越南男学生袭击女教师引发反思

讲台上学生殴打女教师的画面屏幕截图

10月19日上午，在河内市诺拜乡的一所高中里/maths? no math. During a math class, a male student from grade 12 jumped onto the podium and struck his homeroom teacher in the head and face. According to initial information, the student and several classmates had not completed their homework, so the teacher made him stand at the front of the classroom. The teacher suffered a nasal bone fracture, and the medical forensic agency determined that her health impairment was 12%. On October 21, the 17-year-old student was indicted and detained for “intentional injury”. Reading the news, I felt my body heat up. Within that heat were anger at a violent act, deep pain for colleagues who stand in front of classrooms every day, and concern about a wave of fury rising on social media. Then I remembered my own years in middle and high school. There were times when I was scolded by teachers and punished by standing at the front of the classroom. My face would burn, my eyes sometimes well up with tears, and my words would choke. Back then, things passed that way, and I did not tell anyone. Looking back, I realize that the anger of those years never went away. It simply stayed quietly inside me. Such anger usually has only two familiar outcomes: suppressing it silently within oneself, or erupting and harming someone else. The first path is hidden so quietly that few people ever see it. The second, as on the morning of October 19, leaves behind injuries to a female teacher and a criminal record for a student. But the essential point is that I believe there is a third path: a child recognizes that anger is rising, and finds a way to resolve it without harming anyone, including themselves. Yet it seems that this has not been taught to most students or adults. Knowing that something is wrong is not enough to stop the hands.

Standing at the front of the classroom for failing to do homework was a form of discipline experienced by many generations of students, including me. I do not know what was happening inside that student during the minutes he was made to stand at the front. Information from investigators contains only two words: “irritated”. From my expertise in educational psychology, I know that shame and anger are very close. In a survey of nearly 500 students, psychologist June Tangney of George Mason University and her colleagues found that people who often feel ashamed are also more likely to become angry, hold grudges, and blame others. Shame judges the whole person (“I am terrible”), whereas the feeling of guilt focuses only on a specific mistake (“I did not do my homework”). Guilt that is not mixed with shame is less likely to lead to anger. When one is humiliated before many people, blood rushes to the face, the heart pounds, breathing becomes short, and the hands involuntarily clench. That is when the nervous system shifts into fight-or-flight mode.

Every student knows that hitting a teacher is wrong, but that knowledge resides in the realm of thought. During the few seconds when anger surges, the action comes from a body that is intensely activated. People who engage in violence often know what they are doing but cannot restrain themselves, because knowledge has not become an embodied capacity. This does not lessen the responsibility of the student who assaulted the female teacher. The law is doing its work and must see it through. But if we stop there, other children will continue bringing their anger into the classroom and exploding in similar ways.

Children need to learn about themselves

I often tell my colleagues that one of the most important subjects has not received sufficient investment: the subject of learning about oneself. In this subject, children learn who they are, what is happening in their bodies and emotions, and what they should do with what is happening. Many educational systems have introduced such content into schools through social-emotional learning (SEL) programs, identity education, and applied psychology for pupils from early childhood through high school.

Deputy Director of the Department of Teachers and Educational Management Administration Nguyen Thi Hanh visits and encourages a teacher—Photo: MOET

Psychologist Joseph Durlak and his colleagues have synthesized 213 such school programs involving more than 270,000 students, from preschool through the end of secondary school. Participating students showed clear improvements in social-emotional skills, attitudes, and behavior, while their academic results were on average 11% higher than those of the control group. Programs led by teachers already working in schools can still be effective; there is no need to invite outside experts. Even more simply, when working with students, I often guide them to practice noticing what is happening in their bodies—for example, that their faces are heating up or their hearts are beating faster—and then practice a few ways to calm themselves: imagining a peaceful space, taking deep breaths, relaxing their muscles, drinking water, and washing their faces. Some classrooms even have a “calm-down corner” that overstimulated students can use whenever needed.

These things need to be practiced every day, so that when anger erupts, students recognize that they are becoming agitated and, instead of being swept along, have effective ways to stop themselves. At the same time, the ability to cope with one's own emotions cannot be cultivated only during class hours. Children bring their emotions home from school, and they also bring home emotions and ways of dealing with emotions from home to school. If the most effective way of handling emotions at home is violence and repression, then we can understand where the child's outburst was learned.