To make the necessary distinction, it is important to point out that the undergraduates in this Project are not "teacher's aides," "mentors," "interns," or "student teachers;" rather, they are tutors in the old, classical sense of the term.

The undergraduates work the entire semester as tutors, and only as tutors, for four main reasons:

1. Tutoring is the most effective form of instruction ever devised by human society. (Even Alexander the Great had a tutor.)
   
   
2. As the National Education Project has demonstrated in a number of cities across the country, the undergraduates are superbly effective as tutors when working in a supervised and properly structured environment (that is, under the direct supervision of classroom teachers).
   
   Please see Results of the Tutoring for actual evaluations of the effectiveness of the tutors written by the classroom teachers.
   
   
3. Tutoring is what the children in the community genuinely need. For many children, the plain fact is that they must receive tutoring in basic subjects if they are to master the literacy skills that are essential for employment in the technological age.
   
   
4. For any number of reasons, the traditional teacher/student ratio of 1:30 or so simply doesn't work for many children. If they are to learn, these children must have individual attention, and this is what the tutors from the National Education Project provide.

It should be said that the children learn not only reading, writing, and arithmetic from the tutors; they also learn the greater lesson, which is that they are capable of learning.

Moreover, because the tutors are from the local colleges, the children come to see college as a part of their future, a future for which the tutors, in actual fact, are helping to prepare them.

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