It is necessary to launch a national emulation movement to encourage learning, encourage talents, and build a learning society.

Prof. Dr. Nguyen Thi Doan - former Vice President, President of Vietnam Association for Promoting Education. Photo: VA

PV:Professor, why do we need to have a national emulation movement to promote learning, encourage talents, and build a learning society in the current context?

Professor, Dr. Nguyen Thi Doan: Currently, in the context of the 4.0 industrial revolution that is strongly impacting all economic and social fields, requiring us to improve all aspects to respond to the context of scientific and technological development, increasingly high levels of automation; technology, science and technology, especially biotechnology, are developing rapidly.

But we see that in Vietnam today there are still many difficulties in meeting the requirements of the 4.0 revolution, resources are gradually depleted due to overexploitation and severe destruction; the population and labor force are aging rapidly; ODA capital will gradually decrease because we have escaped poverty... Only the most valuable capital, the richest asset remains, which is human capital.

Since the 9th National Congress of the Party, the development of a knowledge-based economy, development by knowledge and artificial intelligence has been mentioned. This has increasingly demonstrated its correctness and is an inevitable trend for national development.

Over the past years, the Party and the State have had many solutions to improve the intelligence, professional qualifications and comprehensive skills of workers. The HDI and HCI indexes as of 2020 have both increased; HDI increased by more than 48%, ranking 117/189 countries; HCI (human capital index with the labor force accounting for 58% of the total population) is ranked in the highest group in the East Asia - Pacific region, but the quality of human resources is at a low level in the international capacity scale. Vietnam's labor productivity is only 7.6% of Singapore's and in Southeast Asia is only higher than Cambodia.

The country must develop through knowledge, and knowledge can only be acquired through learning. Learning at school, everywhere, anytime and self-learning. Learning is very important, everyone knows, but to connect learning - the root of all problems - to unify the whole society with a movement of the whole people is not yet possible.

PV:Professor, could you please share more clearly the difference between the learning and talent promotion movements launched by the Association for the Promotion of Education and the emulation movements at the national level?

Prof. Dr. Nguyen Thi Doan:Although the movement to encourage learning, encourage talents, and build a learning society has been done by the Vietnam Association for Promoting Education with all its might to improve people's knowledge, train human resources, and nurture talents over the past 26 years, this movement has only been initiated by the Association for Promoting Education within its association system, and has not yet become a common movement of the whole country. After all, we are lacking a catalyst that is a driving force in the spirit of promoting learning for all people, and must be promoted uniformly from the Central to the local level, like the movement "The whole country joins hands to build new rural areas"; "The whole people unite to build cultural life in residential areas".

The results of the emulation movement "The whole country joins hands to build new rural areas" that the Central Committee is summarizing in Resolution 7 of the Central Committee show that once the spirit of the whole people is strongly aroused, the people understand the benefits they gain through the emulation movement, how great is the strength of the people.

In addition, the implementation of the Project "Building a learning society" according to Decision 89/QD-TTg dated January 9, 2013 and Decision 1373/QD-TTg dated July 30, 2021 of the Prime Minister is lacking unified direction nationwide because the Central Steering Committee for Building a Learning Society has been dissolved, now only the Steering Committee at the local level remains. Thus, each locality has its own strengths. From that situation, the results of the Project implementation have not been as expected and the quality of the workforce has not been raised to the required level.

It can be seen that, since June 11, 1948, 74 years after Uncle Ho launched the emulation movement "Eliminate hunger, eradicate ignorance, eradicate foreign invaders", there has not been a national movement for the education of all people. There are a few emulation movements in the education sector such as the "Two Good" movement; the "Anti-Cheating in Examinations" movement... but they are not social in nature, only for schools in the education sector.

Now, we must apply Uncle Ho's idea of ​​"Eradicating Ignorance" into the movement of "Eradicating Ignorance" in the 4.0 industrial revolution, eliminating illiteracy in information technology, eliminating illiteracy in foreign language skills, eliminating illiteracy in international integration skills... Therefore, we strongly hope that from the Government to the People's Committees of the provinces must unify actions to achieve the best results.

PV:It is known that tomorrow (May 10), the Vietnam Association for Promoting Education will have a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam regarding the above issue. So what does the Professor expect from this meeting?

Prof. Dr. Nguyen Thi Doan:I can say that once the spirit of the people is encouraged and people see the benefits through the competition, they will do their best. For example, there are families who donate thousands of square meters of land to build roads. Thanks to the national emulation movement to join hands to build new rural areas, the face of the countryside has now changed day by day. Therefore, I hope to have such a movement of self-study.

Therefore, the Standing Committee of the Central Committee of the Vietnam Association for Promoting Education agreed to organize a Conference on the morning of May 10, to meet with relevant ministries, departments and branches to discuss and advise the Government to launch a national emulation movement such as the movement "The whole country joins hands to build new rural areas"; "The whole people unite to build cultural life in residential areas"...

I myself am very hopeful about the results of tomorrow's conference because everyone can certainly see the importance of this emulation movement. If there is a movement launched by the Government, it will be a strategic breakthrough in improving the quality of human resources and local human resources. This is an extremely important breakthrough. The name of the movement will be discussed in detail, but it is very necessary to have a national movement to promote learning among the people, still "Eradicating illiteracy" in the 4.0 era and still implementing Uncle Ho's teaching "An ignorant nation is a weak nation". This teaching has become the truth, always true in every era.

PV:Thank you very much, Professor!