I am a parent who has never sent my child to extra classes. I am also a school manager and have never thought about organizing extra classes in my school.
Students take extra classes at a tutoring center in Ho Chi Minh City - Photo: NHU HUNG
No extra tutoring - extra learning is a matter of course for me, because children nowadays are already struggling too much with schoolwork.
In conversations with parents, I always say: Extra classes are only meaningful when you learn what you like and help develop your personal talents. Extra classes just to review sample essays and math problems are not recommended at all.
Children nowadays work harder than us adults. Adults work 8 hours a day. Children also go to school 8 hours a day, but still have to finish their homework at 10pm. Many seniors study until past midnight. This is unfair to children, something is very wrong.
The first thing that is very wrong is that childhood needs to experience real life, a vibrant, vast, bustling and meaningful life, not just going from home to school, to extra classes and then coming home to study for more than ten years like that.
The second very wrong thing is the obvious injustice when comparing working hours between children and adults. Most children today study, which means working hard, more than 8 hours a day. If they study extra, they don't get a break on the weekends.
But no one mentions it. Every time we adults have to work an extra hour, we fight for our rights and demand overtime pay. But with students and our own children, it is never mentioned.
It is unfair. But no one talks about it. Why? Because all parties involved benefit from extra classes for young children.
Parents worry that if they don't take extra classes, they won't please the teachers, won't finish their homework, won't get good results, won't be able to get into the school they want...
Some parents send their children to extra classes not because of their children, but because of their convenience in managing and teaching their children. Sending their children to extra classes is because they have educational dreams that they could not fulfill, and now want their children to fulfill them for them.
The reason for sending children to extra classes is because seeing the neighbor's children go to extra classes and get better results in exams, so they are impatient and afraid of losing out.
Sending children to extra classes is to avoid the responsibility of properly educating children, by pushing all the responsibility of educating children to the school and extra classes, so that when children have bad results, there is a reason to justify that you have tried your best, have not spared any money to send your children to school.
As for teachers who teach extra classes, the benefits are much more obvious and easier to see, so there is motivation to maintain extra teaching and learning.
Teaching extra brings in extra income. Teaching extra helps you review your lessons carefully, so when you take tests or exams you will get good results, you will have achievements, the class will have achievements, the school will have achievements.
Tutoring is a job, a responsibility, a source of livelihood, a solution to deal with students' fear of poor academic performance and parents' anxiety about exams.
After all, the motivation for large-scale tutoring is the benefit of teachers, not the benefit of students. If separated from the benefit, this practice will naturally stop.
For education management agencies, extra teaching and learning, although not bringing direct benefits, also brings indirect benefits.
Extra teaching and learning is a solution for students to pass exams that are heavy on knowledge and memory, thanks to which the education sector has good results to report. And thanks to that, education managers can maintain the stability of their work and position.
Extra teaching and learning is a solution to an education program with many shortcomings that can be processed and rationalized in an informal way, so that at the end of the year and at the end of the grade, everyone can breathe a sigh of relief because finally everything is okay.
Tutoring and tutoring are additional sources of income, sometimes the main source of income, for some colleagues in the industry who are, after all, acquaintances. Closing eyes and giving each other a small niche to earn extra income is also a way to keep the peace, ease relationships, and make everyone happy.
So everyone benefits from extra teaching and learning, except for children. Therefore, although this issue has been raised for decades, even called a problem, it still has not been resolved.
What is the result?
Generations of young people, one after another, are exhausted from studying, with no time for experience. There are only formulas, sample essays, math problems, lack of sleep and dealing with homework at home, at school and in extra classes.
Many families have to save money on extra classes, but they spend more than their regular classes. The family atmosphere is tense, there is a lot of trouble with picking up and dropping off students, and they have to race to complete assigned homework on time and with the right amount of money... forgetting that they have a family.
And a society that is tired, reactive, uncreative, and always on the verge of exploding because of all the extra classes and arguments about learning that still fail to produce valuable knowledge, products, and technology.
It's time we seriously think about extra teaching and learning, so that children can be children, schools can be schools and education can be education.
Source: https://tuoitre.vn/day-them-hoc-them-vi-loi-ich-cua-ai-20250218083155899.htm
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