Reforming holistically an educational sy

A DRAFT VERSION
----------------------------------------------------------Reforming holistically an educational system
Nguyễn Duy Khang
Current: University of Gdansk
Affiliation: Vinh Long Community College

Every educator can feel when an educational system should be changed. A similar situation
happens quite late as it should be. Educators have limited “real” roles in working with the
general policies in education. In the world, if any reforms are rooted from the top desires and
views of the government, that education system will not prolong with new achievements but
chaos. In a different situation, the coming 5th reform1 of Vietnamese education is a result from
one of the real red alarming cases happening in the society: useless trained workers,
“disability”2 undergraduates, school issues, and so on.
For most researchers and writers, if they want to mention any ideas, they review the literature
and state their own with the compatible, contradictory, or neutral versions from other popular
people or scholars. In this version, to avoid being affected with other thoughts because later or
sooner this attempt will become “garbage” as usual3, the book will express the bare views on
education from personal experiences and from analyzing the possibility in the legal documents
of the coming reform in 2015.
The good signals of a new education reform
Vietnamese citizen has received a great signal from Vietnam Communist Party (VCP), the
government, and Ministry of Education and Training for the new reform of education starting
in 2015. The first legal and directed document point out this reform is the Resolution no294 for
renovating basically and holistically education and training in Vietnam. The others documents
are Direction no025 of the Prime Minister, Conclusion no516 of Vietnamese Communist Party,
and Decision no 12157 of the Minister of Education and Training.

1

The fifth time of reforming education is counted by the author, not official.
“disability” in this case means that the undergraduates fail to enter the real world and become “jobless”.

3
The ideas will be distorted to suit the happiness of others and when that happens, it becomes “garbage”.
4
Resolution 29-NQ/TW dated 04/11/2013 issued by Vietnamese Communist Party on the 8th meeting of the XIth session about
renovating basically and holistically education and training.
5
Direction 02/CT-TTg dated 22/01/2013 issued by The Prime Minister about renovating basically and holistically education and
training.
2

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All of these documents together focus on the importance of renovating the current system of
education. The top-down system of management shows that the Decision 1215 will include
the action plans which will actively intervene into the current system for the reforming
process. The Decision has more detailed goals and purposes which directly propose the
possible ways for current problems of education and training in the country.
This Decision promises a bright future for Vietnamese education which inherits the
achievements during the past time. After different reforms, several massive plans every five
years, and various projects for education, Vietnam has reached some major success which is
visible to every citizen from reports and news: available large-scale of educational system, fast
development, more achievement in ensuring equality among group of learners and those from
different economic conditions, the recognized intellectual level, upgraded teaching and
managing staffs, having positive management tasks, more facilities investing in education, and
the process of internationalization education with more positive results. From the authority
view, the aforementioned success is from the tradition of fondness for learning, the great care
from central leading organizations, the society, and each family. The teaching and
management staffs also bring values to it. Last but not least, the stability of political system
and opened-policies for international integration also contribute a lot into the success of

education and training until now.
Moreover, Decision 1215 will continue these achievements and develop Vietnamese education
into a new level with two phases. The first one is from 2013 to 2015 and the second one is
from 2016 to 2020.
Within this time limitation, the first phase consists of eight main focuses.
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Refining the project of renovating basically and holistically education and training in order to upgrade
the human resources, meet the needs of industrialization and modernization in the free market, and
integrate to the international contexts.
Renovating the educational management by checking the irrelevant legal documents, increasing
management, guiding the local educational authorities to implement education in accordance with the
plenary plan, verifying the management ability of the local areas, fixing the bad effects of extra
classes and negative examination, restructuring part-time education and cooperation with foreign
countries, universalizing kindergarten for 5 year-old kids, elementary, and high school, and to
diversifying learning approaches and lines for purposes of lifelong learning, directing the enhancement
of students evaluating teachers in the pilot to consider for massive application, increasing the effective
th

th

Conclusion 51-KL/TW dated 29/10/2012 issued by XI Vietnamese Communist Party on the 6 Congress about the central ideas
for project of reforming education and training in the period to 2020 of the Ministry of Education and Training.
7
Decision 1215/QĐ-BGDĐT dated 04/04/2013 issued by Minister of Education and Training about the action plans to implement
the strategy of educational development from 2011 to 2020.

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management at institutional levels, building a national frame about diploma and degrees, pushing the
educational accreditation, and changing the ways to collect data and analysis to effectively solve the
problems of education and training.
Developing the teaching and managing staffs through enhancing the control education from the central
to local areas, implementing the pedagogical development plan to 2020, upgrading regularly teachers
at kindergarten, in-service training, and regular education according to the standards of each position,
improve the policies for teaching and managing staffs, training or sending teachers abroad for doctoral
studies, and training teachers for special army courses.
Renovating the contents, teaching methods, testing, examining, and evaluating the quality of education
through activating the project of renewing curriculum and textbooks for general education after 2015,
checking regularly curriculum and textbooks at school levels, implementing the project of changing
teaching methods, encouraging research at high school, expanding the cases for the chance to study 2
sessions in the whole day to kindergarten, elementary and junior high school, directing effectively the
national exams, directing the colleges and universities to check the outcome criteria to meet the need
of the society, renovating managing and training in the self-control orientation of the institutes,
directing continuously the application of credit system in higher education, improving the
informational system of higher education management, completing the decree about ranking
educational institutes, developing training curriculum in two orientations of researching and career

application, speeding up training to meet the social needs, conducting the project of building learning
society8 to 2020 and project to eliminate illiteracy, implementing comprehensively the project of
teaching and learning foreign languages in the national educational system from 2008 to 2020 focusing
on training teachers, restructuring, modifying testing methods and planning new programs basing on
the European framework of language capacity, and boosting the application of information technology
into education from 2013 to 2018 for more new subjects.
Increasing the investments and renewing the financial structures in education through calling for investment
to education, socializing some public services, improving the effectiveness of investments in education,
restructuring the pricing system of education, enhancing the control on establishing new colleges and
universities, studying the reality of building excellent universities with Germany, Russia, and England…,
building researching universities, and speeding up the construction of high school with national standards.
Improving the support to education in remote area, areas with ethnics groups, and the beneficiary of social
welfare through directing the controlling system for policy to teachers in these areas, checking for irrelevant
issues and documents to fix them, expanding the chances for ethnics people, disable people, and homeless
children with scholarship, credit, and enrolment policies, developing the general education for ethics people,
training for labour in the countryside, teaching Vietnamese and ethnic languages at high school, and
concentrating on cementing the schools in the remote areas.

- Developing scientific technology and educational science through increasing the number of researchers,
investing in laboratories, upgrading the researching staffs in education to build up the Vietnamese educational
science, sending staffs to learn and research abroad, and calling for famous scientists from outside with
special policies.
8

Decision 89/QĐ-TTg dated 09/01/2013 by The Prime Minister for the approval of Project to build the learning society to 2020.

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- Improving the effectiveness of international cooperation in education and training through calling for

investment in education and research from outside, training the teaching and managing staffs abroad, building
projects on integrating in education and career education, and paying attention to policies and scholarships for
foreign learners to study and research in Vietnam.

The second phase from 2016 to 2020 consists of nine main points.
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Continuing to renovating education and training for the purposes of adapting to the requirements of
industrializations and modernization in the conditions of free market with the socialist orientation and
international integration.
Implementing the top-down management system with one highest organization and restructuring the state
body of education.
Implementing the project of renovating the curriculum of general education, career education, university,
English, information technology, and those in the first phase.
Continuing the implementation of human resource projects in all levels of educational management and
implementing the program of upgrading science of pedagogy and in pedagogical institutions from 2011 to
2020, training teachers for the project of changing textbooks of general education after 2015, and training
more lecturers at doctoral level for colleges and universities.
Acting actively in the roles of advisor for the government, National Assembly to build teacher law and
policies for teachers and educational managers, standardizing the teachers and educational management
personnel, renovating the ways to design curriculum and regular upgrading programs for current the
educational insiders, redesigning the ways of recruiting new teachers and rearranging those who are not
qualified into other appropriate jobs.
Implementing the new policy of tuition to ensure the cost share among learners, schools, and the society.

Building and implementing projects, national programs, loans for facilities and education development.
Developing the network of educational research institiutes and concentrating on improving the research
capacity of researchers in main pedagogical colleges and universities.
Building and implementing the policies to ensure the equality in education, continuing the learning society,
supporting and putting in the priority the development of human resources for ethnics groups, difficult areas,
the poor, and beneficiary of social welfare.

After thoroughly reading the Decision with two obvious phases, it can be seen that this reform
of education and training promises a lot of large changes in the system. The reforming plan
cares almost every aspect of education from the teachers, textbooks, policies, equality, the
poor, micro and macro programs, long-term and short-term plans, management system, etc.
Any educators and people who have read these documents, especially Decision 1215 will
agree with the author that Vietnam will have a bright future soon. The outsiders of education
fields should believe in the new prospects as described above. The Decision contains the
“paper” promising ways to fix the current problems of education and lead it to the new level of
international integration with high quality products.

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In Nguyen Ba Thai (2006), the researcher analyzed the achievements and negative feedbacks
from different reforms in the modern time from 1945 to now. Different potentials of
educational models have been introduced and piloted in the context. Table 1 shows different
models of education. Some of them have not applied officially yet and some of them are
experienced deeply by the author, citizen, and the labor market.
Table 1: General advantages and disadvantages of applying different educational approaches in the society 9
Source: Nguyen Ba Thai (2006)
Type
Regular,
fulltime

Advantages
Massive training.

Disadvantages

Applicable values

Inflexible methods and the same
requirements for all subjects can
cause inequality in learners.

It is good for the regime of commanding
to train for similar people and listen to
the orders.

The government cannot afford the
huge demands if everyone follows
this type of education.

The poor with government supports can
possibly follow this type of education.

It is difficult in management.
Not regular,
part-time

People with less time availability can
follow.

It is a complicated case of
management.

It is suitable for the remote areas and
those who study part-time at the same
time they work.

Education at
home10

It is a convenient type of education with
less expenses and suitable for individuals
about both knowledge and approaches.

It is applicable for only rich families
and parents are well-educated.

It is possible to expand this type if the
family meets the quality standard and
register for accreditation.

It is possible to reduce the learning time.

It is good to develop the group of
training families in developing
education in the remote areas and it can
possibly expand larger in these areas
with the management supports of the
authority.

It can lead to the development of diversified
teaching methods.
It allows the learners to learn in a flexible
way rather than at schools.
Education at
work11

It helps the current workers upgrade their
abilities and skills.

The quality of training is not high.

These people need special supports from
the budget of businesses in preparation
for any changing in the structures of the
economic system.

Distance
learning12

Learners do not have to go to the learning
places.

It is difficult to accrediate the quality
but it is promising with the global
market.

This type is applicable from the
advanced technology and those who
want to learn in this education must

master information technology at some

It can be available throught out the country.

9

Nguyễn Bá Thái (2006), Table 1 on pages 152 and 153
Education at home is encouraged but the authority will not accept the results of this model. Education must happen in a training
center or school.
11
Education at work is a great model in many developed countries; however, it causes negative effects more than quality in
education. School rarely sends teachers to companies to train them for better the quality and quantity of the working skills.
Businesses and educational institutes have not had a strong links and comprehensive level. Education at work is mostly available for
training people who have a job but the fact is opposite in most cases.
12
Distance learning appears recently and turns to be popular.
10

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First investment in facility is too high
with IT tools and internet.
Learners must be able to self-study
well.
Self-learning13

It is the least expense type of education and
convenient.

It has the characteristics of individual
and hard to be common.

Knowledge and skills develop in a natural
and sustainable way.
It is the closest form to doing research.

levels.
The government needs to consult
learners and have policies to protect the
learners.
It is based on the learner’s own spirit.
This type of learning must be
encouraged and accreditated and get
supports from state and regular
educational institution.
This type of education should be trained
from the young age.

Learning in
educational
companies

This type is new in the free market and
global economic in foreign languages and
some other fields.
This is more with doing business and
suitable with the learning needs of learners.

The quality is hard to be controlled

and if it is expanded, the learners and
the market will directly check the
quality without the intervention of
the authority.

This type of education will develop very
fast in the global economic when most
of other types cannot meet the needs of
the citizen.
The government needs to protect the
learners’ interests if these companies
bankrupt.

In any countries, if a reform is directed and approved by almost all levels of the society, it is
promising to be successful. This reform of Vietnam has the approvals and directions of the
government, the National Assembly, the highest leaders of education and training, and
optimistic citizen. However, many vital points are missed from finding the core issues, no
certain results should be stated at this point.
Reasons leading the educational reform to the dead end
In a contrary side, it is a belief that this massive reform will bring to the society no big change
in education and training. Many root reasons are keeping the Decision and the spirit of
changing education into actions. It happens everywhere in the world and in any educational
reforms if it does not pay attention to the correct roots of issues. Vietnamese educational
situations and the reforming planning actions are carefully studied and analyzed for the
strengths, weaknesses, and roots of the issues. However, the attitudes to education and the
education philosophies in chaos cannot give a clear view to these insiders of the field. If the
insiders can find the problems but not the core ones, what the outsiders of education can rely
on. The following analysis focuses on pointing out the main issues in current picture which

13

Self-learning is encouraged by the teachers and the society but it is not counted as official notification. Like education at home, it
is for self-improvement rather than to be accepted by any places.

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has not been recognized yet. The analysis will lead the readers the possible failure of this
reform from the author bare views.
In a research14, educational reform should refer to the following matter in a logical way. First,
that reform must change the general educational thoughts and then renovate the pedagogical
science. Next, educational purposes must be considered for reform. After that, the system of
education should be renovated and for that reason the ways to manage educational resources
turn to be very important for consideration. The last steps are restructuring the knowledge
contents, teaching methods, and evaluation system15. In a scientific way, it is worth to consult
these matters before reforming an educational system. If so, the master plan of reform in this
context shows a vague future. It is hard to find information about educational thought and
educational purposes. The rest is mentioned in a general way. For example, two of the actions
for reforming education are to develop scientific technology and educational science through
increasing the number of researchers, investing in laboratories, and upgrading the
researching staffs in education to build up the Vietnamese educational science16 and to
implement the program of upgrading science of pedagogy17. The question here is how much
time it should take for the above actions happen. Who should become the “experiment mice”
again when no philosophies are available at the moment or seen to be accepted in the society?
What people are trying will not return with success.
It is not simple that a series of reforms in Vietnam ending with failure. It is not easy because
educational reform is a very complicated process with different affected factors. Regardless
any literature, any philosophers, education should depart from its natures.
The current reforming plans seem to be good though it is very general from the “top-down
point of views”18. Educational authorities usually think that negative issues of education are

mostly from bad management system. That is why a large portion of the plans is for enhancing
the quality of management and restructuring the system. The actions are too general and focus
on important aspects of education, but not the core ones. The society and every body know
that teachers and learners want to teach and study in their own free ways; however, the
educational management system with “too advanced knowledge19” has refused or prohibited
14

Nguyễn Bá Thái (2006). Các cuộc cải cách giáo dục Việt Nam: Lịch sử và các bài học kinh nghiệm (The former reforms in
education of Vietnam: History and experienced lessons). Research Project at Ministry level. Project code: B2003 – 52 - 38
15
Nguyễn Bá Thái (2006), page 124.
16
Decision 1215, phase 1
17
Decision 1215, phase 2
18
Author opinion is from the feeling that most plans are too general and the roots of negative issues in education possibly from
the ignorances about the learners and teachers. The plans are more to control than to facilitate the inner changes from the
insiders of education.
19
Author opinion for stupid or fake intelligent educational leaders at almost all levels nowadays

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most of them. Currently, teachers are prohibited to change without approvals and learners are
forced to study what they may not want to learn. In fact, every teacher in this world, not just in
Vietnam, will never be able to continue the job after a few years because it is very
challenging. Every teacher wants their learners to develop in a way that they feel most
comfortable. Every teacher adapts him or herself very frequently in every class to make sure

that every teaching period is the last teaching time ever. For that reason, management is good
and essential but no authorities have shown to care whatever and whether the insiders need
these new intensive ways of controlling or not. That will lead to a possible failure soon.
In addition, it is quite interesting that the reforming plans also focus on changing the teaching
methods. It is great, teaching methods are important to help learners learn better. However, as
one of the outsiders of education, it is not acceptable for a massive plan as a result from
nothing. Educational leaders usually blame for the negative issues of education or low quality
of training because teachers are using traditional methods of teaching20. From teachers’
perspectives, they complain of having no chance when the class size is always large. Teaching
content and time for teaching caught the most attention of education controller or the bosses.
The authority does not care anything else but the presence of teachers during the class time.
Back to changing methods in the plenary plan, it is ridiculous when the top-down views do not
care about the reasons why teachers select the best teaching methods for them. Changing the
teaching methods will never bring a good result in this reform because teachers always try to
select the best ways to help their learners learn. And if that selection is traditional method,
there should be many reasons. If these reasons are not over, they have very limited chance to
reform.
In any situations, the nature of any reforms or changes should be from within. For this case,
the reforms should be from the heart of teachers and learners. Vietnamese society has
experienced similar changes throughout the history and when talking about education, they
forget that every adjustment should be from the bottom-up. In pedagogy of the oppressed21,
renovation with similar situations usually fail because of many reasons. All of the reasons are
mostly from the oppressed and here can be seen as teachers and learners because they have
limited voice and are not free for their ways of teaching. In Vietnam, teaching and learning
must follow the rules inside the fence of time and place. Freire shows that any renovation
should be from the oppressed because the oppressed will try to resist from the changes if they
20

This point is mentioned forever in every educational report. But it is not the real story. No teachers accept to use traditional
teaching methods if their learners do not like it. Is there any other factors prevent them to change when learners these days are

very active and done well with technology of massive information sources?
21
Paulo Freire philosophy of education

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do not want. In another consequence, he also advises that freedom is a double-edge sword.
Teachers and learners want to be free in their teaching and some feel that they do not know
what to do. However, when too much control is pushing to the teaching and learning, they will
decide to mute or fight. Similarly, Vietnamese tradition leads teachers to mute their desire for
a better education system, thought, goals, and philosophy. For this reason, if the top-down
views do not recognize the issues of the insiders, the reform will fail again as usual.
Furthermore, if teachers teach what learners want to study, they will fail the final high school
exams because the knowledge must be from the textbooks. In recent years, teachers are
encouraged to decide what to cut off from the textbooks and have some right for a certain
percentage of adapted knowledge from reality. However, no variation in examinations is
realized. Learners at different levels of education have to pay much attention to rote learning
with knowledge from the assigned textbooks. Most educators know but the educational leaders
forget that knowledge and information are available everywhere and changed rapidly. It seems
that this reform will fail when they consider learners outside of their plans. It will fail again
when learners need to practice their skills rather than memorization. Learners are in a fence
rather than in a learning community like schools. If the focus of education remains unchanged,
learners have to suffer forever with learning as struggling. If they follow any ways of learning
for creativity or being critical, they will fail to continue their proper education because the
exams them to tell what they know, not what they can do from such a long time at schools.
This aspect shows that if the educational thought and philosophy stay the same, the reform
will make no success.
In a different aspect, it is easy to find in the action plans of the reform that the central
educational management will enhance training teachers for the project of changing textbooks of

general education after 2015 or boosting regular training for teachers every year. Is there any things
wrong here? No, the policy is excellent. However, who knows the real problems? Teachers must
take regular upgrading training every year and the textbooks are still out of dated. What have they
been trained? And who have trained teachers? It could be one of the two following cases. First,
teachers are too stupid to understand the training. Second, the trainers train something teachers
cannot use. Both reasons are comprehensive because the educational authority always sees teachers
as a burden with traditional teaching methods and as the boss, teachers must be trained and guided
again and again. No one cares about the effectiveness of these training occasions. What do they
care? Will the reform be success with similar ways of thinking? If teachers are under qualifications,
why does that happen? If this reform just focuses on what they want regardless heart of educational
activities, it will never gets close to the success.

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In fact, it is not too complicated to reform Vietnamese education successfully. It can happen only if
the leaders of education and training try to listen to teachers and learners. They should change their
views on education and put some thoughts to find the roots of negative issues and what prevent
education to develop. One of the best ways is that they should carefully check themselves because
all the problems of education are the feedback from the society. Learners are not free in their fences
of education. Teachers are told to be free in teaching what are good for their learners, except that
the examinations must follow the unique textbooks. The heart of education is for learners and those
who directly teach them – teachers and the community. Education should happen not only at
school. If the reform does not meet the above drawbacks, success never comes.
Current comprehensive challenges before reforming Vietnamese education
The coming reform of Vietnamese education is facing several challenges. If the educational leaders
do not pay much attention to the cores of issues, it will become a failure later or sooner. It can be
easily divided the challenges into internal and external categories.
In the internal aspects, many challenges can be counted as follows.
- The training quality is quite low22 with weak effectiveness.

- Young learners are trained to become good obeyers rather than critical people.
- The training programs are more theoretical than practical.
- The evaluation methods are not flexible and measure the wrong ways.
- Kids are scaring of schooling. Students feel bored with classes.
- Lessons focus less on the values of ethics, skills, and attitudes.
- Learners are forced to study irrelevant courses regardless objections.
- Learners learn to compete at school in a wrong manner rather than about peace and the love of
learning.
- Teachers have to fulfill too many other tasks different from teaching.
- The flu of achievements is killing the heart and enthusiasm of teachers and heartfelt educators
because achievements are understood as for the bosses.
- Teaching methods are encouraged to bring variety at the same time with the “unchanged” ways of
evaluation for both teachers and learners as numbers.
- Transferring among different educational institutions is limited.
- Personnel in education and training have not improved their ability for a long time which leads to
more and more negative issues.
22

Nguyễn Bá Thái (2006), page 126 – the italics challenges are collected and translated from this source.

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- Some teachers are seen by the top-down views as lacking of enthusiasm and qualifications.
- Number of educators and managers are insufficient in both quality and quantity.
In the external aspects, the following can be seen as current challenges.
- The connections among educational institutions and the labor market are very loose.
- The labor market does not find their needs to be noticed at training institutions.
- Investment in education is usually ineffective.
- Inappropriate policies in education are maintained too long on purposes by some individuals.

- Inequality in education is obvious from the city to the remote areas.
- Some rules, decisions, or some articles of the laws are ignored by the citizen and schools.
- Internationalization in education turns to be mess in higher education due to top-down
management system.
- Accreditation is new in Vietnam and the rising number of education institutes becomes chaos.
At first, the reform seems to be a good plan with supports from all levels of authorities and sound
workable. However, with the aforementioned challenges and analyzing the wrong and out-of-dated
“top-down views” on education, there is very little signal of success. If this reform wants a focus, it
should be discussed by the citizen, learners, teachers, and educators; not the bosses23 in education.
The nature of education is “love”. Only with love, education will be renovated. Nevertheless, the
learning demands of the society are rapidly increasing in comparison to the attitudes and thoughts
of educational leaders who reach the deadlock. In order that, the strategies are to open more schools
and diversify more types of education. It sounds meaningful if the educational personnel dealing
with this matter work effectively and responsibly. For that reason, more schools bring more
problems with quality and scandals. Negative issues appear every day but people are bored of being
involved for fun. No one listens to the bottom as from teachers, learners, and parents from average
economic to poor conditions. Last but not least, the philosophies of education, the goals, and the
educational mindsets of the authorities are undervalued and do not function well in guiding the
education to go through the new turning-points.
An example in higher education is that many colleges and universities are brand-new. The Ministry
of Education and Training allows them to offer similar courses without any smart thinking. In one
province, three colleges and 3 universities have the right to enroll new learners. A community
college has some junior college programs like technical food processing, agriculture, information
technology, and so on; two universities have the same program names. A specialized university in
construction field can enroll learners in businesses and social sciences. In brief, this example is just
23

The author opinion is that educational bosses are usually stubborn and stupid.

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to show the carelessness and unthoughtful decisions of most educational leaders who really have
the right of making decisions.
All in all, the challenges of current situations will strongly affect the process of reforming
educational system. It is hard to have a guess at this moment and the citizen has to wait until the
educational leaders decide to have a look at their mindsets and the important roles of the insiders
that education serves them. If the educators and scholars question about the philosophies of
Vietnamese education in the new era and the answer is again the Resolution 29, dreams never come
true.
Conclusion
Education has vital roles in any society. Reforming education is a very complicated action and
Vietnam has experienced the failures for many times. Many lessons are learned from the
former renovations. Many actions have been planned and implemented. All again will bring
no success if the real roots of educational issues are not paid attention.
One of the common failures of every reform is that people try to fix the surface problems, not
the roots and from within. If education is seen in a micro and macro ways, they are too busy
with the approaches. Therefore, people usually forget to care about the real core of the issues
which urge the authority to the decision of reforming education. If it is considered, the nature
of education means that learners and the love of education should take interests from the
educational outsiders and the bottom. The reason is simple because no echo of these people
can reach the top views of educational leaders. For a bright future of education for the next
generations of Vietnam, the outsiders should be united to fix the malfunctions of the
educational love within first and then prepare a new mindset for learners to deal with their
freedom in education, creativity, critical ability, ethics education, physical education, and love
of lifelong learning.
Education needs to develop learners holistically. It should not focus on transmitting as much
knowledge as possible. If the new reform can concentrate on learners to train them not to mute
and obey at school but be creative and skillful. If this goal is set, teachers will need a real heart
with passion to facilitate this form of learning. Learning should be conducted at the same time

with learning and application24. However, it is not easy at all and no regular training from the
educational authority can possibly do it (regardless who is the trainers, is the educational
mindset changed?). Teachers with passions will change themselves and adapt to the new
philosophy and teaching environments with new generation of active learners.

24

Ho Chi Minh’s philosophy of education

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Last but not last, in a free form of education, both teachers and learners should be prepared for
the new meaningful assessment system which will not base only on exams. The types of
evaluation should be varied and even the testing items should be considered to test what levels
of learning25 too. The evaluating methods can include observation with rubrics, interaction
situation, reflections, solving problems and making decisions, and application levels. It is not
easy for both important subjects in education to familiarize with new evaluating methods.
More training in this field is essential rather than caring about the textbooks and the surface
issues.
To sum up, if people who have the right to change do not carefully think and care about the
proposed ideas, no one could blame them but the educational reform will not bring much
benefit to those who should get. Reform needs passion and love of education from the insiders
and pushes from the outsiders at the same time.

References
Conclusion 51-KL/TW dated 29/10/2012 issued by XIth Vietnamese Communist Party on the 6th Congress
about the central ideas for project of reforming education and training in the period to 2020 of the Ministry of
Education and Training.
Decision 1215/QĐ-BGDĐT dated 04/04/2013 issued by Minister of Education and Training about the action

plans to implement the strategy of educational development from 2011 to 2020.
Decision 89/QĐ-TTg dated 09/01/2013 issued by The Prime Minister for the approval of Project to build the
learning society to 2020.
Direction 02/CT-TTg dated 22/01/2013 issued by The Prime Minister about renovating basically and
holistically education and training.
Nguyễn Bá Thái (2006). Các cuộc cải cách giáo dục Việt Nam: Lịch sử và các bài học kinh nghiệm (The
former reforms in education of Vietnam: History and experienced lessons). Research Project at Ministry level.
Project code: B2003 – 52 - 38
Resolution 29-NQ/TW dated 04/11/2013 issued by the XIthVietnamese Communist Party on the 8th Congress
about renovating basically and holistically education and training.

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Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning domains. Available online at />
Draft version – NDK / P a g e | 13