VietNamNet Bridge - Many  secondary school students in Huong Hoa District in the central province of Quang Tri have been found illiterate, with some of the oldest students unable to read or write. 

Stories about the students have appeared in local newspapers, but most of them featured students in the lower grades.

Nguyen Huu Son, a parent in Nghe An province, last year said his daughter, a third grader, still could not  write words of two syllables.

Son’s daughter, born in 2005, was a third grader at Thanh Van Primary School, when her story was published in local newspapers. Her knowledge was worse than that of a first grader.

Son said that one day he asked the daughter to read the words on TV and surprisingly realized that she couldn’t read them. 

Nguyen Tung Lam, a renowned educator, headmaster of Dinh Tien Hoang High School in Hanoi, said he cannot understand why students still can move up to the next grade even though they have poor learning records or grades below average.

“How could the students hide their illiteracy, while the students’ learning records are under the control of a monitoring system of teachers, inspectors, headmasters and education sub-departments.

“It takes students several months or one year at maximum to learn to read and write. Meanwhile, it is easy to examine students to find out if they can read and write. Why couldn’t the educators discover the truth?” he said.

An analyst commented that the problem is not the educators’ ability to examine students, but in their attitudes to their work. 

“They did not discover the truth because they did not want to,” he said.

He said that illiteracy of secondary school graders is a result of the so called “achievement disease in education”. 

The phrase has been used in Vietnam to describe the attitude of educators, who try to hide shortcomings and only report high achievements.

This should be blamed on the current management policies, which “encourage” teachers to do this. 

“They (the teachers) get awards if their students gain achievements,” he said.

“It would be wonderful if 100 percent of your students can move up to the next grade. But, you would be reprimanded if your students cannot finish the academic year,” he explained.

“It is the teachers who have to take responsibility for these cases, while the schools, local education sub-departments and parents also must be jointly responsible,” Lam said.

Dan Viet