VietNamNet Bridge – The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has denied the opinion that the current curriculum for first graders is overloaded, which forces parents to teach their children how to write before the school age.

When reviewing the 2012-2013 academic year and discussing the tasks for the new academic year, MOET requested nursery schools not to practice writing or tracing letters.

Director of the Pre-school Education Department under MOET Nguyen Ba Minh stressed that forcing children to practice writing in advance is “antiscientific.”

Minh said, if forcing children to practice writing too soon, when their physical conditions are not ready yet, this would make them stressful which would badly affect their physiological psychology development process. The pre-school age is the time for children to “discover the world” instead of practicing writing.

The surveys have pointed out that the age from 0-6 is the time for children to develop their physical status, emotions, social feelings and language. Therefore, they need to live in a friendly environment which facilitates their play activities.

A lot of parents have argued that if their children do not practice writing before they go to school, they would lag behind in the classes, where other children all can read and write. They also said that teaching children at nursery schools would allow children to get adapted to the schooling environment more quickly.

Especially, they have blamed the currently applied too heavy curriculum on their decision to teach children before their age.

However, MOET’s Deputy Director of the Primary Education Department Tran Thi Tham denied this, affirming that the curriculum is not heavy to first graders. She said the curriculums for different grades have been carefully considered by the ministry before they are applied in reality.

She went on to say that the current curriculum is being applied to the first graders in rural and remote areas as well. Even the ethnic minority students can also acquire the knowledge, though they don’t practice reading and writing in advance.

When children enter the first grade, they will be taught from the very beginning on how to sit, hold the pens, and pronounce properly. In order to help ethnic minority students learn better, the pre-school education department has designed a specific Vietnamese intensive curriculum.

Tham has also denied the fact that some primary schools, ignoring the MOET’s ban, still organize entrance exams to enroll students for the schools.

“The ministry has decided that primary schools nationwide must not organize the entrance exams. Some schools select students by considering necessary indexes. This must not be the exams,” she said.

In 2008, MOET began applying the new Vietnamese language teaching program on a trial basis in 19 provinces and cities, which showed good results. Following the success, the ministry decided to apply the technology all over the country on the voluntary basis. To date, the technology has been applied in 36 localities, which gather 200,000 students. The northern province of Lao Cai has been applying to 100 percent of its first graders.

With the method, Tham believes that students can be proficient in spelling, language structure, and they would not forget the knowledge throughout summer holidays.

Kim Chi