VietNamNet Bridge - Educators have repeatedly called upon schools to intensify life skill lessons, emphasizing that lack of life skills is the biggest problem of Vietnamese students. However, they still don’t know what ‘life skills’ mean. 

 

The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has decided to recall the life skill textbooks for first graders which teach students to walk on broken glass. However, the debate about what to teach primary school students in life skill lessons still continues.

‘Life skill’ turns out to be a controversial concept. Dr Phan Quoc Viet said basic life skills comprise presentation, communication, teamwork, learning and listening skills.  

Meanwhile, Nguyen Thanh Doan, MA, thinks life skills are abilities of doing one or a chain of actions based on the person’s knowledge and experience.

The skills can be classified into three groups – professional skills, social skills and working skills.

According to Dr. Vu Thu Huong, a lecturer at the Primary Education Faculty of the Hanoi University of Education, people need to obtain the skills to grow up, settle their problems in lives and live safely in their environments.

As such, ‘life skills’ include skills to get out of danger, respond to emergency and problematic cases and to manage money and time safely and effectively, and to find the ways to persuade others.

Bui Van Truc, director of Phu Sa Do Company in HCM City, though thinking that courage is an important lesson, believes that it is unreasonable to teach first graders to walk on glass.

As for primary school students, courageous students are those who dare to admit their mistakes to grow up into people who have high responsibility for their speech and behaviors. 

Huynh Toan, a life skill expert from the HCM City Youth Union, said that it was ‘unreasonable’ and ‘unscientific’ to teach students to walk on glass.

He went on to say that walking on broken glass cannot be done by all students. 

“Those students who cannot do this will feel self-pity, the feeling which may affect their lives in the future,” Toan said.

“Practicing life skills does not mean doing one’s stuff and showing off one’s outstanding abilities,” he said.

Huynh Thieu Hoa, a parent in Cau Giay district, said she does not know what her son needs to learn for life skills. 

“There are too many books on life skills for primary school students, and there are too many life skill training centers,” she explained.

“I cannot understand why even a book of the Education Publishing House also gives such unreasonable lessons,” she said.

Khanh Huyen