A teacher assigned an essay for students to describe their beloved father. One student couldn’t write it, the teacher scolded them, and the child cried. It turned out the child didn’t have a father. How can children clearly feel compassion and fairness every day when they come to class?

During an opening ceremony at a school in Hanoi, the story involving children’s information made me feel sad and heartbroken.

Sad because private information about the children was publicly displayed on a large screen in the schoolyard. Things like “difficult family,” “parents separated, living with grandmother,” “student with mobility disability,” “diagnosed with lymphoma”…

Unintentional harm to children’s souls

I understand that teachers did this wanting to avoid potential controversies about funding from sponsorship campaigns to support the children. However, such oversight shouldn’t happen, as it can hurt the fragile souls of children.

The right to privacy, personal secrets, and family secrets, including for children, is clearly regulated. Furthermore, from psychological and educational perspectives, handling such matters requires extreme caution and flexibility.

What’s more unfortunate is that actions and methods that can hurt young souls don’t just happen once or twice but keep repeating, sometimes even becoming more severe.

I still remember very delicate stories that easily hurt little souls, also occurring in schools.

On one Christmas occasion, a family hired a Santa Claus to come to class and give gifts to their child.

In terms of appearance, that approach unintentionally made some children who didn’t receive gifts feel left out, even though they were very well-behaved, didn’t understand what was happening, and felt somewhat hurt.

In another situation, during a class, a teacher assigned an essay for students to describe their beloved father. At that time, there was one student in class who couldn’t write the essay. The teacher scolded them, and the child cried.

After calming down, the teacher investigated and learned the child didn’t have a father. Already sad about not having a father, the child’s young soul was further hurt by being scolded for not being able to write an essay whose root cause was not having a father.

Nowadays, there are women who don’t get married but still want to have children, which is a legitimate need that should be respected. If only the teacher had assigned the topic as “describe someone you respect and love most,” then the child could have described whoever they loved and respected.

Thinking about this, I suddenly remember a story written by Amicis, the famous Italian author, back in the 19th century.

The story goes roughly like this: A mother came to school to pick up her child. Just after leaving class, seeing her mother, the child immediately ran and hugged her tightly. The mother then acted very angry, pushed her child away, and walked far away to another spot.

When they got home, the mother told her child: “You were very thoughtless. Your friend just lost their mother, surely they’re suffering greatly, while you are so fortunate to still have your mother and have her pick you up from school. In front of your friend, hugging me like that would make your friend feel heartbroken…”

Every day at school, children must clearly feel compassion and fairness

To me, teaching isn’t nobler than other professions, but its specific nature requires each educator to meet stricter standards. One requirement for teachers is to understand life, understand society, and particularly have expertise in educational psychology and human psychology.

Recently, there have been opinions suggesting it’s time to stop requiring students to wear uniforms to school.

From an educational psychology perspective, it’s not difficult to see that this proposal is unreasonable, as implementing it could create negative aspects in the educational environment.

We all know that in any classroom or school, students come from different circumstances.

Therefore, schools should at least create an environment where children feel equality from the moment they enter the