VietNamNet Bridge – A lot of students now have the “hobby” of speaking ill of their teachers on Facebook, because they know that the information on the social network would be spread out very quickly.

Teachers complain that they feel tired of the teaching job nowadays. Especially, they feel a hard pressure from their students themselves.

“If you could not sleep last night and you yawn with tiredness at a lesson today? Be careful? A student may record your images with his iPhone, and the images would be posted on Internet just after several hours,” said an old history teacher of a high school in Hanoi.

“Students nowadays are very impish. They are not obedient as we were in the past,” he explained. “They can use everything they can to obtain what they want.”

“A colleague of mine complained that she has received an “ultimatum” from a student, who asked the teacher to give him good marks, or he would post the images of the teacher in ridiculous postures on Internet,” he continued.

Vietnamese schools have been urged to apply a modern education method, under which students are encouraged to express their opinions at the lessons. As a result, a lot of students deliberately pick quarrels with the teachers before the class.

“A hot tempered teacher may give a student a thick ear, if the student cheeks the teacher. And this may lead to the end of the teachers’ career, because the teacher’s behavior would be condemned by the public, and especially by the students’ parents, who say that slapping students is an anti-pedagogical solution,” the old teacher said.

“Most of the parents nowadays are very busy with their jobs to earn their living. Therefore, they confide their children to school and the society. They even do not have time to discuss with the children to find out what they want and how they grow up,” said Van Thi Mai, a literature teacher of the Nguyen Hue High School in Hanoi.

It is understandable why the old teacher finds it hard to get adapted to the current education environment. In the past, students were told that their task was listening to the teachers and doing what they were told to do. However, the things are quite different now.

It seems that younger teachers can understand students better. Hieu, a young English teacher of a high school in Vinh Phuc province, said there always two sides of a coin.

Being a member of Facebook social network, Hieu said he spends hours a day to read all the comments from students, because these help him realize his problems.

However, Hieu believes that “it would be better if students offer suggestions directly to teachers in a direct dialogue for mutual understanding, rather than putting bad information about the teachers on Facebook.”

While a lot of educators believe that the students who speak ill of their teachers and friends on Internet need to be heavily punished, Hieu believes that no need to apply such strong measure, because the students just wanted to make teachers understand them.

Having realized about the importance of the impacts of the social networks on students, the Dinh Tien Hoang High School in Hanoi has organized a seminar discussing the “behavior culture” that both teachers and students need to have when communicating on Facebook.

“Social network is a virtual life, but it can show the personality of every person,” said Dinh Tien Hoang’s Headmaster Nguyen Tung Lam.

Compiled by C. V