I Don’t See The Vision

How many of us, when we run into a tough concept we don’t immediately understand, have gone to the newly renovated Math Help Center, staffed with teachers paid to support us? How many of us have tried the various honor societies’ 1-on-1 tutoring? Or watched all of Jacob Clifford’s econ videos? Or even just Googled the concept and worked through it ourselves?

Now, let me ask a different question. How many of us, instead, have defaulted straight to MathVision?

Because despite all these free resources at our disposal, SAS students have continued to fund the three sports cars that the founder of MathVision — who everyone seems to be on a first-name basis with — drives around Singapore. 

I don’t have an inherent issue with tuition. Learning isn’t one-size-fits-all, and for some students, the extra guidance can make the difference between confusion and confidence. The problem is what it’s become at SAS.

I can’t go a day without seeing my classmates brandish the thick practice packets they’ve gotten or hearing friends plan their afterschool Grab shares to that 30,000 square foot building in Little India. MathVision is a household name at this point. 

Instead of struggling through a problem, making mistakes, or trying different approaches, SAS students have gotten too used to outsourcing the thinking and using tuition as a first resort, rather than the last one. And it’s gone further than that—people are checking out of class entirely, zoning out or taking twenty-minute “bathroom breaks,” because they already know they’ll be spoonfed the content later at MathVision.

What we need to realize is that in college, this safety net disappears. There is no MathVision. Well, not unless you’re like the engineering major I heard about who continued with online lessons deep into her second year. Professors expect you to struggle through difficult material and take ownership of your own learning. If we don’t build those skills now, if we become this dependent on external tuition, we are setting ourselves up to struggle later in an environment that assumes independence.

But where MathVision truly crosses the line is academic integrity. Teachers have tried to contain this for years with new policies and tighter rules, yet the problem persists. Some students come out of their physics test absolutely fried because of that last “three chilli pepper” question, where 65 kg Johnny, tethered to a pulley system, drifted through the atmosphere in a wingsuit. Meanwhile, half the others breeze right through because the day before, they solved the exact same problem at MathVision, just with a 43 kg Josie instead.

This affects everyone. Once the curve is warped, grades stop reflecting understanding. You can study honestly, struggle through the material, and still get burned—because you’re not being compared against learning, you’re being compared against access.

And that’s what gets me. What started as extra help has turned into a system that rewards who can pay, not who can think. It’s frustrating, it’s unfair, and it’s a cycle that makes students feel like they have to be enrolled, or risk being left behind..

None of this is about blaming students for wanting good grades. I know as well as anyone that that pressure is real. But at some point, we have to ask ourselves what kind of success we’re actually preparing for.