LookAtVietnam – Educators appear to share the same viewpoint – students aren’t inherently bad – it’s the bad system that’s to blame.

However as students learn specifically to pass exams and teachers base their lessons around it, it has caused its own problems.

Dung stresses that this way of teaching and learning will not produce real talent. “The overly hard pressure on students will lead to the fact that students will not be fit for work after they finish schools,” he said.

In other countries in the world, social activities take up to 50 percent of students’ time. Meanwhile, in Vietnam, according to Dung, 99 percent of time is spent learning. Therefore, a lot of parents prefer to send children abroad to study at because they want children to learn in countries with modern education systems.

According to Le Trong Tin, headmaster of the Nguyen Khuyen High School, students always complain about heavy curriculums, which, he says, is because Vietnam does not provide good career guidance.

Tin said in other countries, students at 10^th grade are advised on decisions as to whether they will go to vocational schools, colleges or universities.

Tin’s conception is that students themselves are not naturally bad students, and that, instead, unreasonable teaching method should be blamed.

“Every student has specific capability he said. “The job of the teachers is to discover the capability of students to have suitable teaching method”.

Tin said that with the viewpoint, Nguyen Khuyen School has had suitable teaching method, 12 students of the school came first at the 2009’s university and junior college entrance exams.

“It is necessary to classify students and apply suitable teaching method to every of them,” he said.

Head teacher of Trung Phu High School Nguyen Phung Quoc Hung agreed, saying his school accepts all students. After that, the school classifies the students based on capability. Teachers will focus on improving weak students, cultivating good students and helping excellent students to become greater talents.

Nevertheless, educators stressed teachers alone “cannot create talents on an empty stomach”. With the current pay scheme, teachers dare only wish to get enough money to cover basic needs.

Minh Quyen