VietNamNet Bridge - A list of four major flaws in Vietnam’s education compiled by Nguyen Tuan Hai, the owner of an education establishment in Hanoi, has been disseminated among the public. Many parents have admitted that they make at least one of the four mistakes. 

1.Vietnamese parents, especially urbanites, all want to turn their children into prodigies at school. 

Every day, they try to stuff their children’s heads with knowledge and practice to attend exams to schools for the gifted or selected classes for excellent students, as if being students of these schools and classes is the only way for children to have bright future.

Most students with good learning aptitude are asked by their parents to apply for math or English majoring classes at schools for the gifted. Meanwhile, other learning subjects are considered less ‘attractive’, including physics, the science which has close relations with people’s daily life, as well as social sciences and arts which make people’s lives more enjoyable.

As a result, many talented students in non-math and non-English fields can be overlooked because they don’t have opportunities to develop.
 

2. Adults want billionaires.

Look at the way Vietnamese join the traffic: everyone tries to go ahead to surpass other people, even by one meter. The same thing is occurring in the education race. Parents all want their children to study in the majors which can bring money. They want themselves and their children to become billionaires, as soon as possible.

A list of four major flaws in Vietnam’s education compiled by Nguyen Tuan Hai, the owner of an education establishment in Hanoi, has been disseminated among the public. Many parents have admitted that they make at least one of the four mistakes.

As a result, other sciences and arts majors have lost many talents to training majors which can earn big money. Money and positions in society, not passion and enthusiasm to devote themselves to society’s development, are considered the tools that measure one’s success in life.

That is the reason why people rush to go to university to obtain master’s degree and doctorates. Ironically, Vietnam now can export many products to the world market, but cannot export domestically trained MAs and PhDs.

3. Vietnamese teachers try to give as much knowledge as possible to students, while ‘forgetting’ to train them in skills and ways of thinking.

Students only receive theoretical knowledge at school, while they don’t have opportunities for practice. One interesting experiment would be worth more than one chapter of theory.

Meanwhile, university students write down the words of lecturers, who read the textbooks that every student has or can have. There is no emphasis on self-study, self-reading and self-research.

4.All parents dream enrolling their children in top schools in the US.

The US is believed to be the best destination for students all over the world. Therefore, many parents begin preparing their children for studying in the US when they begin school.