Education
Revamping history education in Vietnam
  • By S. H | dtinews.vn | November 07, 2012 02:35 PM

The Ministry of Education and Training is planning to change the content of history textbooks and teaching methods to make the subject more interesting to students.

 
 Students in Thanh Hoa Province visit a museum for a history lesson

The Ministry of Education and Training announced that they have collected over 99 reports for the national conference on history teaching from teachers, scientists as well as education managers.

The majority agreed that the content has not shown much difference in the lessons between school levels, moreover, the structure of the lessons were not really balanced between ancient history, war history and modern times.

The textbooks, many said, overemphasised the Vietnam War, and though the content goes deeper for higher levels, the same themes repeat themselves, boring students.

Teaching methods were also under scrutiny, with many of the reports indicating that lesson plans lack active participation from students and discourage independent thinking.

The reports suggested that teachers should instruct students to analyse, using the knowledge they have been taught, to form their own conclusions on topics.

Many experts have said that the emphasis on maths and sciences, coupled with the low salary of teachers, has led to this problem.

Experts have also proposed to have more open tests on history and combine the teacher evaluation and student evaluation about their own performance.

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