VietNamNet Bridge – The “confession” movement has become so hot in the
Vietnamese youth community. “Confession” not only is the place where students
show their feelings and admit their faults, but also the space where they can
talk about the problems they meet every day.
The “dark sides” of schools in the eyes of students, which cannot be found by
normal solutions, can be easily found on the “confessions” webpages of schools.
The thing that most obsesses students is the unsanitary toilets at their
schools. In fact, the problem has been existing for a long time, while schools’
boards of management many times affirmed on mass media that the toilets would be
upgraded to meet the standards.
However, it seems that no improvement has been so far, which has been simply
explained by the lack of money to upgrade the material facilities.
A lot of student generations complain that they have been sitting in the
classrooms just next to the toilets that give terrible smell every day. A funny
story was related that students sometimes have to go to the toilets reserved for
teachers, even though they know this is prohibited.
In fact, a lot of schools, especially in big cities, have spent big money to
upgrade material facilities and build new classrooms. However, it seems that the
heavy investments do not aim to serve students.
“The house for physical exercises has become a badminton playing field for lease
for money. A lot of students say they have never entered the house, because it
is always closed,” a student of QT School in Hanoi wrote on her “confession.”
The stories about school cleaners posted by some students on their “confessions”
can show the morality lesson they receive at schools.
School is compared as a small society, where students can feel the sympathy and
kindness, where students are taught that they need to be honest. However, a lot
of students cannot feel safe when they are at school.
Some of them complain that they accidentally forgot valuable things at
classrooms or toilets, and they had to insist the school cleaners to get the
things back. In some cases, they had to pay money to “redeem” the things.
It seems that the school cleaners did not understand the morality lesson which
says one should repay the objects that somebody drops.
Gambling and school violence are also the problems students complain about.
Students fight each other right in front of schools or in classrooms, and throw
their money into gambling, which have damaged the pedagogical environment of the
schools. However, everyone seems to keep indifferent to the evils, which makes
the thing, in many cases, become uncontrollable.
The “confessions” about bad teachers seem to be a topic of great interests.
“To …, the math teacher of the 12A1 class. You left a strong impression on me
right on the first day when we met. Just with one word “keep silent,” you could
make the classroom quiet – the ability which I think no other teacher has,” a
student wrote about her teacher.
“You were so harsh. I rarely saw your smiles, though you looked very beautiful
when you smile. This might be the reason why my classmates were always
concentrating at your lessons. However, I always felt frightened when you asked
me go to the blackboard to solve math questions,” the student continued. She
also wrote that she felt regret that she decided to leave the class to avoid the
harsh teacher.
Le Huyen