Mr. Nguyen Minh, Principal of Tran Dai Nghia High School for the Gifted (HCMC), once said that it is necessary to redefine the concept of "good, diligent, and well-behaved students". Indeed, it is time for us to free ourselves from old, binding concepts.
Helping students to be bold and confident in communication with a critical spirit is one of the tasks of modern education.
Not only good at cultural subjects is good
For a long time, the educational perspective has emphasized achievements in cultural subjects, causing a student's ability to be framed by the results of math, physics, chemistry, biology, literature, foreign languages, history, geography... Therefore, when people see a student "plowing" all day and night with books, knowledge, and exercises, they consider him/her diligent, hardworking, and industrious... For a long time, we still assume that good children and good students are children who obey their parents and teachers, and do not say much when debating with adults...
"Good", "diligent", "obedient" - 3 criteria that shape successful parenting and successful student education methods have been ingrained in the thinking, home life, and teaching habits of Vietnamese families and Vietnamese schools. But let's look at some of the following situations to see that the concepts of good, diligent and obedient have shifted somewhat.
A competition to create a book introduction clip was launched, requiring 6th graders and their homeroom teachers to work hard. Choosing good books, writing introductions, and practicing an emotional voice were all done. As for filming, cutting, pasting, and editing the clip, they would probably need the help of computer science teachers.
Then, a student raised his hand to volunteer to edit the clip. The child studied normally in class, but his quickness with technology made the teacher and his classmates exclaim in admiration. This software added music, another software cut movies, animated images, still images, fast scenes, slow scenes appeared under the child's skillful hands and passionate eyes. "She's really good!", many teachers exclaimed when watching the clip the child edited, even though the child's academic achievements were not outstanding.
Assessing students' abilities needs to escape the narrow framework of only being good at cultural subjects.
What is "diligent" and "good"?
A ninth grade boy was often late for his first morning class. His first semester results were quite good, but when evaluating his behavior, some subject teachers disagreed with the intention of giving him a good grade because of his frequent lateness.
When the homeroom teacher talked to him many times to find out the story, she finally understood the reason why the student was late. The student's family was quite poor, his mother sold tofu and had to go to the market early. On days when the father was drunk and could not take his wife to the market, the child had to take his mother by bike to the market and then return to school, so he was late. Of course, after knowing the reason and understanding the student's family situation, no one could bear to "put" the student on a low conduct level. However, this student boldly accepted the initial conduct level and was steadfast in the face of the teacher's advice about his final year achievements.
Changing old concepts in the new educational picture
The two stories are two small slices of the current educational picture. What is "good"? When a child cannot solve difficult math problems and cannot write fluently but is quick to approach technology, is aware of his responsibility to the group and volunteers for tasks, and completes them with a humble attitude, I still consider him good.
What is "diligent" and "obedient"? When a child is aware of his difficult family situation, helps his parents with filial piety, even though he is negligent in discipline and sometimes firmly accepts defeat, should we rush to judge the child as not diligent and not obedient?!
The concept of "good, diligent, and obedient students" needs to change in the modern educational picture.
Let's also look frankly at the weaknesses of many students today, which are shyness, timidity in communication, laziness in debate, and reluctance to ask questions about any issue of concern.
Students gave many constructive comments and suggestions on the teaching methods of subject teachers at a school dialogue session of a high school in Da Nang City in 2022. These models are needed to help students practice critical thinking, know how to ask questions, and reduce shyness in communication...
The rut of leveling the learner’s personality has existed for quite a long time in general schools. The common standard of knowledge and skills required to achieve forces all children to solve difficult math problems according to the model, write a good review of the beauty of a piece of writing… has overshadowed the thinking of respecting the learner’s personality. At the same time, the disease of achievement also emerged from here, the race for scores and titles has caused many unfortunate consequences.
The passive learning style, afraid of criticism, makes many students grow up to be extremely obedient, absolutely obedient. The individual "I" is assimilated with the collective "we". We hope to raise good children, dream of teaching a good class to avoid hard work and trouble. But being so obedient that it leads to heartbreaking individual phenomena like what happened: a teacher forced 23 students in a class to slap a friend but none of them disobeyed her or a teacher went to class for months without teaching and everything only fell apart when there was a dialogue with the city leaders... no one wants that.
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