20 - 26 December 2001
Issue No.565
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 20 - 26 December 2001 Issue No.565 |
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Half-time
Class in session
Private lessons are normally associated with the home but tutoring outside the livingroom comes a close second in Egypt. Children taking private sports lessons in local clubs has been a practice nearly as old as the clubs themselves. It has been a major feature for decades but the trend has flourished even more in recent years. The promise of becoming a household name worldwide and fees as a high as the stratosphere have made competition the world over extra fierce. More sophisticated training techniques, an array of muscle-building dietary supplements and the taking of banned steroids have all produced supermen and women whom the generations before them could not have dreamt emulating.
But not everybody is born a superstar; not everyone has the natural talent to compete at the highest level of sport. Many need help from the outside. To help compensate, zealous parents who want to give their tots a head start over the rest of the field have for long resorted to the private trainer. Since the challenges facing a budding star are greater than before so, too, the tutor is more in demand than ever.
Sports tutors essentially come from the club that the parents are members of and are willing, for a fee, to take your tot by the hand and give him
that extra edge on the court, in the field and in the water.
But controversy continues over whether private teachers can indeed be of benefit to aspiring athletes. Supporters point to the crowded conditions of even the highest rated clubs to back their claim that one trainer per one child is feasible. It is not uncommon for a trainer to be responsible for as many as 50 children in a sport and as such, it would be impossible in a one-hour session to give his undivided attention to one child.
And because school studies take up nearly two-thirds of the year, regular training in clubs is cut down to a minimum in winter. A private coach, supporters add, can provide his services year round and can also tailor the times he will teach to the particular needs of his students.
Detractors of these private affairs say some coaches are not above deluding parents who are not knowledgeable enough in sports into believing their children can make it to the top and are well worth the effort when in fact the child might not have the slightest chance of one day making it big. Such practices,
if they exist, are of course done for money's sake and are a horrendous deception for parent and child alike.
Perhaps the biggest problem lies in parental interference in the affairs of the coach, mainly in the form of favouritism. Many children who have private trainers might have the same trainer on their club teams as well. This trainer who gets paid double is expected by parents to pamper their child more so than the others, inevitably creating bad blood between parents and bitterness between the children.
The controversy is unlikely to stop.
Like the lessons given at home, those administer ed on the field are likely to continue being open for debate.
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