not synonymous.
Being the sympathetic soul that I am, I also have concerns for the families involved. If parents are able to choose tutors based upon their degrees and are inviting them into their homes, I wonder what other criteria the selection might involve: “Darling I prefer the blonde Swedish tutor, she looks like she could give Toby a much firmer grasp of A-level biology and she could improve his Swedish oral at the same time.” The Times described the phenomenon as ‘Jane Eyre Joins the Jet Set’ and mentions how in the novel she falls in love her employer, Mr Rochester, without making this apparent link with tutor-parent incest. However, provided that the tutor more resembles Sister Immaculata than Mrs Robinson, this shouldn’t be too much of an issue.
Despite reservations, if I was offered a six week paid holiday in Tuscany, the only proviso being that I had to teach young Tobias the finer points of Shakespeare’s history plays (and despite my almost non-existent knowledge of said plays), would I take it? You can bet your chintz-patterned socks I would.
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