Educational reforms don't need trillion-dollar projects.

From 1945 to the present, Vietnam has undergone four major reforms (1950, 1956, 1979, 2013).

Each reform involved significant changes such as the national school system, curriculum content and textbooks, teaching methods, and assessment methods.

However, a closer look at the details of these educational reforms reveals that school life seems to have been neglected during the reforms.

Creating a healthy school environment is crucial in every educational reform. Photo: Le Anh Dung

Typically, in major educational reforms around the world, school life—including all activities taking place in the school and the surrounding atmosphere—is always included in the reform content, and its improvement is a crucial indicator in assessing the success of the reform.

However, school life in Vietnam today, despite numerous reforms, remains stagnant and lacks significant change.

School life and the atmosphere still heavily reflect the mindset, habits, and ways of living from decades ago, in the context of a country at war and not yet deeply integrated into the global community.

Many school activities like these could be mentioned: weekend class activities, student conduct assessments, activities of the "Red Flag" (Red Star) team, etc.

These activities are heavily influenced by the mindset of enforcing strict discipline on students, and when repeated nationwide in all schools for a long period, they become…normal school activities.

However, in today's era of globalization, when viewed through the lens of modern educational philosophy aimed at shaping well-rounded citizens, many such activities appear abnormal and harmful to students' development and the functioning of schools.

Let's take a typical example: the evaluation of students' conduct (morality).

A school is an organization, a space with its own unique characteristics, and therefore it always needs "rules" that its members must follow to ensure that its operation is not disrupted.

However, violations of school "rules" such as being late, talking during class, forgetting to do chores, forgetting to do homework, etc., cannot be used as a basis for judging a person's morality. Academic achievement, measured by grades, is even less likely to determine whether someone has good or bad morals.

Furthermore, the teacher's unilateral moral judgment, coming from an entity holding both "power" and "authority," creates a mechanism of unconditional obedience that is detrimental to the development of students' thinking and character.

A person's morality cannot be judged as good or bad using simple levels like "fair," "good," "poor," "average," "weak," etc., as school teachers are doing. This is both offensive and likely to cause harm to students, who are in the process of socializing and becoming adults.

It is easy to see in reality that many students who received poor or unsatisfactory conduct grades during their school years have become individuals with rich souls and admirable personalities, while many students who had excellent conduct grades for 12 consecutive years have become self-serving, selfish individuals who are willing to trample on the health, lives, and living space of others.

In Japan, and perhaps in all other countries with successful education systems, there is no moral evaluation of students in schools.

To improve the quality of education and minimize problems in schools, improving school life is essential. Therefore, in addition to considering abolishing student conduct evaluations, schools also need to eliminate the following activities:

1. Using students as "Red Star" (a term used to describe students who are in a specific class or graded based on their performance) to identify mistakes in other students' classes.

2. Ranking of students in terms of academic performance within the class and by grade level.

3. Publicly comment on students in front of other parents or students during group activities such as flag ceremonies, class meetings, or parent-teacher meetings.

4. Using the term "invigilator" to check and monitor students' adherence to school regulations (the title "invigilator" in schools may evoke negative and inappropriate associations in an educational environment).

In addition to eliminating the aforementioned outdated school activities, schools need to actively do the following:

1. Create conditions for students to organize their own "autonomous" clubs and organizations such as sports clubs, arts clubs, cultural clubs, and social activity clubs.

2. Facilitate students in producing and operating school radio broadcasts and publishing regular class and school newsletters.

3. Create conditions and provide support for students to conduct activities that connect with parents, local people, and the local community, such as: performing arts, exhibiting learning products, and holding regular annual or semester-based sports days.

4. Create opportunities for parents to participate in school activities with their children, such as field trips, observing classes, participating in sports competitions, cultural exchanges, volunteering in the local community and at school with their children, building school gardens, laboratories, etc.

In modern educational theory, schools are not only places to prepare for life, but must also be life itself, where students can experience and practice being "young citizens" by actively participating as "masters" in social activities.

Therefore, the richer and more realistic school life becomes, the more effectively it will contribute to students' personal and professional growth.

These reforms neither require "trillions of dong" nor can be implemented immediately in any school, regardless of its existing facilities.

Every educational reform must eventually be tested in practice. If reforms fail to create a fresh atmosphere and a democratic, free environment in schools, then even the most elaborate reform policies and initiatives will struggle to succeed.

According to Vietnamnet.vn