Drop-out students are choosing to work instead 

According statistics from the provincial Department of Education and Training, 1,050 students left school during the first term of the 2011-2012 academic year. The figures included 291 primary pupils, 549 secondary students and 210 from high schools.

Ea Tul is one of the communes with the most alarming student drop-out rate in Cu M’gar District. The managing board of Ea Tul Secondary School reported 27 drop-outs in the first term of this school year, of whom 11 have since returned to school.

“We face a lot of difficulties in persuading children especially those from ethnic minority groups here to go to school,” said a teacher from Ea Tul Secondary School, Nguyen Dinh Bac, who has spent years encouraging local children to go to school.

“Children usually run away when seeing teachers visiting their houses to persuade them to return to school.”

Bac took us to visit a student named Y Dik Adrong in Yao Village, who has left school for several months. Seeing us coming, Y Dik Adrong ran away.

The village head, Y Bhem Koza, then took us to another student Y Cung Nie who had dropped out of school for three months. Y Cung Nie said that he found studying boring and difficult.

“I’ve decided to find a job and won’t return to school,” the sixth-form student confirmed.

Meanwhile, Y Cung Nie’s father, Y Thu Ayun said that he had also tried to persuade his son to return to school but Y Cung Nie had refused.

“We can only help the students who don’t come to school due to economic difficulties,” Bac said. “But there’s no way for us to deal with those who do not want to study anymore.”

According to head of the Department for Education and Traning in Cu M’ga Distrct, Dinh Van Lien, 70-80% of the students are from Ede, Mnong and Jarai minority groups.

“Many parents also want their children to go to school but the children don’t want to go,” Lien said. “Some children even threaten to commit suicide if their parents force them to study.”

source from: dtinews

Student Huyen at the police station for further investigation

The incident took place morning of May 7 at the Truong Dinh and Giai Phong Street crossing in Hoang Mai District.

The student lashed out at the local policeman when he tried to stop the couple driving a motorbike with plate BKS 34 N8- 8005 for not wearing helmets.

However, even as the policeman tried to stop the duo, the girl’s boyfriend who was driving sped away, which prompted the local traffic police to give chase through the city streets.

When the police finally caught up with them, they ordered the couple to show their papers, which they refused to do and accused them of being ‘fake’.

While the police were dealing with the case, the girl suddenly pushed Nguyen Thanh Sang, one of the policemen, who was keeping order at the scene, to the ground. 

She then viciously tugged at Sang’s T-shirt and punched him hard on the face till he bled. Taking advantage of the distraction, her boyfriend ran away from the scene.

After about an hour, her boyfriend returned and the couple continued to insult the law enforcement officers.

The girl student was later identified as Nguyen Thi Thanh Hien, who is currently studying at the Thang Long University while her boyfriend Tran Duc Thanh, 25, is a student at the Open University.

They were both taken to the Hoang Mai District police station for further questioning.

source from: saigon-gpdaily

The cell phone that Hung used to shoot the clip.

The man in the clip is Le Trong Hung, 17, who has just quit a high school in Ha Dong district, Hanoi. Trung has two girlfriends at the same time – AH and HT – who are tenth-grade students at his former high school.

Being jealous, on April 10, HT borrowed a cell phone of her friend, gave it to Hung and asked him to shoot a sex clip between him and his other girlfriend named AH, in order to diffuse the video clip to humiliate AH. Hung agreed.

On April 11, Hung and AH rented a room at an inn in Ha Dong district. Hung told AH that he would like to shoot a sex clip to keep as memories. AH agreed.

The same day Hung then gave back the cell phone, with the sex clip inside, to HT. This schoolgirl brought the cell phone to her school and showed the sex clip to others. After that, this video clip was diffused to many other students in several high schools in Ha Dong and was detected by teachers, who reported to the police.

Police summoned Hung for investigation. Hung said that he loved HT more, so he agreed to shoot the video clip at the request of HT.

Police quickly prevented the diffusion of the clip.

source from: vietnamnet

After getting reprimand by his family for poor school performance, a grade-6 student hanged himself at home in Central Highlands Dak Lak Province.

The heart-breaking incident occurred last Saturday evening when Pham Dinh Tuyen, a student of Trung Vuong Junior High School, was found dead in his room at his house in the province’s Buon Ma Thuot City.

According to his family’s report, a few days earlier Tuyen was scolded by his mother and elder sister for his poor marks in art, one of his subjects at school, and he had been unhappy ever since.

At 18:30 pm on April 21, Tuyen returned home from school and continued getting reprimanded by his mother. He then went to his room and 30 minutes later one of member of his family entered the room and found him hanging.

Tuyen was taken to hospital immediately but he died on the way.

Tuyen was the family’s youngest son and all the adults in the family, especially his father, spoiled him since he had been very obedient, a member of Tuyen’s family said.

His mother and sister reprimanded him only because they wanted him to get better grades, the member said.

In a similar heart-breaking case, a grade-12 schoolgirl, Nguyen Thi K. O., at Dong Hung High School in the northern province of Thai Binh, committed suicide on January 7, 2012 to protest her math teacher’s punishment on a number of students who had got marks of 5 or below 5 on a mathematics test.

The teacher, 30-year-old To Thanh H., ordered those students to write down her answer key for the math test four times.

O, who got 5 marks, jumped from the second floor of the school and died in a hospital later the same day, after H. heavily insulted O. and threw her out of the class since she objected to H’s penalty.

After the incident, the school’s management suspended H. from teaching.

source from: tuoitrenews

A short movie made by a Vietnamese student has been selected for the top ten finalists of the 2012 Asia-Europe Film Awards.

Titled “The Visitor,” the 3-minute movie directed by Nguyen Le Hoang Viet from the Hanoi-based National Economics University is a story about cross-cultural experience in the field of language, family relationship and love.

In the movie, Alex, an European youth tries to cheer up his Vietnamese girlfriend’s grandmother, who is lying lonely in the hospital and refuses to talk to anyone, by singing the song “Chau Yeu Ba” (I Love You, Grandma) in Vietnamese.

Launched by the Singapore-based Asia-Europe Foundation, the contest aims to invite young filmmakers and film enthusiasts from Asia and Europe to create a short film expressing their views on the connections between the two regions.

Four prizes will be chosen by the contest’s jury and one will be chosen by the public via online voting at http://www.facebook.com/AsiaEuropeFoundation.

The winners will receive a training course on film making at the in New York University Tisch School of Art Asia in Singapore and a 5,000 Singaporean dollar award.

The award ceremony is scheduled to be held in Singapore on May 17.

source from: tuoitrenews

The unpredictable risks

In the eyes of many modern Vietnamese parents, sending children to foreign universities is the optimal solution to follow higher education.

Going studying abroad has become a growing tendency in Vietnam, especially after scientists voiced their criticism against the traditional education methods in Vietnam, saying that the methods have become out of date and Vietnamese students need to approach the modern western education style.

A lot of parents force their children to go studying abroad, even though the children do not want to. They hope that by studying in foreign countries, the children would become the “world’s citizens” who can live and work in all environments. The parents do not know that a lot of risks are awaiting in the “ideal environments.”

The death of a Vietnamese student at Golden West Community School recently shocked Vietnamese people. NMC, the victim, a student of the school, hanged at the inn in Westminster City.

Prior to that, on October 24, 2009, in San Jose, California, PH, a Vietnamese student was beaten with police batons for being suspected of attacking the roommate.

On July 17, 2009, the dead body of NMN, a Vietnamese student, was discovered in the wardrobe of a dorm room Queensway Singapore. N had been living in Singapore for just two months and following an English course at a school.

Ngoc Ha, a Vietnamese student in the UK, said that the students, who live far from their parents, always have to bear hard pressures. If they have bad learning records, or feeling shocks, they would not be able to find sympathy from relatives and friends like in Vietnam. Therefore, many of them try to commit suicide to end their tragedies.

Meanwhile, the living environment in foreign countries proves to be too different from Vietnam’s, while risks exist in many places. The cultural differences among the students from different countries always exist as a big barrier.

Spending money and only getting worse

Explaining why she decided to send the only daughter to a school in Australia, Thao Trang, an accountant officer of a foreign company said that she wants the girl to approach a modern education. “While other parents have to grow two or three children, I have only one child, and I want her to receive all the best things I can give her,” she said.

Trang related that she was very happy when the girl informed that she would return to Vietnam to celebrate Tet. However, Trang could not fetch the girl at the airport, because the girl decided to stay in Nha Trang sea city for several days before returning to Hanoi to meet the parents.

However, when arriving in Hanoi, the daughter refused to live together with parents at the home, when she was born and grown up, saying that she would stay in a hotel during the time in Hanoi.

Trang feels discouraged when realizing that the daughter has absolutely become a westerner: she does not like living with parents, and she does not intend to return to work in Vietnam after finishing school. Especially, the girl said she would send the parents to retirement homes when they get older. Meanwhile, in traditional Vietnamese families, grandparents, parents and children can live together in a home and take care for each other.

Le Thi Tuy, a consultant, has warned that sending children abroad should not be seen as the ideal solution to re-educate naughty children. A lot of parents now tend to send their children to foreign schools if the children fail the domestic university entrance exams. However, many of them cannot obtain a high education as their parents want. Though they spend money, but they only get worse.

source from: vietnamnet

Insulting is a part of the… lesson

“Mum, why does the cow wearing hat look dazed?” a fourth grader of a primary school asked his mother.

The woman, who related the story, said that at first she could not understand why the child raised such a funny question. Later, after talking with the child, she realized that in the class, the teachers insult students “as dazed as cows wearing hats.”

They also use other crude words to express their dissatisfaction about their students, who cannot understand the lessons or do exercises.

Duy Anh, another primary school student, one day asked his father what “water off a duck’s back” means. He and his classmates could not understand why the teacher usually uses the words when she finds someone not fulfilling his home exercises or making noise in the class.

Hieu, a third grader, said that one day he gave a wrong answer to a mathematic question. Then the teacher said to him: “Why are you so stupid?” Hieu got red with shame. Since then, after seeing someone failing to do something, he said: “it is because he is too stupid.”

Meanwhile, the teacher of a fifth grade in a primary school in Hanoi, like describing her students as “mad people.” If someone cannot do exercises well, he would hear something like: “I think I need to return you back to Trau Quy mental hospital for further treatment.”

The teaching method of the well-known teacher has brought immediate effects. Her students also try to use crude words in daily conversation. “Are you nuts? You have just returned from Trau Quy?” are the words the students usually speak out.

It seems that secondary and high school students have to hear more crude words from teachers than primary school students, because they are more active. Of course, when teachers feel unsatisfactory with the students, they would grumble and criticize their students severely.

“If you do not want to study, get out of my sight” seems to be the most “gentle” words students expect to hear when they mistakes. In many cases, teachers spend the time of the lesson to insult students.

Huy Hoang, an 8th grader of a secondary school, said that he and his classmates really feel hurt when hearing the words of a teacher, who said that we have lost all self-respect, and that “students’ awareness is even worse than that of a fly.”

In general, the students with bad learning capabilities would be the main targets for teachers to insult. Duy Anh, a 9th grader of a secondary school, related that a friend of his could not do a mathematics question, and he was so tremulous when seeing the rod on the teacher’s hand. The teacher, who could not make the student understand the lesson, asked the student to return to his seat, saying: “I don’t know if you are human or animal. Why are you so stupid?”

Not only general school teachers, but university lecturers also like insulting their students. A student complained that she could not imagine why a person with higher education can have such a crude behavior.

A student, who drowned during the lesson, was described by the teacher as having the face of an “intellectually disabled person.” The students said that they do not want to attend the lectures because they fear that one day, they would receive similar crude words.

source from: vietnamnet

However, the modern digital age has made many over dependent on technology.

At present, students more often than not make use of the internet during group working sessions or while writing essays.

The problem occurs when information is ‘copied and pasted’ without adequate verification.

Ha Le Phan, a student at Ha Noi University, argued that: “This is the time of technology, of which we need to take full advantage. It is like a lifebuoy to us.”

She did admit that digital technology had two sides, as “not all information found on the internet is correct”.

“We must keep a level head and have a little prior knowledge when sourcing information, otherwise we’ll get lost in the labyrinth,” she said.

Besides those who spend time carefully researching material, a fair number of students have little clue as to the information they drag off the net, often combining different pieces into an illogical whole.

Suong Hoa, a sociology student at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, said her teacher once asked the class to write about “Why young people love social networks”.

“The next day, most of my 50 classmates handed in essays with similar content, all copied from the internet and void of any personal perspective. As a result, the teacher got angry and asked us to do it again! Despite criticism, however, many hold that copying info from the internet saves time and energy,” she said.

A student posting on an online forum recently said: “Thanks to advanced technology, we can write essays quickly and simply; just cut and paste!”

In agreement, someone responded that, “Today, few students spend time in libraries to find material for their essays. Just use the internet and everything will be OK!”

Copying documents from the internet has become a popular habit amongst many students, to the disappointment of their teachers.

Ngo Lan Van, a high-school literature teacher, said, “Apart from literature, students copy material for many other social subjects. I once asked them to write about their families, after which I found that some had copied paragraphs from the same source. I gave them all bad marks in the end!”

Everything has both good and bad sides however.

As long as students use information they locate on the internet properly, technology will indeed remain a useful tool in study.

Whenever Dinh Thi Ngoc Linh, a student at the University of Languages and International Studies, gets a homework assignment, she often searches for reference material via Google

“Once I conducted research on the role of games in teaching children English. Besides my own points of view, I found so many additional ideas on the subject. The more I read, the more I became interested in the topic. After analysing the available info, I used it to write a pretty original piece, for which I earned a high mark,” she said.

“I think we are much luckier than students in the past, having advanced technology to assist our studies. To students studying foreign languages like me, the internet equips us with both technological and linguistic capacity while allowing us to remain up to date with our foreign counterparts,” she added.

The internet has helped Linh go beyond information provided within lectures and textbooks alone.

Van Tien Hung, a first year student at the University of Business and Technology, often discusses lessons with his classmates via email or chat.

“It saves both time and money. I can even discuss my lessons with students from other universities thanks to the internet,” he said.

While the internet provides us with both good and bad aspects, if students overuse the cut-and-paste technique, they will stop absorbing information, which in the long term, will affect their ability to obtain knowledge.

Students should partake in the digital world with a sense of responsibility so as not to create overdependence or harm their path to maturity.

source from: vietnamnews

In an interview with Thanh Nien, Nguyen Thi Huyen, chief of the Ministry of Education and Training’s Ethnic Minority People Education Department, said the language will be an optional subject for Chinese Vietnamese students only.

It will be mainly for schools located in areas where many Chinese Vietnamese are living, she stressed.

According to the official, the ministry initiated the plan in a bid to make the study of the language official and end “unwanted shortcomings and messes” around Chinese language programs that have existed for years at several schools.

After collecting public opinions for 60 days, the draft will be submitted to the government for approval, she said.

The ministry’s incomplete statistics showed that in four southern provinces where many Chinese Vietnamese people live, 34 schools are teaching Chinese as an optional subject for students of Chinese descent, Huyen said

Source : thanhniennews

Students and their parents flocked to the school on Nguyen Van Troi Street, in Phu Nhuan District, Ho Chi Minh City on March 19, which was the deadline for reimbursement. A tense meeting between the students and school officials, lasted nearly 10 hours, but no agreement was reached. The local police eventually had to be called in to keep order.

Then students and parents sent a petition against the school, accusing them of fraud.

According to the petition, Raffles International School promised to reimburse student tuition fees within 60 days (from January 18 to March 19), but have failed to make full payment. The compensation for which they are asking amounts is still less than what the students already paid.

Students and their parents also asked the police to ban the school’s leaders from leaving the country.

Earlier, on March 17, Raffles International School sent a letter to students in which they offered the alternative of continuing the same programs in Cambodia, Singapore or Australia.

On December 29 last year, the Ministry of Education and Training decided to penalize three high-profile international training institutes in HCMC for offering programs they had not been accredited for.

Source : vietnamnet