Parent: Dr Malpani, my son spends six hours a day in his tuition classes. They promise guaranteed results in the JEE exam. Isn’t that a good thing?
Dr Malpani: It depends on what you mean by good.
If you want him to become an expert safe-breaker, sure — he’s getting great training.
But if you want him to become a curious, self-reliant learner who can think independently — then those classes are probably destroying that potential, one worksheet at a time.
Parent: Safe-breaker? That sounds harsh.
Dr Malpani: Think about it.
A safe-breaker studies how a lock works — not because he wants to understand locks, but because he wants to crack them quickly.
That’s what most tuition teachers do. They teach your child how to “crack” exams — not to understand concepts.
They know which formulas will get partial marks, which distractor options to eliminate, how to guess correctly when confused, and how to finish the paper in exactly 178 minutes.
That’s not education. That’s reverse-engineering a vault.
Parent: But the exams themselves are multiple-choice. Don’t students have to learn exam techniques?
Dr Malpani: Of course — technique matters.
But when technique replaces thinking, you end up with students who can recall tricks but can’t reason through problems.
Tuition classes teach pattern-recognition, not pattern-creation.
They reward memorising shortcuts, not building understanding.
So your child learns to hear the click of a correct answer but never truly grasps why it’s correct.
They’re trained to break into the system — not to build anything new.
Parent: You make it sound like coaching is a scam.
Dr Malpani: Not a scam — a symptom.
The entire schooling system worships marks.
Parents want ranks. Schools want results. Coaching centres sell that dream.
Everyone’s complicit, and no one asks the obvious question:
What happens after the exam?
When the marks fade and the memory tricks stop working, these kids enter college or work — and discover they have no clue how to think independently.
They’ve spent years decoding question papers but never learned how to decode reality.
Parent: So what’s the alternative? My child still has to compete.
Dr Malpani: Yes — but let’s teach them to compete with curiosity, not fear.
At Teach to Earn, we believe every student should learn to be their own teacher.
We use technology to make learning self-paced and exploratory.
Students learn with AI tutors, build personal websites, and document their progress.
They stop memorising and start experimenting.
They learn not just to solve a question, but to ask better questions.
When a student understands why something works — not just how to score on it — they carry that knowledge forever.
Parent: But isn’t that slower than traditional tuitions?
Dr Malpani: Maybe at first. But remember — the goal isn’t speed, it’s depth.
A parrot can repeat answers faster than a human, but you wouldn’t hire it as an engineer.
When students learn through exploration, they may take longer, but they retain more, understand better, and innovate faster.
That’s what the world rewards today — not your ability to mark circles on an OMR sheet.
Parent: Still, most parents feel safe sending their kids to tuitions. There’s structure and accountability.
Dr Malpani: Exactly — “safe.” That’s the word.
The illusion of safety is what kills creativity.
We outsource responsibility for our child’s future to a coaching centre because it’s convenient.
But in doing so, we teach the child to follow instructions blindly.
Real safety comes from confidence — the ability to teach yourself anything.
That’s what self-directed learning builds.
And that’s why I tell parents:
Stop paying to make your child dependent.
Start investing to make them independent.
Parent: So you’re saying the best students are self-taught?
Dr Malpani: Almost always.
Look at every innovator — from Einstein to today’s best coders — they learned by doing, failing, reflecting, and trying again.
No one sat them in a classroom with 200 others to memorize past papers.
Tuition culture kills exactly that spark.
It tells students there’s only one right answer — and one right path.
But learning is messy. It’s nonlinear. It’s human.
And once students experience the joy of discovering things on their own, they’ll never go back to being spoon-fed again.
Parent: So how can my child start this journey?
Dr Malpani: Simple.
Let them log on to app.jee.eklavya.io.
It’s India’s first AI tutor designed to make students self-directed learners.
They’ll get daily challenges, progress dashboards, and even build their own personal website that tracks their learning.
No pressure. No fear. Just curiosity rewarded every day.
Once learning becomes a habit — not a chore — you’ll never need to drag them to another tuition again.
Parent: That sounds like real education.
Dr Malpani: Exactly.
Tuitions teach you to crack questions.
We teach you to open your mind.
One breaks safes. The other builds futures.
👉 Visit www.teachtoearn.in and discover how your child can stop being a safe-breaker and start being a solution-maker. Let’s raise a generation that doesn’t just crack exams — but cracks the code to lifelong learning.