VietNamNet Bridge – The first semester of the 2013-2014 academic year has finished. Vietnamese parents now, once again, feel worried about the education their children are enjoying.

Nga in Tay Ho district in Hanoi said she did not reproach the son, who goes to a prestigious school in the city, for the mark 7 he got from the semester-end math exam.

Mark 7, in the Vietnamese marking scheme, means “relatively good.” However, the boy felt ashamed of it, because he usually got 9 and 10, the best marks, during the lessons. Most of his classmates got 9 and 10 marks at the exam.

Nga said she did not reproach the boy because she understood well why he got the unsatisfactory mark. “It is because my son did not go to the private tutoring class run by the teacher,” she said.

Nga once brought the son to the teacher’s class earlier this school year, even though she felt sorry for him. He was busy from Monday to Friday, while he still had to go to he extra class on Saturday and Sunday as well.

However, Nga later decided not to let the boy attend the class any more after she found the teacher’s irresponsibility. The teacher did not come to the extra class one day without informing this to the students in advance. As a result, tens of students came and waited for the teacher for two hours outside the class, until they were collected by the parents.

“My son began receiving bad marks right after he stopped going to the extra class,” Nga said.

While Nga feels said about her son’s unsatisfactory exam mark, another parent feels sad because her son got a high mark at the exam.

Ngoc, an office worker in Hai Ba Trung district, breathed a sight when her son informed he got 9 for the essay.

Ngoc understood that the boy got the high mark because his essay was exactly the same with the sample essay given by the teacher. The boy has realized that he needs to learn the teachers’ essays by heart to be able to get good marks.

When asked to describe a pet, he tried to describe a yellow cat of the neighbor’s with the mother’s assistance. But he only got an “average” mark for the essay, because the cat was not similar to the teacher’s cat.

“The teaching method being applied at general schools is so mechanical, which would kill the creativeness,” Ngoc complained.

The boy was asked to write about his family the other day. He wrote about his parents, his sister and the housemaid. The teacher gave him 6 and commented that he did not understand the teacher’s request well. Students were told to write about their families, while a housemaid is not a family member.

“That is why I still feel sad though the boy felt happy with the high mark,” Ngoc said.

Meanwhile, Ngoc Ha, a mother of a second grader, complained that the teacher of her daughter showed her students to cheat at the exam.

“There were two difficult math questions. The teacher wrote the answers on the blackboard and told the students to write them down in their exam papers,” Ha said.

Chi Mai