How should we properly perceive the importance of lifelong learning? How can we raise social awareness to increase investment and interest in promoting lifelong learning? Education expert - Dr. Hoang Ngoc Vinh - former Director of the Department of Vocational Education ( Ministry of Education and Training ) had an interview with Dai Doan Ket Newspaper reporter.
PV: The movement "The whole country competes to build a learning society, promote lifelong learning in the period of 2023 - 2030" has been and is being deployed to each locality, each residential group, school... However, the reality is that for a long time, many people still think that learning is the job of students, scientists , and researchers. Learning has almost stopped after the gates of universities and vocational schools. What do you think about this?
Dr. Hoang Ngoc Vinh: First of all, I would like to reiterate that the policy of an education for everyone, regardless of region, condition, etc., is correct in the context that humanity is facing the challenge of constantly innovating, learning, and adapting to changes in nature, science, and technology, etc.
We must determine that graduating from high school, college, university... is the first stop for each person, not the end of learning here. During the working period, the real environment is different from the educational environment not only in terms of culture, context, surrounding environment, relationships are also different... Besides, technology is constantly updating and advancing, requiring each person to learn to update changes and new trends.
Lifelong learning will create opportunities for everyone to cope with the challenges of the new era and is affirmed as an important part of the national education system of countries. This is the motivation for self-study that is to meet the demands of the job.
Education does not stop at learning in class, in school, but everywhere, all the time. Learning in your life, learning from each other and learning from teachers, friends and colleagues…. As President Ho Chi Minh said: As long as you live, you must continue to learn.
To make lifelong learning not just a slogan but a reality, what do we need to equip learners with, sir?
- First of all, I think we must recognize and address the challenges that are currently facing us. That is, even in the process of general education, the educational philosophy for everyone is still facing obstacles when we have extremely stressful exams such as entering grade 6 and especially grade 10 of public high schools. The lack of ensuring enough places to study for all students who wish to study is a burning issue in many localities. It is necessary to emphasize that ensuring enough places to study is a very important principle to promote the socialization of education and open education.
In addition, the quality of education is not uniform, there is still a large gap between different regions and localities. School violence still occurs. There are cases of students in secondary school who still cannot read or write fluently... The quality of human resources is therefore affected.
To solve these problems, education needs to foster and build in each person the ability to self-study and update new knowledge, skills and abilities required by the job content.
Specifically, the general education program from primary, secondary to high school, even from preschool, needs to teach children how to think independently and critically so that they can learn by themselves later. The first step is to guide children to read books, forming a reading culture from a young age, because waiting until they are older to cultivate it is too late. The education program in schools needs to increase the initiative of learners. Teachers must apply different teaching methods to help students improve their thinking, self-study, and self-reflection.
Once a habit has been formed, teaching and learning will be very "easy" for both teachers and students, achieving high efficiency. This is also the solution to prevent and limit the current situation of extra teaching and learning. Because part of the root cause of extra learning is because children cannot study at home, so they have to take their children to school or to a center to study. On the contrary, if children can study by themselves, now there are many materials available online, many online courses are provided for free, children can proactively choose to study what they want, supplementing their own shortcomings instead of studying according to a pre-prepared program that is not personalized to that child.
The role of self-study in the development of each individual is very important. However, what means and tools are needed to be able to self-study, sir? Can everyone self-study?
- To self-study, you need tools, such as English or other foreign languages to read documents, and know how to use information technology to search for open learning resources on the internet, which are very diverse today. When there are diverse learning organizations, suitable for many different subjects, a learning society will be formed.
To teach a child to learn by themselves, we must create a suitable direction. For example, for Literature, we need to guide children to create an outline before writing. Once the framework is in place, we can add other content. If we only require length and quality but not the child’s true creativity but copy the sample essay, we will create identical products without the child’s own voice… Teaching literature according to a template, forcing students to follow a pre-existing mindset cannot develop the learner’s capacity and qualities as the goal of the new general education program is setting.
No one else but education in schools, specifically teachers combined with education in the family must form children's ability to self-study from a young age, then lifelong learning will not just be a slogan, a distant goal.
You mentioned the disparity between regions. Specifically, in many localities, especially in disadvantaged and remote areas, recruiting teachers, especially teachers of foreign languages, information technology, etc., is very difficult. Most recently, the Ministry of Education and Training proposed lowering teacher standards according to the provisions of the 2019 Education Law to recruit enough staff. Do you agree with this proposal?
- To ensure education for all, the prerequisite is to ensure enough teachers. Wherever there are students, there must be teachers. I agree with this proposal because the characteristics of each locality are different. And in the current transitional period, there is not enough recruitment resources, so lowering the standards is necessary to recruit enough, then adding time to foster and train to improve teaching capacity.
Not everyone is suitable for this profession. Especially, if you study without practice, it will be very difficult to achieve the desired results.
For some specific subjects such as Information Technology and Foreign Languages, even if the standards are lowered, it is still very difficult to find teachers to go to the highlands. The solution is to continue to propose salary and benefit reforms for teachers to ensure attracting teachers and in the long term, to make teachers feel secure in their work and stick with their profession. If the salary is too low, teachers still have to worry about food and money, it will be difficult to invest in education.
Thank you very much!
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