VietNamNet Bridge - Many people expressed their concern about the fate of history as a learning subject at general schools after the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) integrates history with other subjects.

 

 

MOET, which is working on general education reform, has designed a 3-in-1 learning subject – Vietnamese citizens and the fatherland – which is a combination of three learning subjects which are taught separately – history, citizen education and national defence & security.

The ministry has tried to calm the public down by affirming that history will not disappear from general schools. Only the way of teaching history will be changed. 

However, Duong Trung Quoc, a renowned historian, said in an interview to Nguoi Lao Dong: “MOET argues that history will not be eliminated from school, but we think this is just ‘saying’ and we doubt it.” 

“We feel disappointed with the idea of declaring death to history as a learning subject at general school,” Quoc said.

A high school teacher in Hanoi commented that MOET seems to be trying to ‘please’ students who complain they are fed up with history lessons by integrating history into other learning subjects.

In 1996, Tuoi Tre newspaper conducted a survey on students’ interest in history and found their differences with other subjects. Polled students said they found history lessons boring and time consuming. 

However, surprisingly, students now do not feel excited about MOET’s idea on integrating history with other learning subjects as analysts thought. Nguyen Van Hung, a student in Hanoi, wrote on his Facebook that though he is bad at history, he doesn’t want history removed as a learning subject.

“I believe that history is important. What MOET needs to do is to change the teaching method to make history lessons more attractive in the eyes of students, not to eliminate history as a subject,” he commented.

Kieu The Hung, former vice president of the Hanoi Education University, commented on Nguoi Lao Dong that it was an ‘unreasonable’ and ‘anti-scientific’ idea to eliminate history.

Hung said that he has never before seen such a ‘special phenomenon’: so many people, from history lecturers to scientists, working teachers and retired teachers, old people to students, and war veterans,have expressed their worries about the position of history in the general education curriculum.

Quoc, the historian, said that though he advocates the idea that it is necessary to reform the education and ease the workload on students, he does not think eliminating history from curriculum is a reasonable behavior.

“We don’t agree with MOET on its way to treat history,” he said.

Thanh Lich