Prof Dr Nguyen Lan Dung, who always has a voice in education forums, said that it is necessary to have more than one set of books for general school. However, he said that it would be a big waste to compile more textbooks with the current curriculums.

I think it is not difficult to have good curriculums for general school. Other countries in the world have good curriculums, and they are very similar. Meanwhile, I do not have enough information about other subjects, but I’m sure that Vietnam’s curriculum for biology is dissimilar to that of any other country in the world.

Why don’t we think of referring to the curriculums for general education from other countries, especially natural sciences like mathematics, physics, chemistry or biology?

Of course, we need to change some things to build a curriculum fit to our students’ learning capacity and our natural conditions.

Another question we should ask is if students should read literature valued in Vietnam’s literary history but is not modern literature. These writings, I think, should be studied at the university level.

Is the Ministry of Education and Training planning to build new curriculums?

It is necessary to discuss compilation thoroughly. Let’s consider students in Nepal. In the country, students finishing 10^th class are considered as having enough general knowledge. Therefore, from 11^th class, students choose one of four major groups to study, and they have to learn four subjects only in each group. As there are only several subjects, students can learn to get deep knowledge. The textbook for biology, for example, has 700 pages.

I think that it would be better to let scientific associations come forward and organise the compilation of curriculums, since the organisations gather leading scientists in the fields. The curriculums would need to be ratified by the National Assembly before they are applied.

When will we need many textbooks instead of one set of textbooks, then?

When we are able to build up standard curriculums, we will have many sets of textbooks like in other countries. In principle, textbooks need to follow the standard curriculums.

I think that nowhere else in the world does the government spend money to print textbooks like in Vietnam. This is the job of authors and publishing houses – that this is education universalisation.

Who do you think has the right to choose textbooks for studying?

Students. Teachers can give advice, but they must not force students to choose the same way. If local education department directors, or schools’ headmasters are allowed to choose textbooks, they may collude with publishers, which may lead to the fact that low-quality textbooks will be used in general schools.

VietNamNet/TP