The whole family is in a rush during the semester exams like university exams, why is it that the less the load, the more tired we become?

The curriculum has been reduced, it seems that studying and taking exams will be easier for the children, but it seems that the burden of grades is like a heavy stone added to an already oversized bag. As a parent of an 11th grader, I dread every semester exam of my child, and I feel that the university entrance exam is not as stressful.

Study hard day and night

Half a month before my child’s first semester exam, my whole family entered a tense “battle” of studying with him. There were 8 exam subjects, 8 sets of outlines with a “huge” amount of knowledge, and there was not a day when my child went to bed before 1am.

As workers in a garment factory near our home, my husband and I often worked overtime until 8pm, and our whole bodies ached from standing at the sewing machine all day. However, we couldn’t rest, so we quickly finished our bowl of rice and took the opportunity to sit at the table to “study” with our children.

There are many difficult exercises for the children to review and do, many of which are quite difficult and cannot be found in the textbooks, so my children and I have to go online to find instructions on how to solve them. My wife often asks if we are hungry or thirsty so she can make us a glass of milk or peel a plate of fruit to "recharge" us.

We are workers so we also want our son to study well so that he will not have to work hard like his parents, but we do not put pressure on him to get good grades. Many times we feel sorry for our son and urge him to go to bed early but he refuses, saying that the teacher will give him a test tomorrow.

Seeing the boy studying for the exam and looking so skinny, my grandparents thought my husband and I were forcing him to study, so they scolded him many times and explained, but they didn't believe him and were so angry that they refused to eat.

Mainly cramming to learn by heart

Not only is my eldest son stressed about studying for his semester exams, but my youngest daughter in grade 7 is also stressed out, going to extra classes every night and then doing homework until 1am. The review outline mostly requires memorization, many subjects, a lot of knowledge, and the review time is rushed, so learning first and forgetting later makes my daughter even more flustered and stressed.

She studies for exams anytime, anywhere, even when eating, I see her mumbling some concept or law. When I was driving her home from school, I saw her quiet and not saying anything. I called her and she was startled and said she was trying to remember a poem.

Review knowledge is mainly crammed to memorize (Photo: vietnamnet)

The time spent reviewing knowledge took up all of my thoughts, all fun activities and reading were abandoned. Even the essentials of eating, drinking, and bathing were cut to the minimum to save for reviewing for the semester exam.

After just over a week of reviewing for the first semester exams, my child has lost nearly 2kg, his eyes are sunken because he stays up late every day, and his face is dull and lifeless, making both my husband and I extremely worried.

Meanwhile, both children are entering puberty - an important age that determines physical and mental development. However, exams have worn down their strength, physical activities, sports or eating and sleeping properly to develop physically are something too luxurious before semester exams.

Nowadays, people talk a lot about how the younger generation only knows how to bury their heads in their phones, computers and social networks, so they don’t have a childhood like the previous generation. However, the main reason why children lose their childhood is probably because of studying.

My husband and I do not know whether the knowledge we cram for exams will help our child have a good future or not. But we are more worried about the impact on his physical and mental health.

I hope my child will go to school and work and be better off than me in the future, but I worry that with the current pressures, my child will not be healthy enough to work as a worker, let alone do something more important.

As a parent, I hope that there will soon be a change, a truly reasonable reform so that each exam is no longer a nightmare for students and parents. We know that “if you don’t know, you have to ask; if you want to be good, you have to study”, but studying regardless, studying at the expense of health and childhood just to get good grades is meaningless.

Hoang Oanh (Parent)

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