VietNamNet Bridge - The unreasonable curriculum and outdated textbooks have left students unknowledgeable about technology. 

The unreasonable curriculum and outdated textbooks have left students unknowledgeable about technology.

A teacher from a school in Tan Binh district, HCM City, for example, said students are provided with statistics released in 1995-2004 when studying about Vietnam’s agriculture. 

The textbook for 10th graders cited statistics that the General Statistics Office (GSO) released in 1995, 2000 and 2004 to show that “the agriculture, fisheries and forestry play a very important role in making products for export”.

The chart in the textbook which shows the labor structure in Vietnam also uses data from 1995 to 2000. Meanwhile, there have been big changes in the labor structure in recent years. 

“Out-of-date figures will lead to wrong analyses and wrong understanding,” she said.

After learning about the importance of fisheries, forestry and agriculture in the national economy, students will be asked to comment about the contribution of the branches to the gross domestic product based on a chart given in textbook. However, the chart is designed with statistics released 10 years ago. 

The textbook for 10th graders cited statistics that the General Statistics Office (GSO) released in 1995, 2000 and 2004 to show that “the agriculture, fisheries and forestry play a very important role in making products for export”.

“If we give students statistics which cannot be updated, we will sow the seeds of backward thinking in their heads,” she commented.

A high school teacher in Hanoi said he was discouraged when teaching technology to 12th graders because he believes the lessons are useless in modern life.

“I have to give lessons about television and I have to talk about antenna as a wave receiver,” he said. “Antennas are no longer used. They can only be found at some families’ houses.”

“With the national television digitalization program, Vietnamese will use set top boxes for TVs, and antenna will no longer exist. However, students continue learning about antenna, while they don’t know how to use set top boxes,” he said.

Do Ngoc Thinh, a technology teacher of the Ba Diem High School in HCM City, said the Ministry of Education and Training sometimes add new special topics into technology textbook. For example, technology teachers are asked to teach financial skills to high school students as a special topic on life skills.

However, the problem is that only a limited number of teachers specializing in technology have been trained to give lessons on the topic. 

Other teachers in charge of several teaching subjects have not been trained. 

Meanwhile, the majority of teachers giving technology lessons to students are in charge of more than one subject.

Thinh said it was unreasonable to teach life skills in technology lessons, saying that life skills should be part of all learning subjects.


NLD