Students of all classes in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City schools are forced to buy reference books though they are nominally optional.
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| Some books used at SC Kindergarten in Phu Nhuan District, HCMC |
Van, the mother of a first-grade student in Ho Chi Minh City\'s District 9, said the teacher never asked her son to use the reference books she had bought for him.
“She tells him to do exercises in other books,” she grumbled, adding the same teacher even recommends yet more books.
The parent of a ninth-grader in the capital said he had bought reference books three times this year following repeated urging by his child’s teacher.
An eighth-grader said he had had no choice but to buy a reference book that contained homework his teacher frequently assigned him.
Many of his schoolmates were forced to buy a lot of practice books but rarely used them, he added.
Many ninth-graders at another middle school complained that their teachers threatened to punish them if they failed to do some assignments that were only found in reference books she had recommended.
Other students said teachers wanted them to buy reference books with exercises that were basic and thus unnecessary.
A teacher at a primary school in Hanoi even “wrote” her own reference books and sold them to her students.
