VietNamNet Bridge – The physical strength of Vietnamese people is at a lower average, which has been blamed on the inappropriate physical education at schools.

The physical strength of Vietnamese people is not good enough to satisfy the requirements of the industrialization and modernization.

The comment was made by the Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Hoang Tuan Anh--noted at the July regularly meeting discussing the draft program on renovating the Vietnamese education and training to get adapted to the industrialization and modernization, in the context of the market economy and international integration.

Giving the participants at the meeting a shock, Anh gave warning about the bad of the stature and the physical strength of Vietnamese people, believing that the average heights of Vietnamese young men and women at 1.61 meters and 1.53 meters, respectively, are lower by 8 and 9 cm than the standards.

Anh also said that the height is lower than some other South East Asian countries.

In fact, the problem has been warned for a long time already. This was one of the reasons why the Prime Minister on April 28 2011, released the Decision No. 641 on running the master program on developing the physical strength and the height of Vietnamese in 2011-2030.

The program aims to develop the Vietnamese physical strength in the next 20 years in order to upgrade the quality of the labor force to serve in the country’s industrialization and modernization, enhance the quality of the Vietnamese race and increase the Vietnamese longevity.

Under the national program, Vietnam strives to obtain the average height of 167 cm for men by 2020 and 156 cm for women. The figures would be 168.5 cm and 157.5 cm for men and women by 2030.

The physical strength of Vietnamese men would be defined by their abilities to run for five minutes. 18-year old men are expected to run 1.050 meters, while women 850 meters.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has specially emphasized the importance of the two works – sports, physical exercises and school nutrition care.

The story about Japan has been cited as a good example for upgrading the physical strength and stature.  Japanese have been making every effort to improve their height over the last decades, because they understand well that the good physical strength would help them improve the productivity.

Meanwhile, the Vietnamese stature and height have not been improved significantly over the last many years. This has been blamed on the inappropriate attention to the physical training at schools.

The teacher of a high school complained that his students attended his lessons just to answer the roll call, because the diligence would be considered when assessing students’ learning capability.

Vietnamese students spend most of their time on theoretical subjects, while physical exercises have been automatically considered as “auxiliary” subject. For a long time, physical training hours have been considered as the time for students to relax.

Ngo Quang Huy, Director of the Hanoi National University’s Physical Education and Sports Center, noted that while Vietnamese students don’t like sports, the material facilities at schools are not good enough to attract them.

Meanwhile, a lot of people have disagreed with Anh, saying that Anh’s thought shows his inferiority complex about the Vietnamese ability. A reader emailed to the editorial board that he believes the success of the industrialization and modernization depends on the knowledge, viewpoint and iron will of people, not on physical strength.

NCDT