VietNamNet Bridge – Too many big mistakes were found in the educational books published in 2013. The irresponsibility of the editors and publishing houses is feared to spoil the next generations.

Vietnamese book shows Chinese flag

In March 2013, Vietnamese parents got exceedingly astonished when finding the Chinese flag shown in the book “Be lam quen voi chu cai” (getting familiar with letters.”

The image of a Chinese flag did not come in line with the Ministry of Education and Training’s regulations on the educational purposes and programs at schools.

In late March 2013, in the book “Phat trine toan dien tri thong minh cho tre” (developing children’s intelligence) released by Dan Tri Publishing House, parents once again found the image of a Chinese flag flying over a school.

Horrible math questions

“You had 10 fingers. But after an accident, you lost two fingers. How many fingers do you still have?”

This was a math question given to first graders for the lessons relating to the four basic operations within 100.

Only when the problem was found and spread out on Internet did the Ministry of Information and Communication check the information and discover that the book was circulated illegally.

Textbooks forget… Hoang Sa and Truong Sa

The textbook for first graders showed a map of Vietnamese country which did not show the images of Truong Sa and Hoang Sa archipelagos.

Explaining this, Director of the Vietnam Education Publishing House Ngo Tran Ai blamed this on the printing quality, saying that the image was just not very clear.

The textbooks were printed by different printing houses, which produced the textbooks with different quality.

Le Quy Don’s book showed Nguyen Trai’s photo

This was “Kien van tieu luc” (Small Chronicle of Things Seen and Heard) book of Le Quy Don, a well known Le Dynasty Confucian scholar.

The biggest mistake of the book was that instead of the picture of Le Quy Don, the real author of the book, the publishing house showed the picture of Nguyen Trai (1380-1442) an illustrious Vietnamese Confucian scholar, a noted poet,[1] a skilled politician and a master tactician.

The second mistake was found right on the cover page: the name of the translator “Pham Trong Diem” was mistakenly printed as “Nguyen Trong Diem.”

Notebooks showed wrong historical knowledge

The book helping students practice writing published by the Vietnam Education House showed a serious mistake relating to the historical facts.

In the lesson about Khai Dinh’s King Palace, the author’s explanation led to the misunderstanding that Khai Dinh was the last king of Nguyen dynasty. Meanwhile, in fact, it was Bao Dai, who was the last king of the dynasty.

More than 3,000 copies of the book published through the districts’ education sub-departments were then recalled to have the mistakes fixed.

Software with nine-dotted line used at secondary schools

In late December 2013, some secondary schools in HCM City were found as using the software with the image of nine dotted line sourced from China.

Earth Explorer, a software piece associated with the informatics textbook for 7th graders in Vietnam, showing the image of the controversial nine dotted line, can be downloaded from Motherplanet.com.

This is the website of Motherplanet, headquartered in Shanghai, China, established in 2002 which specializes in providing 3D graphics and maps.

Dan Viet