VietNamNet Bridge – Experts believe that the biggest problem in Vietnam’s education now is that teachers cannot act as educators, but they just simply are the “teaching workers.”

The “tho day” (teaching workers) has been invented recently, used to talk about the teachers, who simply provide knowledge to students year after year, thus turning themselves into the teaching machines with no emotion, no feeling and no care about students. The teaching workers just try to go to school every day to give lessons every day, fulfill the duties assigned by the schools and then return home after teaching hours.

Professor Nguyen Minh Thuyet, Chair of the National Assembly’s Committee for the Education, Youth and Children, has noted that teachers have forgot that they are the educators.

NN, a teacher of a high school in Hanoi said that she reasoned with a colleague while they both served as the proctors at an exam. When discovering a student copying from textbook, NN asked the student to put the textbook into his briefcase and promise not to open the book again. Meanwhile, the colleague pretended that she did not see the cheating behavior.

Later, NN discovered the behavior of cheating at the exam committed by another student and decided to seize his documents. The colleague then took NN aside to tell NN that she should have not done this, and that the proctors should have been “kind-hearted” and let the student pass the exams.

“I felt sad when hearing that and I feel disappointed when realizing that this is the way of thinking of the majority of teachers nowadays,” NN said.

“While they think that they should create most favorable conditions for students to copy and pass exams, because they love students, I strongly believe that they pursue an anti-pedagogical education method,” NN added.

Nguyen Thi Hien, Headmaster of the Doan Thi Diem people’s founded school, recalled a lesson carried out by a young teacher of the school. It was a good teaching hour, when the teacher successfully provided knowledge to students, while the students were dynamic and could understand the topic of the lesson.

However, Hien only gave “good” mark when assessing the lesson. “It was because the teacher could not show her role as an educator,” Hien explained.

“Our school has been following a principle that the top priority task of a teacher is educating, while providing knowledge is just the second important task,” she added.

H, a university lecturer, is the parent of a third grader, who goes to a people founded school, complained that her daughter has to attend extra classes every day, after the school hours.

“The teacher asked her housemaid to go to school to meet students and then carry students to the teacher’s house, located near the school, so that the students can attend private tutoring lessons there,” she explained.

The lecturer believes that a third grader should not be burdened with too many lessons, but she has to send her child to the private tutoring class, because she has been told that if teachers do not have extra income, they would not be able to live and keep teaching.

Nguyen Tung Lam, Headmaster of the Dinh Tien Hoang people founded school, has noted that Vietnam is following a special way when managing teachers based on the number of teaching hours they give.

Lam said in developed countries, teachers have to stay at schools and keep working until the working hours finish. Meanwhile, in Vietnam, teachers can leave schools right after they finish their lessons.

Thuyet believes that it’s necessary to change the method of enrolling students for pedagogical schools.

He said that in the past, a lot of requirements were set on pedagogical school students. For example, students had to attend the interview, where they answered the questions about their viewpoint about the career.

Compiled by C. V