LookAtVietnam – A major seminar on education held in HCM City last Saturday called for higher teaching quality that focuses on building national identity.

Students at Thang Long Secondary School attend an educational programme organised by the Ministry of Education and Training and international organisations.

They said several shortcomings including low wages, lack of adequately trained teaching and management staff needed to be addressed to achieve higher education standards in the country.

Pham Minh Hac, chairman of the Viet Nam Association of Educational Psychology, which organised the conference, said that educational system in Viet Nam has to make teaching and learning more effective with a focus on overall personality development.

Nguyen Minh Ky from central Khanh Hoa Province stressed the need to build up a teaching staff with good ethics and morals as well as professional knowledge and pedagogic skills.

The State should tighten management of teaching staff and be determined about strictly punishing unethical behavior, he added.

He also called for the inclusion of more masters and doctorate degree holders in the teaching staff. “The country has 376 universities, but only 320 professors,” he said.

Ky said that current pay levels for teachers were too low and had to be changed to ensure a good standard of living that would allow them to focus on their work.

The leader of any educational institution should be a person of high knowledge and principles, he added.

Hoang Ngoc Bat, member of the Thanh Hoa chapter of the Association of Educational Psychology, said that schools were not choosing educational content that would help students become moral, ethical and creative citizens.

Insufficient attention was paid to human values in schools and important social science subjects were not given due importance, he said.

Students from primary education to tertiary levels were also not taught life-skills that would help them do better in their career as well as personal lives, he said.

Stable curricula

Tran Quang Kiem, standing deputy chairman of the Hai Phong chapter of the Association of Educational Psychology, said that the country needed stable curricula and textbook content to help reduce wastage of time and money.

For the last few years, high school textbooks had to be changed frequently, leading to difficulties in learning as well as wasting funds that could be better spent in other areas, he said.

Other speakers called for the government and the Ministry of Education and Training to ensure management policies and agencies to monitor the operation of local and foreign schools in the country.

Hac said many foreign schools and universities had been set up in Viet Nam, but had not been managed closely.

Some schools and universities were not teaching anything about Viet Nam, he said.

He argued that teaching all the subjects in foreign languages was “not good,” adding that teachers, lecturers and students including foreigners should respect Viet Nam’s cultural and educational tradition.

Nguyen Thi Hieu of the Management Education Institute said Viet Nam’s education still faced many problems.

A major problem was the approach that made student passive learners who took down notes without applying critical thinking skills, he said. This would hinder the full development of their intellectual capabilities, he added.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News