Vietnam - It’s to blame parents for students’ overloading

The Ministry of Education and Training which has been violently criticized for overloading students with heavy curricula, is considering cutting many lessons in order to ease the burden on students. Meanwhile, parents have been trying to stuff their children’s heads with too much knowledge.


Nguyen Khanh Ly, a third grader of the Nguyen Truong To Secondary School in Hanoi, has a busy daily timetable. After the school hours, Ly has to go to private tutoring classes to attend intensive classes in mathematics, literature and English.

Ly complains that she is so busy that she nearly does not have free time to relax or go out with friends.

Ly said her parents force her to learn all the time because “all the children in the city also have to learn hard.”

Tran Thi Hai Yen, a parent in Hanoi, said that her son only had two weeks for summer holiday. The boy now goes to the fourth grade, and he has been told that it is an important school year, because fourth graders will receive new important knowledge.

“Just two weeks after the old school year finished, my son had to go to tutoring classes,” Yen said. “I understand that my son has been overloading, but I have no other choice. If he does not learn now, he will lag behind the classmates.”

Huong Giang, 40, who lives on Le Trong Tan Street in Hanoi, said that as the living standards have been improved, parents now have good conditions for children’s education. Therefore, she wants her children to go to the best schools and study with best teachers. Especially, she puts high hopes on the children, believing that once they have good education, they would have better living conditions in the future.

However, modern parents have been warned that the high expectations they put on the children may accidentally cause bad effects. 

Professor Nguyen Lan Dung, a well known scientist and educator in Vietnam, said that in Vietnam, only qualified workers are highly valuated at work, which has badly affected parents’ thought. They always want their children to obtain higher education degrees, believing that only the degrees can help the children have good jobs in the future.

As a result, the parents have been trying to force their children to learn as much as possible. In fact, the overwork will not bring the good future to the children, but make the study too heavy and boring for children. Therefore, many students nowadays say they learn hard not because of the passion, but because learning is a must.

Meanwhile, Pham Van Lam, Headmaster of the Phu Dien Secondary School in Hanoi, believes that weak students should take extra classes to better review the lessons. However, he also thinks that children should not spend too much time on learning, because “all work and no play will make Jack a dull boy”.

Meanwhile, parents have voiced the same complaints that it is the currently applied heavy curricula which have made students get overloaded.

Vu Thu Ha in Cau Giay district in Hanoi, who can compare the curricula applied at international schools and state owned schools, because her child went to an international school when he was at first grade, and is now going to a state owned school, said that the curricula set up by the Ministry of Education and Training are clearly heavier than that of international schools.

Ha said that at the international school, students spent half of the time on attending entertainment activities which can help develop the creativeness of children, such as swimming, ballet or dancing. They only spent 50 percent of the time on learning, especially on learning English.

Therefore, Ha believes that it would be better not to put the subject on nature and society into the curriculum for second graders, while it is necessary to focus on other basic subjects such as mathematics, Vietnamese and arts. The knowledge about the society proves to be too heavy for small children.

Nguyen Mai Phuong, a parent in Hanoi, said that the textbooks on history and science designed for fourth and fifth graders content too much knowledge, while the information has been provided in a difficult-to-understand way.

“I myself find it difficult to read the books and I feel as if these are the books for university students. How can small students understand them?” she questioned.

Thu Thao
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