VietNamNet Bridge - Scolding and insulting students has been a serious problem in the Vietnamese school environment for many years.

Hang Hoa, 40, who is now the mother of two children, said she will never forget her teacher of chemistry in the 11th grade.

Hoa heard from older students from the same school that the teacher had very good professional knowledge, therefore, she was eager to meet the teacher at the first lesson. 

However, Hoa quickly became disappointed about the teacher when she heard the teacher call her students “Thi No” and “Chi Pheo”.

Thi No and Chi Pheo are two characters of a famous short story by Nam Cao. Thi No is famous for her bad disappearance, while Chi Pheo is known as a monster, who always curses in reaction to his tragic life.

“The teacher checked the list of students and then called up a schoolgirl with a very beautiful name,” Hoa said. “When the schoolgirl stood up in the class, the teacher commented that the girl was not beautiful and she did not deserve the beautiful name the parents gave to her.”

“We felt hurt about the way the teacher called us as ‘Thi No’, but we could not do anything, because we were afraid of the teacher,” Hoa said.

Meanwhile, Mai Linh, an office worker in Hanoi, said she sometimes recalled the day she and her classmates spent with the 10th grade literature teacher.

“We all were shocked when receiving bad marks of below five for the first test of the academic year. There was only one 5-mark, or the average mark, given to the student, who once attended a national competition for excellent students in literature,” Linh said. 

“The teacher said we were all too stupid,” she added.

More recently, a clip was posted on internet showing a teacher at a people-founded school in Hanoi cursing a student when slapping him on the face.

“It is so unfortunate for your parents to give birth to such a child like you,” he said to the student.

The Tran Phu High School in Hai Phong City became known after a clip showing a teacher of English cursing a student for 18 minutes was posted on the internet.

The educators attending a workshop on academic conduct held recently rang the alarm bell over the physical and mental abuse in school.

Insulting, beating and fining students; forcing them to tell lies; and behaving in a discriminatory manner toward students are actions that occur regularly in many schools.  

The most serious problem, according to Nguyen Thi Thu Huyen from the HCM City University of Education, is that Vietnamese teachers believe they have the right to behave rudely toward students.

Ngan Anh