Dismay and Disgust
Today I received the below comment on some of Tutors International’s recent job listings.
I am really dismayed and disgusted that so many of your jobs insist on a private school education as a prerequisite for being a tutor. This is totally unacceptable and should be illegal in my opinion. I would not want to work for the kind of snobs who would require that and neither should you accept this. There are plenty of highly educated and able people who did not attend private schools – you can advise your clients that really intelligent people would know this. For now – I will make sure I put on my application that I went to a private school – and have no compunction about lying – that is my response to snobbery.
As usual, when people send me such comments, they do not include a valid email address to which I can respond, and my reply duly bounced. This is what it said:
Tutors International recruits teachers on behalf of our Clients, according to their precise requirements. Given the cost to my Clients of what we provide (starting at 100,000 GBP per annum) it’s not surprising that most of these people send their children to private school and want similar backgrounds in their tutors.
While not all my clients request or expect their private tutors to be privately educated, they do all expect honesty and polite professionalism.
Tutors International verify all previous education and employment before proposing a candidate for our clients, so while your tactic might work with many of the less thorough companies it will only undermine your credibility with mine.
I’m happy to discuss this further with you if you’d like. Please let me know a good number to reach you on and a convenient time for me to call.
The thing surprises me most about such comments is that Tutors International employs private tutors in full time private tutoring roles. Not by-the-hour after-school roles as most tutoring companies do. This means that the writer of the above email is expressing disgust and dismay at what precisely…? After all, the writer is looking to move into a full time private education role, even though he clearly doesn’t believe that private tuition is any better.
Why would someone want to become a full time private tutor while despising the very notion of it!