Let your children live carefree before wanting them to become champions.

(Dan Tri) - "Let your child live in love and grow up with a carefree, innocent childhood, without pressure before placing on their shoulders expectations of success or becoming a champion."

The above is the opinion of Professor Le Anh Vinh, Director of the Vietnam Institute ofEducational Sciences, at the discussion "Let Vietnamese children grow up with a pressure-free childhood", taking place on March 13 in Hanoi.

The discussion raised the issue of how children can grow up with a carefree childhood, without psychological trauma, pressure to succeed or demands to achieve achievements at work.

Before becoming an outstanding person, let them live a carefree and happy childhood. A pure and carefree soul will be a good foundation for them to be successful in the future.

Professor Le Anh Vinh, Director of Vietnam Institute of Educational Sciences (Photo: Ngoc Trang).

That requires education to have a change not only in teaching but also in the process of awakening, nurturing personality and encouraging self-development and self-realization of students.

Education should be conducted on the basis of love, with the comprehensive development of the human being at the center.

Champion or indifferent?

Sharing right in the opening part of the discussion, with the role of having 10 years of leading the delegation to participate in the International Math Olympiad, Professor Dr. Le Anh Vinh gave 3 stories.

According to Professor Vinh, from these 3 stories, we can see that: For primary school students, getting high scores, becoming a champion or a champion is a very small and easy to achieve goal.

The higher and more difficult goal to achieve is for children to develop comprehensively, to grow up with a carefree and innocent childhood, to develop their full potential without any pressure.

Specifically, the story that Professor Le Anh Vinh told about a student in the International Math Olympiad team that he previously led, gives a different perspective on student pressure.

"On the evening before the Olympic exam, I often have to take my students out to eat and sit at a cafe to talk. One student was very nervous and told me: "Teacher, in two days, I will never have to take a math exam again."

This story is very normal if it were a normal student. But this is one of 6 students in the Vietnam international math team, who have gone through countless exams.

I often joke that you guys are like warriors, competing professionally, and I always think that you guys must be very strong.

However, when the student told his teacher that after only two days he would never have to take a math test again, the teachers understood how great the pressure was," Professor Le Anh Vinh recalled.

According to this expert, after many years of leading groups, he realized that parents just need their children to be happy, and as long as their children achieve success, that is great. Friends and all relatives are very proud of their children.

"So why is the pressure on children to study so great? Where does this pressure come from, or does it come from the students themselves?" Professor Vinh asked.

It is known that the boy who struggled with the pressure that year has now completed his doctorate at a top university in the US. As an educator, Professor Vinh understands better than anyone the pressure that his little student had to go through back then.

Education experts point out student pressure (Photo: Hai Su).

Scores aren't everything

According to Professor Le Anh Vinh, the reason he told the above story is to show that the destination of the exam is only a very small part. The result of whether the student is a champion or not is also very small.

The remaining and greater thing is that it is the journey we take and how we take it that is most important.

At the seminar, many experts raised the question: So how can students not be pressured but still maximize their abilities? Is high pressure really too high? If we set lower pressure, are we being too lenient, causing children to not try?

Many people agree that primary school is extremely important, it is the foundation for a child's development but it is not the level to cram as much knowledge as possible.

The Director of the Vietnam Institute of Educational Sciences assessed: "We always have a pressure to do something that can be seen, and the easiest thing to see is scores and achievements in exams. Parents think that wanting their children to get all 10s is a high expectation, winning math, STEM, English prizes... is too high an expectation.

Unfortunately, that is not a very high expectation. If you consider that the biggest goal for education, especially primary education, then I think that is a low expectation.

High expectations are for children to develop confidence and have the best foundation for them to go the long way, not to take the fastest possible first steps.

"We also have students who don't get very good scores, but later become very successful. So, scores really aren't everything," Professor Le Anh Vinh affirmed.

Statistics show that the rate of children with mental health problems is increasing. Pressure comes not only from higher education levels, but even at secondary school level, there are students who have to endure such pressure. Even high pressure comes from primary school level with alarming numbers.

Particularly at the primary level, in recent years, the Ministry of Education and Training has made many changes in testing and assessment to relieve pressure on students. These changes have had a very big effect.

Source: https://dantri.com.vn/giao-duc/hay-de-tre-duoc-song-vo-tu-truoc-khi-muon-con-thanh-nha-vo-dich-20250313154639100.htm