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A contradiction exists in Vietnamese education. Vietnam is usually among top 15 in Asian academic contests and the Vietnamese education department reports that 95-100% of students graduate from high school every year. However, both international and national companies complain they have to completely re-train the graduated students about communication, team-work and specialized skills. Graduated students admit they gain little from their education. Parents moan that the more their children study, the less skillful they can deal with real lives’ problems. These failures in education are the results of poor facilities, unsatisfactory teaching staffs, an overloaded yet incompetent curriculum, and social misconceptions. Each and every problem is calamitous, and without a throughout and meticulous innovation, the problems will aggravate speedily.

The most evident educational calamities are the degraded and insufficient facilities. Having few classes, schools stuff each class with at least fifty students, which limits teachers from recognizing students struggling academically or emotionally. Students can’t get access to updated and reliable academic resources since computer labs and libraries are rare, and if existing, have “antiquated equipment” and books “published decades ago” (trans. from Hoang “Khoa Hoc” 2). All science classes in a school share one or two laboratories, so each class experiments at most three times a semester, with eight to ten students sharing a set of equipment. Unable to experience trials and processes or train how to or produce scientific products based on theories, the students neither can understand nor practically use the knowledge. This can explain why among Asian countries, Vietnam always has the lowest annual numbers of new inventions (Nguyen Ngoc 3). In 2009, research shows that 46% of graduated students can’t conduct basic research for their companies (Nguyen Ngoc 4).

Indeed, the Vietnamese economic condition can’t afford educational equipment as modern as those of developed countries. Still, is the economy to blame if the education department annually dispenses hundred billion dollars for academic contests and exams to train students to compete in international contests and raise their country’s fame? Do these contests actually encourage students to study, or do they instead prevent students from training practical skills such as experimenting and researching? Imagine how many thousands of students and teachers these contests recognize each year: beautiful handwriting, best students and teachers for each subject, teaching staff with the most contribution, graduation and entrance exams for each school level, and so on. Do these mass-produced certificates prove any true values? In addition, these contests require advanced knowledge above students’ grade levels. In order to prepare students for the contests, preparatory classes - many of which are funded by the government - grow rapidly, wasting more public funding upon examining student’s skills rather than teaching them these skills.

Surprisingly, the main cause of funding loss is not the excessive contests and exams but the fact that schools and individuals steal government and parents’ funding to fill those schools and individuals’ pockets and to pay for the silence of any superiors. The government rarely catches the schools’ crimes, since government laws about educational bills’ records are unclear and cursory. The Vietnamese Investment Review newspapers report that in 2005, bribes and embezzlements deprive 40% of the overall government’s educational funding, not to mention the unreported loss. Ha Noi University even openly steals money from students by opening fake computer classes and guaranteeing that students applying for the class will receive two free points in graduation exams (Tam 2).

The most ridiculous outcome of bribes and embezzlements is the cycle of funding loss and salaries’ lowering. Due to the deficiency in educational funding, on average, a college professor earns $170 a year, so they can buy a house after working for a hundred year (Vu 5). However, if they complicate their tests and force students to take their preparatory classes, they can double or triple their salaries. By accepting “presents” from parents and joining the bribe machines, they can exponentially raise their incomes. The teachers partly console their morality by claiming that excessive school contests decrease funding at the relatively same percent as bribes do. From the teachers’ examples, the students learn a “philosophy” that fraudulence is a fast, effective and acceptable way to achieve results. They use this philosophy to rationalize their cheating during tests, and once again, ease their consciences and senses of honesties. They gradually lose trust and respect towards the teachers, and thus ignore the teachers’ sermons about morality.

Because of low salaries and teachers’ notorieties, the college students are also reluctant to choose teaching education as their majors, resulting in a critical lack of Vietnamese teachers, as shown in the chart below.

Source: trans. from Hoang “Nguoi Thay” 10

According to the chart, on average, the teachers are 44-52 times fewer than the students. As a result, in addition to dealing with tight schedules (24 hours a week for high school teachers), the teachers have to score mountains of tests, then attend conferences and guide extra-curricular activities. From the evening until night, they struggle with “lesson plans, reports of students’ performances, extra-curriculum reports, department conference reports, specialized projects’ reports, and so on” (trans. from Vu 6). Each record is at least 60 pages in length, and takes at least six hours to finish (trans. from Vu 6). With the overburdened workload, the teachers can’t well-compose lesson plans or update their knowledge. Their enthusiasm and think-abilities decay year by year. Well-trained teachers who are dissatisfied with the salaries and the over-demanding schedules end up quitting teaching and going to work for companies, causing the already infinitesimal portion of well-trained teachers to shrink tremendously. In 2009, 10% of college professors have doctorate degrees, 15% have master degrees; so basically the teachers’ and the students have equal academic levels (Hoang “Dai Hoc” 7). None of the pre-school teachers have master degrees (Hoang “Dai Hoc” 7). Due to the pre-school teachers’ lack of education increases the frequencies of mental abuse, physical violence and uses of unacademic languages. Most abusing actions are not serious, such as lightly lashing on children’s arms. The teachers don’t mean any harm either but merely can’t “anticipate” that such abuse may “damage children’s physical, mental and emotional developments” (trans. from Hoang “Nguoi Thay” 4).

The major factor determining the success of a curriculum, nevertheless, is not the facilities or the teacher but the curriculum, which is not flexible. Despite the diversities of teachers’ teaching methods and students’ characteristics, school in each school level, except in college, share identical curriculums, all of which are determined by the Government’s Educational Department. Though this policy squanders billion dollars of government’s money for researching and conducting the curriculum, it is ineffective. Teachers can’t teach at their paces or utilize their individual strengths. Students can’t choose subjects fitting their majors and interests either. They assume that they are “gobbling” useless knowledge, and use this assumption as an excuse not to study wholeheartedly. Limited from diverse conceptions, the students meet difficulties recognizing counter-arguments and supporting their sides in controversial issues.

Not only is the Vietnamese curriculum inflexible, it is also impractical. It concentrates on cramming knowledge rather than training critical thinking and organizing information. For instance, secondary eleventh grade students have intensive yet unfocused semester schedules, including thirteen subjects: mathematics, foreign language, technology, music, art, PE, civics, and so on, most of which overload the curricula. In particular, a history teacher has 12-15 lessons, 4 tests and 5-7 quizzes in 24 forty-five-minute lessons (Tam 3). Each session includes complicated topics such as the causes, developments and consequences of World War I. Subsequently, in the first fourth of the semester, the teacher may lecture and ask questions, yet can’t expand the lessons to real life application or teach her students some tactics for long-lasted remembrance. Then, the rest of the semester, fearing the students will fail their semester’s exams if she doesn’t teach the whole curriculum, the teacher reads for the students to highlight numerous text-book lines. The students are too exhausted with remembering their lessons to consider whether the knowledge is rational or understandable. They tend to delete “old” knowledge as soon as new semesters come. The higher they study, the more confused they are. More seriously, scare discussions, presentations and projects make lessons monotonous and prevent student from training their public-speaking, discussing, debating, team-work and leadership skills.

Since teachers can’t throughout explain the lessons, elementary students normally go to preparatory schools. Secondary students naturally leave preparatory schools at 9pm. The summers of many students are not for vacations and sports but to study the next year’s lessons in preparatory schools. Except from studying, these students can’t play sports, do house work or pack for a trip. Besides from lacking life experiences and the abilities to adjust to changing conditions, the students don’t have chances to work part-time or do volunteer jobs. Sitting still days and days, their muscles and reflections degrade. Most importantly, the students can’t play with their friends. Play is not merely for fun but to nurture a happy, lively and creative childhood. It is a child’s basic right.
Perhaps the Vietnamese students are suffering from the education because of some Vietnamese social misconceptions. Eighty four years after the feudal government corrupted, the Vietnamese educational goals are still to “aim for high positions in the government” rather than to satisfy their curiosities and train their bodies, minds and souls (trans. from Nguyen D. Cung 4). Influenced by the “Confucianism once-popular in Vietnam”, the curricula focus on “theories” instead of “knowledge’s real applicability” (trans. from Nguyen D. Cung 4). “Achievements” but not “the paths to reap results” are important (trans. from Nguyen D. Cung 4). These conceptions cause a redundant and crooked education, as shown above, and impair the productive methods remaining in the education. For instance, according to Nguyen Dinh Cung – the vice-president of the Central Committee Research Institute, the Vietnamese literature curriculum is “well-conducted” (trans. from Nguyen D. Cung 4). It details the classification of literature genres, clearly states the genres’ outlines and criteria, and offers tactics to compose interesting essays. Nonetheless, with the unreasonably intensive curricula, teachers teach these skills cursorily, and students lack time to review the skills. In order to maintain high grades, the students gather ideas from various teachers in preparatory schools, then re-write and re-organize these ideas to compose their own essays. Teachers are too used to this illegal citing “disease” that they highly score essays with similar ideas as long as the essays are interesting. Parents also encourage the disease by driving their children to preparatory schools six days a week. With this teaching method, the students don’t learn any knowledge about literature. The Government’s Educational Department reports that in 2006, 45% of students in Educational University satisfy dictation requirements, 26% satisfy grammar requirements, which means these future teachers can’t write as well as a fifth grade students do (Hoang “Dai Hoc” 2).

Another Vietnamese misconception about the education is the tradition stating that whatever the students learn from the teachers are as respectable as the admonishments of the student’s ancestors. Unfortunately, the students don’t reasonably listen to the teachers or think for themselves but instead blindly follow the teachers’ instructions. They assume that the knowledge their teachers teach are always true. They dread to express their personal opinions in exams, since arguments opposing those in composition books or teachers’ speeches are always wrong. The teachers, in the same manners, would label the students offering such ideas impudent. Eventually, the students are submissive, undetermined and indolent to think for themselves.

The Vietnamese indeed need reformation, and every reformation requires large amounts of money. The government should transfer 10% of the treasury spent on massive construction of department stores into educational innovations. Education is the foundation of a country’s future, decorating cities’ views is secondary. Preventing money lost due to excessive academic contests, bribes and embezzlement is also important. If the Government’s Educational Department upgrades their hand-written records, which are easily falsified, into computerized records, schools and individualities will meet more difficulties exaggerating the spent money, thus lost funding decreases. Plus, except from college entrance and graduating exams, the Educational Department should eliminate graduating exams for all grade-levels and all academic contests for teachers and students. Quizzes, final exams and teachers’ recordings can determine the students’ competences accurately. One or two contests annually sufficiently trigger students to survey about advanced knowledge. Most significantly, without these exams, the government doesn’t need to spend money on organizing preparatory classes. Students have to attend fewer preparatory classes and no longer face pressure from incessant contests and exams.

Using 30% of the billions of dollars regained from the first step above, the government can quadruple the teachers’ salaries and hire twice the numbers of the current teachers. College teachers then can buy a house after 25 years of working. They can teach fewer students and complete fewer recordings. Additionally, higher salaries reduce student’s reluctances to major in teaching, leading to more students attending educational colleges, and finally, more future teachers. This new labor force shares the current teachers’ burdens, thus reduces the teachers’ stress and enables the teachers to have more time to renew their knowledge. With higher salaries, teachers aren’t obligated to join the bribe machines for survival either. Since bribe has grown roots in teacher’s life, the teachers need an abundance of time and courage to forfeit this habit. Still, they have in hand the chances to implement the Vietnamese traditional roles of teachers: the guides, the guardians and the second parents of the students. They can retrieve their dignity and the students’ respect towards them.

Another 20% of the funding regained in the first step is for sending teachers abroad to train in teaching. Vietnam should suggest European or American countries to cooperate with them in this program to share the costs and strengthen their bonds. Vietnamese teachers selected to receive the program can practice foreign languages – a weakness of Vietnamese teachers. They can investigate teaching methods in developed countries and update their knowledge. Obviously, because of the varied national situations, even the most advanced education only best suits its country. Therefore, the teachers have to regard the Vietnamese current situation to select which knowledge to learn.

10% of the funding regained in the first step, if possible, is for improving the facilities, firstly by doubling the number of classroom so that each class has at most 35 students. Each high school needs at least three laboratories (for biology, physics and chemistry). Each school needs an official website offering reliable resources for research and conducts some class lessons about researching. Still, since researching is also a vital weakness of Vietnamese teachers, these classes have the best effects only after the teachers complete the abroad training program.

The Government’s Educational Department can also share the burden of work and funding with schools and individuals by enabling them to participate in the educational reformation. Human beings aren’t perfect; neither are the professors the Educational Department chose. These professors may be knowledgeable and experienced in teaching, but they can’t firmly grasp the need of each school in each city. After allowing every teacher and scientist to promote ideas to innovate the curricula, the Educational Department can gather numerous diverse conceptions, then select and assemble a council to filter these ideas, summarize the criteria for the curricula and determine sets of curricula that schools can choose based on the characteristics of the schools’ students, teachers and locations. In order to diminish superfluous theories from the curricula and emphasize on practical skills, the council should discuss with administrators of big companies as well as successful businesspeople, intellectuals and activists to figure out what characteristics the contemporary Vietnamese economy, society and politic demand their citizens to possess. Hiring these teachers requires about 40% of the regained money.

Obviously, this proposal requires a relative amount of time and money. The council needs at least three years to determine acceptable criteria for the curriculum. Limited funding enables the government to send only 30-50 teachers to train abroad each time. Each group trains for three to six months, and there are tens of these groups. Even so, an educational innovation always requires patience, and rush only leads to failure. During the last five years, hoping that the students can study new curricula as soon as possible, the Government’s Educational Department has published new curricula at the beginning of the year, and then has retrieved the curricula at the end of the year, for the curricula still contain flaws. As a consequence of limited funding, the Education Department annually selects seven among twelve grades to receive innovative curricula. According to professor Do of Educational University, this proposal has consumed about 30% of the annual treasury, and its mere purpose is to “increase Vietnamese educational rank among Asian countries” by training students for international contests instead of preparing them for real lives (2). As a consequence, students are suffocated with new floods of knowledge. They alternatively study knowledge in the old and new curriculum, some of which contrast with each other. Even in primary schools, they lack a step-by-step education, lose their knowledge’ foundations and exacerbate their machinery learning styles.

In short, as long as the Vietnamese don’t exterminate the achievement disease from their trains of thoughts, they will merely emaciate their time and treasury with half-baked educational innovations. It’s thus urgent time for the Vietnamese to reconsider the true purpose of education: to nurture students to become perceptive and functionary adults who possess complete and colorful souls and distinct purposes for lives. Do Vietnamese parents and teachers, especially those in the government machines, if not feeling responsible for their children and students, want to live in a retrograde and unproductive country as seniors? Only the Vietnamese governments, parents and teachers know the answer for these questions.