My mother showed me that she was surprised to hear that she was asked, “I don’t study well anymore, do you still love me?”

Mom showed off the points that surprised me when I asked: “I don’t study well anymore, do you still love me?”

(Dan Tri) – Debates around the issue of showing off grades and showing off your children on social networks, if they take place in a civilized way, are a useful dialogue for education.

Educator Nguyen Thuy Uyen Phuong, co-founder of Faros Education emphasizes this aspect when it comes to the story of showing off children’s grades on social networks that is causing controversy among parent groups.

Showing off must also be safe

What is your opinion on the image of parents showing off their children’s transcripts and certificates of merit flooding social networks every closing season?

– I find showing off children is a very natural and normal hobby of parents. Parents who love their children often have one thing in common, that they find their children to be lovely and proud of everything they do. From the story of the baby taking the first steps, the first voice in his life, to the academic achievements he achieved at school…

Showing off their children, somewhere is also a way that many parents choose to express their love and care for their children or simply express their joy when their efforts to raise children have now paid off. .

The thing to think about in this story is what and how to show off!

Why bother with “showing off what”? Because the more things are shown, the more they value the owner. And what the majority of parents care about, it becomes easier to become a measure of the school and society.

If you only boast about your child getting good grades, but rarely talk about how you help your friends, protect the environment, or some simple joy of yours… then in the end, that’s not what parents really consider. important? We criticize education as more and more achievement-driven, more and more pressured, but then we celebrate and contribute to making it a yardstick for schools to follow?

Then many parents are absorbed in showing off their child’s certificate of merit but do not notice that it can reveal important personal information of their children such as what grade they attend, what school, who is the homeroom teacher… Care should be taken to ensure that the adult’s preference for bragging does not cause harm to the child.

The safety of children is also a matter of whether parents and families create invisible pressure and expectations on their children?

Once, my child asked me a question like this: “If I don’t study well anymore, will you still love me?”. That question of my son made me later learn to refrain from praising him.

Not stopping there, the story of showing off the points and showing off the children’s certificates of merit seems to be dragging on a fiery “war” on social networks between groups of parents?

– Every problem has two sides, it is not possible with just one sentence to affirm that bragging or praising your child is absolutely right or absolutely wrong.

It is like the question of whether money is good or bad. Money itself is neither good nor bad, how to make and use money is something worth discussing. Whether it’s okay or not good to praise your child or show off your child must consider the content of showing off, how to show off like I said above.

However, having such debates and if these can be civilized, then I think it is a useful dialogue for education. It shows that parents have become increasingly interested in profound topics such as: Are high grades in school something to be proud of? What are the consequences of showing off our children that we need to consider? How to praise and acknowledge your child appropriately?

Instead of “fighting” to see who is right and who is wrong, if the community can spend time discussing these questions more deeply, I believe it will bring out many interesting perspectives.

In education, it is very necessary for the spirit of co-construction of all parties, from schools, families, and learners. Each person does his or her job better, creating something that solves the problem. Today, our education seems to need only a small flame to ignite any tension.

Vietnamese parents consider their children as property

With the perception that Vietnamese parents are too serious, if not “crazy” for grades, what do you think?

– Score stories are common in society where the pressure to succeed is heavy on the recognition of others.

Everyone has a desire to succeed, it’s not wrong, and every society has pressure to succeed. It only “problems” when a person pursues success from the perspective of others, not because it is necessary for himself.

In Vietnamese society, the value of being a parent is determined by having a warm family and having my children succeed. And these pressures are pushed down on the child.

Children with Vietnamese parents are still a kind of… property. Successful children are like a guarantee that a person is a good parent, if the child is not successful, it means inferior, not equal to this or that person.

The success of a child is later judged to be this grandparent, which is attributed to a score because it is the most visible, easiest to measure, makes people feel secure. As for all other hidden and hidden problems such as the child’s personality and ability… are both difficult to see and difficult to measure.

Not to mention, we still use scores as the primary assessment tool for exams.

Focusing on grades, academic achievement is a problem in every society, but in Asia it is more serious because Asian parents associate personal achievement in parenting with the personal achievement of children. .

It must also be added that rising to excellent and elite standards is necessary. When teaching students, the teacher must have the attitude, have the seriousness to see if it is possible to push the student to the next step, to instill in the student the thought that he or she can do better and that he can do it himself. better.

The better thing needs to be based on the ability of each child, having children from 5 to 6 is appropriate, is good, not forcing all to score 9 – 10.

In the opposite direction, many parents have the view that “children just need to have fun, practice personality, it doesn’t matter the grades”. The problem for every parent and family is to calculate the trade-off between children’s joy, skill development and learning outcomes?

In my opinion, don’t be absolute about one concept or direction and then completely refute the others. When we say that we don’t value grades, we don’t mean that it’s easy, let your child study no matter what.

We tend to think that if we gain one, we will lose the other. If I focus on academics, I will underestimate skills, develop character, and vice versa, if I work on character, I will sacrifice learning. Not! We can have both. Education is not a trade-off between personality training and skills acquisition with knowledge acquisition.

But it is very difficult to have both such integrity. Because it is difficult, in the daily decisions and choices we will do, how to do it will have to be very meticulous and used.

When learning about the constructivist school model in India, I found that the student’s schedule has many periods for activities and projects to develop skills and practice personality. The number of hours for these activities is balanced with the amount of time learning academic knowledge, but their students still have very good academic results.

As for our study program, the school day is very long and dense with subjects, the time frame for non-academic activities is extremely small, only 1-2 hours a week.

What measure produces that result?

It’s still the score story, people still complain, the general education program is very heavy, but the results of the students are all good and all excellent. A lot of people can’t explain this paradox, ma’am?

– I see that is not paradoxical, on the contrary, it is very reasonable with what is going on. It is because we want all students to be good and excellent that we have to force them to study and study so hard!

Once, I happened to watch an Asian-American stand-up comedian talking about his Asian parents. He joked with a sentence that made me remember forever: “For Asian parents, an A is considered a ‘pass’, everything below an A is a failure. It’s in our blood. ” (Asia) starts with the letter “A”, not the letter B!”.

According to the general measure, just above 5 points is considered “passed”, but in fact, some parents are satisfied with the average score of their children.

In addition, there are a number of objective reasons such as the fact that many schools or teachers do not have enough conditions and capacity to teach differentiated according to students’ ability. A class of 40-50 children, plus the pressure to “run” to keep up with the program, the schedule can easily lead to the fact that the school has to pour the same amount of knowledge, a way of teaching for all cannot. Pay attention to the individual needs of each child.

Many teachers still have the mentality, it is better to put a heavy burden on students so that if there is a problem, leaders or parents will not blame teachers for not doing their best. Has anyone noticed that teachers know how to reduce their load, listen to students, or are teachers only based on the number of good students and graduates with high scores?

There is an English proverb that is “You get what you measure”.

Thank you very much for the open and frank discussion!

Hoai Nam (perform)

May 26, 2023