Tutor

A tutor is a person who teaches or guides another person. Usually, the tutor is an older expert who teaches a younger learner. Early examples were Socrates, who taught philosophy by holding conversations with his students, and Aristotle, who was appointed the personal tutor of Alexander the Great when the latter was a youth.

The essence of a tutor's work is to adjust the teaching to the individual learner. The tutor has to take account of:

1. what the learner already knows and does not know
2. what the learner has incorrectly learnt
3. the personal interests and goals of the learner
4. the particular talents of the learner

The idea is that a tutor teaches, or 'moulds' the student as a whole. However, there is an obvious difference between the tutor's need for topical knowledge and his or her need for 'people skills'. The system operated at the older colleges of Oxford University recognises this by appointing two tutors to a student: a subject-matter tutor and a moral tutor. The latter helps the student with problems of a personal nature.^[1]

Education by a tutor is often thought to be an ideal kind of education, because the tutor can adjust the learning to suit one student. However, the word is often misused. If students are taught in groups larger than three or four, then much that makes a tutorial special is lacking.

1. ↑ Bailey, Cyril. 1965. The tutorial system. Revised by J.B. Bamborough, in Handbook to the University of Oxford. 279–286 Oxford: Clarendon Press.