Exam season is a chaotic season for the whole family.

These days, the urgent atmosphere of studying for the final exams of the school year is fueling a "fire" in many families.

The school schedule is intense, the timetable is packed, parents are busy taking their children from one tutoring center to another. Parents prepare delicious and nutritious meals, and reminders to study are constantly heard.

The whole family walks softly and speaks softly every time the children sit down to study. Many people compare exam season to a season of chaos for many families. And the most disturbing cause is named: the review outline.

My daughter is in grade 7 at a reputable local school.

Seeing the way my child prepares and studies the outline every exam season is really daunting. There are as many outlines as there are subjects.

Math, IT, and foreign languages require formulas and vocabulary. Natural sciences, history, and geography combine knowledge from many sub-disciplines, which increases the pressure. Technology andcivics require more topics to prepare and knowledge to review.

We talk a lot about educational innovation, testing innovation. Modern education aims to create a friendly and open learning environment; foster the desire to acquire knowledge and hone one's abilities.

But in reality, studying sample essays and checking outlines still appear in every exam season.

For a long time, public opinion reacted because the old program forced academic knowledge and tested students based on memorization.

Now that the new program is being applied along with innovative testing and assessment, students still have to memorize outlines that are several pages long, which is really worrying.

Parents suddenly become learning machines with their children, urging them to study and then going over the outline over and over again.

The more we accompany our children's learning, the more we realize that the children around us are still following the old way of reviewing: memorizing the outline and then asking parents to check each sentence and count each idea.

After finishing this subject, I put it aside to cram knowledge of another subject into my head in time for the next exam.

Even more worrying is that the technology of writing samples is still causing many people headaches with their children's learning and testing!

Look at how elementary school students warm up for finals and end-of-year exams.

Before that time, teachers had started to limit the essay topics for students to practice. Each type of essay had a range of 3-5 topics.

The children will write and rewrite these essays many times according to the teacher's instructions. After several revisions, the final step is to memorize them to get a perfect score on the exam.

The descriptive writing test will review three topics: describe your school, describe the beautiful scenery of your hometown, and describe the way to school.

To test the writing of describing people, just review three types: describing relatives, describing teachers, describing friends...

The tragicomedy of the current state of literature teaching has been quietly passed down through many generations over the years.

Children are used to learning and writing literature in primary school, so when they move to another level, they follow the old ways: copying and memorizing sample texts.

Literature is a subject that requires high levels of perception, creative thinking and writing skills. Yet, when exam season comes, many middle and high school students still have to memorize model essays.

Is it true that the picture of teaching to develop learners' capacity and innovate testing and assessment to prevent rote learning and cramming is still quite far away?

THANH NGUYEN

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/mua-thi-la-mua-roi-cua-ca-gia-dinh-20250507160719904.htm