VietNamNet Bridge – Experts have told teacher – don’t just criticise – find time to compliment too.

Le Thu Hien, mathematics teacher of Huong Son Secondary School in Bac Giang province, also said teachers spend most of the time in weekly review meetings criticising students.

Bui Tran Linh from Nguyen Van Huyen secondary school in Hanoi estimates that the ratio of compliments to criticism is 30/70 percent.

Explaining why teachers like criticising students, Quang says teachers always fear students cannot meet set requirements teachers and they want students to work harder.

“Teachers always think that students do not learn because they are lazy. They do not understand that students sometimes have objective reasons for struggling,” “Quang said.

He went on to say that when teachers were students, they could only learn knowledge, not “reasonable behavior”.

Meanwhile, Hien believes teachers regularly criticise students because of the so called ‘achievement disease’. All teachers want classes to rank highly among classes in the same school, therefore, they always set high goals. Then, once the goals prove impossible, teachers blame the students.

Dr Nguyen Cong Khanh from the Hanoi University of Education said that teachers always look at issues with the “ adult eyes” not the eyes of young people who need help.

Khanh says in principle, teachers should give more compliments than criticism in order to encourage students.

Besides, he said, if teachers feel that they need to give criticism, then they should be even more ready to provide encouragement.

He also said teachers should only criticize behavior not personality. They should also not recall mistakes students might have made previously.

The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) is to launch a new document stipulating teachers are not allowed to use the words which may hurt students.

The document is being compiled after parents of primary school students complain their kids have become afraid to go to school, because they fear criticism from teachers.

Local newspaper Dan tri quoted Le Thi Bich Ngoc, who has a son attending first grade this year, as saying that after two months of school, his son has become afraid of learning, because he has been regularly criticized for not writing well and being slow in mathematics.

Bao Anh