The authors of the draft standards for 5-year-old children say that adults underestimate 5-year-old children when they say children will not be able to meet the standards.

The authors emphasise that a wrong attitude about the capabilities of 5-year-old children could lead to children becoming more fragile and passive in their activities. Meanwhile, the growth of children depends greatly on adults and the expectations society sets on them.

Awareness of children’s capabilities will alter the behaviour of adults towards children. When adult people change their behaviour towards children from considering them immature to listening to them, giving them opportunities to select and decide themselves, children will also change, turning from shy, passive children into self-confident, independent and dynamic young people.

Eighteen years ago, the then Ministry of Education, now the Ministry of Education and Training, promulgated a regulation on pre-school education, signed by Prof Dr of Science Pham Minh Hac, which included requirements that the authors believe are much higher than their draft standards. Prof Hac was one of the members of the board to review the draft standards.

Regarding the criticism that the standards for 5-year-old children are even higher than the standards for doctoral candidates, the authors say that the concepts in the draft standards should be considered alongside children’s conditions. For example, ‘creativeness’ is a standard for 5-year-old children, but the requirement about the creativeness of children is different from the requirement for adults and doctors.

For example, children should be required to ‘fulfill the tasks they are assigned to’. They need to tidy up their rooms, arrange the dinner table even with the assistance of adult people. If 5-year-old children cannot fulfill the tasks they are assigned to, they will meet more difficulties in the next periods of their lives.

Moreover, adult people can teach children things that even some adults cannot do. For example, adult people still smoke, while children should know that smoking will harm their health.

What percent of children meeting the set standards would be enough? According to the authors, in general, experts selected standards which they believe some 40-60% of children can meet. When 80% of children can meet the standards, it is necessary to raise the standards.

Regarding the materials used for reference when compiling the draft standards, the authors looked at Russian and former Soviet Union documents, Vietnamese educational documents.

The authors also referred to documents used at the global workshop on standards for children’s growth held in Bangkok, Thailand in February 2008, and a document on pre-school education in Singapore.

VietNamNet/VnMedia