Reform in the right place

((Baonghean) - Our education sector is probably the most continuously reformed sector, but to say whether Vietnamese education has come closer to the door of integration is difficult to say.

Preparing for the new school year, my sister took Bim to buy books and school supplies. Seeing her happy, completely different from last year, I was surprised to ask her and she happily announced, "This year, we will not study VNEN anymore. Hearing the news, I breathed a sigh of relief. If we had studied VNEN, we would not have seen any reform. We only saw that Bim was shy, slow, and even more behind than his friends."

Group study time using the new teaching method in class 2a, Long Thanh Primary School, Yen Thanh. Photo: Hoai Thu

Not only my sister but also many colleagues at the office shared the same opinion and were clearly satisfied when there was a policy to stop the mass implementation of the new VNEN school model. There was a woman who had studied abroad and had many new views on how to educate her children, but she also did not support the VNEN model.

The reason she gave was: “The model of a country that is not in the group of developed countries in education in the world, why should we bring it back to learn? Why not learn the model of those advanced countries, otherwise, isn’t this going backwards?” Another woman who has an acquaintance who is the principal of an elementary school looked pensive:

- But they still say that schools can decide to maintain the VNEN model if parents highly agree. So it doesn't mean that this model should be stopped completely, right?

- Probably just saying that to make up for lost time. Parents have been protesting for a long time, so why support them? Many people even announced that they would transfer their children to another school if they continued with the VNEN model. They study VNEN but take exams in the old way, many classes don't even have decent textbooks to study, they have to study photocopied books. A class following the model has only ten or fifteen students, but here in our country there are only dozens of students. In general, the theory is very good but if it is not close to the real situation, it will die young, which is easy to predict.

Classroom following the VNEN program at Hung Dung Secondary School (Vinh City). Photo courtesy.

If what the education sector is doing is to “salvage” and make up for the shame of VNEN, then I feel a bit disappointed. Our education sector is probably the sector that has been reforming the most, but to say whether Vietnamese education has come closer to the door of integration is really difficult. The foreign language teaching and learning project is so costly, and its effectiveness so far is also one of the failures that the education sector must admit.

Except for private international schools in some big cities, foreign language learning in public schools is still poor. If today's youth have made progress in foreign languages, it is probably mostly due to actively reading books, watching movies, listening to international music, and taking extra classes at foreign language centers, but the effectiveness of the general education program is not much.

There is no need for reform in such a faraway place, no need to be so big as to change the educational model, the most urgent need right now is to improve the foreign language ability of Vietnamese people - does the education sector have any practical solutions? Just looking at the scene of Vietnamese beauty queens speaking English like Vietnamese in international arenas makes me feel fed up. The need for reform is reform in that place, not anywhere else!

Hai Trieu