On Tutoring

Remember that movie?

There was a ginormous incident with that flick some 20 plus years ago or so in Massachusetts.

You see, one of the UHF channels, I want to say Channel 27 in Worcester, accidentally showed the fleshy film unedited one Sunday afternoon. There was an uproar from the media elites and the public - which was actually divided. Half of the complainers wanted the flick rerun because they missed it while watching the Patriots!

Anyways, this post is about up-and-up tutoring - not about the movie which wore out West Coast Tom's VCR's rewind button.

One of my wife's friends was up visiting from Long Island this past weekend. She's a reading teacher at a suburban government school down there - fifth grade or something.

On the side, she tutors kids for extra dough. At one point a couple of years ago I was astounded to hear that she made $70 an hour doing so.

But not quite that much these days. She has a pair of twins that she sees for two hours apiece, every week. Her pay is a tax-advantaged $250 or, $62.50 per hour.

Consider that if that pay went *unreported*, AND one was in an upper tax bracket, $62.50 an hour would be the equivalent of roughly $100.00 per hour. Annualize that at 40 hours a week, times 50 weeks per year, and this hypothetical sneaky tutor is earning at the same rate as a $200,000 salaried wage slave!

Of course, one might be hard-pressed to want, or get, all those hours.

But still, theoretically a good tutor could make even more that - given adequate skills and being in the right market.

I asked the teacher chick if she tutored her own students:

GovernmentAgent - No....we're not allowed to. Our principal forbids it.

CaptiousNut - So what, do you have some sort of referral thing going on with teachers at other schools? You give them your wealthy laggards and they send theirs over?

GovernmentAgent - Nope [waxing irate]. Well, the problem is that teachers at all the other schools are permitted to tutor their own students.

Hmmmmmm.

Ponder for a moment the ethics of such a practice.

Teachers get paid, by local taxpayers, to educate students. But, their very own failure in this regard can, when abetted by wealthy, Moronic, and most likely malpracticing parents can be rewarded with a lucrative side job!

If only today's tutors were half as ethical as the carrot-dangling Caren Kaye....



Raunchy, un-Christian-like movie, but, nonetheless that's one darn good secular tune!

I'll have much more to say on tutoring, and the private market for education, later on.

Given the political and financial state this nation, we all ought to be looking at hard-to-confiscate income streams for ourselves....