Many experts attending a seminar on textbook reform in Hanoi on August 28 voiced their concerns over the flaws of the scheme to reform curriculums and textbooks the Ministry of Education and Training has initiated.
At the consultation with experts held by the National Assembly’s Committee for Culture, Education, Youth, Adolescents and Children, Prof. Ho Ngoc Dai said that the scheme is unrealistic and is conceived with an old mindset.
According to the professor, the authors have dreamed up the scheme without referring to learners as the core for reform.
“There are children and then there are schools, teachers, principals, directors of education departments and education ministers. They keep talking about the reform without orienting to children,” he said.
According to Prof. Nguyen Minh Thuyet, positive impacts of the new curriculums mentioned in the report are just imaginations of the authors and not based on rationales, practices, experiments or surveys.
The scheme states that “the new curriculums will focus on developing capacities of learners and thus workload will be streamlined and help reduce overloads and learners do not need to take extracurricular classes.” Referring to this point, Thuyet said extracurricular classes are not based on the demand of learners, but come from teachers who seek more income.
“The Ministry of Education and Training is about to present the textbook reform scheme to the National Assembly but has not put it on the table for discussion until now, which is too late,” Thuyet said.
Thuyet added a scheme needs to include how it will impact the State budget before being presented to the National Assembly but the textbook reform scheme does not.
Meanwhile, Prof. Nguyen Khac Phi said that the title of the document called “report on impacts of the new curriculums” is not accurate as new curriculums and textbooks have not come out. So there cannot be a report on a thing which has not existed, he added.
SGT/VNN