VietNamNet Bridge – A young woman decided to resign from her post as a literature teacher after she faced the violent criticism from the public for missing a students’ mistake in an essay.

The story began some days ago, when a local newspaper reported the case occurring in Lomonosov people founded school in Hanoi.

Ha Thi Thu Thuy, a young teacher, asked students to write their thoughts about the folk-songs showing the images of Hanoi in the past “Gio dua canh truc la da/ Tieng chuong Tran Vu canh ga Tho Xuong” (the bamboo branches swaying lightly in the wind/ Sounds from Tran Vu temple’s bell and cock-crow heard, signaling a new night watch).

However, since Vietnamese language has many homonym words, “canh ga Tho Xuong” was understood by a student as a traditional Vietnamese dish – chicken broth. A student of the Lomonosov commented that in the past, Hanoians liked eating the Tho Xuong chicken broth.

The problem was that the teacher, when marking the essay, did not realize the mistake and gave the student 8/10 marks, the mark only given to good school works.

The essay has become “famous” when the parent of the student decided to provide a copy to the editorial board of a newspaper.

The article about the special essay immediately stirred up the public. Hundreds of emails were sent to local newspapers, expressing their anger about the teacher who they believed was irresponsible in her work. They said that the teacher should have found the terrible mistake and corrected it, so that other students can learn from the lesson.

Meanwhile, some readers expressed their doubts about the capability of the teacher, even though the teacher reportedly showed a very good profile. She has a master degree in literature, and she was always an excellent student at the university.

In the minds of the Vietnamese people, degrees sometimes do not truly reflect the real capability of the degree owners, because Vietnamese education is believed to suffer from a heavy disease – the “achievement disease” – which means every teacher, every school and every student works and learns just to obtain degrees. In many cases, they spend money, rather than time and efforts, to buy forged degrees to polish their images.

Especially, a lot of extremists called on to dismiss the teacher, saying that they cannot understand why such an unqualified teacher could be recruited. They also warned that such the teachers would spoil the next generations with their bad knowledge.

The teacher, named Thuy, was put under such hard pressure, that she decided to resign from the post, returned to her home village, and turned off her mobile phone to stop all the contacts. Some days later, Thuy was hospitalized because of the ill will of the public.

However, the situation has been reserved. A lot of people have voiced their sympathy with Thuy, saying that the only fault of Thuy was that she did not check students’ notebooks after she asked them to correct the mistake relating to “canh ga Tho Xuong.”

“Humans are not perfect. Everyone can make mistakes. And Thuy, a teacher with high enthusiasm and qualification, needs to be given more opportunities to devote herself to the education,” Ha Yen, a reader, wrote in an email to VietNamNet.

Bui Ngan Ha, a reader, emailed to Giao duc Vietnam newspaper, writing that this was just a “career incident” which everyone may make in their lives, and that the public should encourage Thuy to return to the school to continue her favorite job, rather than pushing her against the wall.

There’s a noteworthy thing that while the parents feel angry about the qualification and personality of teacher Thuy, the students of the schools love the young teacher very much.

Some fanpages have been created by the students, calling for the support to the young teacher. Nguyen Van Dang, a student wrote: “Please, return to our school. We love you.”

Compiled by C. V