Last Sunday night, my son needed to finish the exercises assigned by his teacher, and many of them were about arranging the words in the right order to make a meaningful sentence. Normally I just leave my son to do the work by himself and will check the result once he completes it. But yesterday I sat with him to see how he solved his problems.
There was one sentence in his exercises caught my attention “Tiên học lễ, hậu học văn", in English it would be “Good manners come before good education” or “Character before knowledge”. In the beginning, I thought it would be super easy for him to complete it as that sentence is hung everywhere in his school. But he could not make it, as he does not understand its meaning. It’s quite funny for me to realize that truth.
People put the assumption that everyone would understand it the same way and can learn from it, but no. And one more thing, the teacher expects the kids to finish a large amount of exercises during the weekend without spending effort to explain the meaning of each sentence, are you only looking for quantities over quality? Is that something that conflicts directly with the sentence you’re asking the kids to finish?
If you are using this chance to teach the kids how to take responsibility, work hard, admit their mistakes to share that they didn’t finish all the exercises, and then show you when they can make it happen so, it’ll be much appreciated. I think it’s a great chance to teach them about the word “lễ", and later you can come up with “văn" as the proverb insists.
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Study with my son
