You learn

Comedies were replaced by extensive tear-provoking novels with poor, but proud students and bankers' daughters (or the opposite).

In a word, authors of all times always terribly liked teachers as protagonists: so many plots could be made up around them! But there was a reality: home tutoring never died. And today it is a respectable current.

Well, any person could teach something to another person. The point is, in its essence, in the payment of this process. If a John Doe from the block wilfully explains to his street audience the basics of anatomy, than he's a youth guide or a missionary. If he teaches the same to a separate student and is paid on an hourly basis, it means that he's a tutor. By the way, this word has been adopted in our parts harmoniously and explains the process very well and clearly: knowledge - money - knowledge. And if previously other brains were needed for just several subjects, today, according to the specialists, in Kazakhstan tutors work in 40 disciplines. It is all explainable: there are new directions, prevoiusly unknown profiles.

They speak a lot about the low level of education in Kazakhstan. According to some sources, only 77 per cent of population is relatively educated. At the same time more young people start to realise that they won't be able to live their whole life with a bought diploma. Today your Dad is in a position, and tomorrow you'll have to look for work. Competition is high. You have to know languages, computer programs, a lot that you missed in a school or in a University. And this niche of lack of knowledge has been successfully filled up with home teaching. The same teachers have become home tutors, who are so much lacking in the schools of the country, especially in the rural ones. But how on Earth one would blame them, if for one hour of individual lessons, say, in maths, Almaty ignorant ones pay from 400 to 500 tenge. Two hours twice a week... The highest home tutors rates in Southern capital are those for English - from 800 to 1800 tenge per hour. And then the music follows: 1000-1500. Computer "lamers" can get a little knowledge for 600. Computer knowledge is one of the most popular proposals in the local newspaper ads.

It goes without saying that the issue of the quality of this sort of education arises. It is absolutely out of the State authorities control. And even if any of the high education officials would get concerned with it, it would be impossible to draw its overall objective picture: 99 per cent of home tutors don't have any certificates. That is they teach illegally. The question of how well they do it, will remain unanswered, because as it was said a monitoring is impossible. The tutors are not registered anywhere, do not confirm their right to sow the reason, the good, the eternal anywhere. Their army is spontaneous and calling to a newspaper, anybody in search for knowledge plays roulette: if he's lucky - he'll enlarge his "brain" luggage, if not - he'll remain at the same level. An example lives next door to me: a music teacher found wonderful talents in a girl and offered individual training. A violin was bought and the future Lana during one year was torturing her neighbours. Afterwards, to my delight, the teacher finished it herself and the evening tortures stopped.

Possibly, many tutors would gladly get a certificate, which they would be able to show to distrustful clients. But the scary image of the Tax Code of RK doesn't let them do it. Its article 371, placing a home tutor in the category of an entrepreneur, strictly requires accountability. And what if they could work without bureaucratic nerves wastage, financial costs, than why not? In the West there are special agencies, which scrupulously select "the teaching staff": because a tutor not only has to be a top level specialist, but also a psychologist, an upbringer, and simply - sociable, friendly person. And then everybody would be happy: the student, who paid for the certainty of obtaining knowledge, the teacher, who got well paid for a high quality labour, the firm, earning its reputation and interests, the State, obtaining profit in taxes and a potential specialist. In the case that there are any misunderstandings between the student and the tutor, their relations are terminated as per contract, in a civilised manner. But this is an ideal scheme and we are very far from it. While we study: yea, we'll learn something somehow.