Education
Students raise voice against decision on school hour change
  • | VietNamNet | February 15, 2012 08:37 PM

Most of the students asked to write about their thoughts about the learning shift changes have expressed their disagreement to the decision about the new school hours.

 

One day after the decision about the new school hours took effect, the 10th graders of a high school in Hoan Kiem district in Hanoi, were asked to express their viewpoints about the decision at a lesson.

Thirty essays were submitted to the teacher. These included short works with just half an A4 page, short stories, and especially the long essays which showed big students’ difficulties in implementing the new decision.

The noteworthy thing is that the majority of students have expressed their dissatisfaction about the new regulation. Some students even criticized the local authorities of “considering students as the white mice in the laboratories,” who are the subjects for local authorities’ experiments.

A student related the story of his mathematics teacher. The timetable of the teacher is as follows: gets up at 5 am, leaves home at 6.15 am, so as to be present at the classes at 6.30 and prepare for the first teaching period commencing from 7 am. The morning shift finishes at 11.30 am. What to do? It would be better to stay at school during lunchtime and then continue the afternoon shift at 2.30 pm. So, it would be better to bring meals with her and take a nap after lunch in the classrooms.

The afternoon shift finishes at 7 pm. The teacher hurriedly leaves the school for home, prepares dinners, haves a bath and then sits on the desk at 11 pm to prepare the teaching plans for the next day. Then she goes to bed at 1.30 am, so that she can get up at 5 am. As such, the daily timetable puts teacher in a whirl.

Other students wrote that they have been facing too many difficulties with the new school timetable.

“All students nowadays have to go to exam preparation centers or private tutoring classes in the evening. And this is really a big problem for the students, who finish school hours at 7 pm. If so, they have to finish the private tutoring classes late at night, at about 10 pm. This is really dangerous and inconvenient for students and their families,” an essay reads.

“Students have to get up too early to go to school, therefore, they feel tired and cannot acquire knowledge effectively. As students do not have time for breakfast at home, they have to have breakfast at street shops, which costs them a lot of additional money,” a student wrote.

The most important thing is that the decision, which has made students’ activities get upset, cannot help ease the traffic jam as the local authorities strive to.

LQT, a student, said that the school hour changes would even make the traffic jam more serious. “As parents do not feel secure when letting their daughters go on street late in the evening, they have to come to school to pick up their children. As too many parents gather at the same time in front of schools, this would lead to a more serious problem with the traffic.

LUM, trying to follow mathematical analysis, said that the problem would still not be settled, the schools in the same areas have the same finishing hours, this means that a high volume of people would be in circulation at the same time, and the traffic jam would remain problematic.

“I have not seen any improvement in the traffic after the new school hour timetable is applied,” MN, a student, concluded.

Meanwhile, THA proves to be very critical. “It seems that the city’s authorities consider students and citizens as the white mice for their experiments,” she wrote in the essay.

“We have to fulfill any idea, no matter they are good or bad, from the textbook renovation, to the ban on students driving motorbikes to school. And now, we have to implement the decision on school hour changes, which has made our lives upset,” she continued. 

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