12-grade students in their break time at Tran Nhan Tong High School in Hanoi (Photo: VNA) Nguyen Thi Mai Hoa, vice chairwoman of the committee, said following a newsurvey on the implementation of new general education programme for history inhigh schools, the majority disagreed with the ministry’s announcement that itwill no longer be a compulsory subject in the 2022-23 academic year.
There are some reasons for the disagreement, according to the vice chairwoman.
History is believed to be a particularly important subject, playing a key rolein political and ideological education for future generations.
High school students, aged 15 to 17 years old, have more mature awareness sothey could have the acquisition of history knowledge better than the youngerstudents.
This is also the age that determines the students’ formation of world views,nature, society, principles, codes of conduct, and human values.
Hoa added that fostering historical knowledge for high school students wasnecessary in order to develop a comprehensive human being, arouse patriotictraditions, national pride, beliefs and aspirations to develop a prosperouscountry for Vietnamese people.
Therefore, the committee asked the ministry to regulate history as a compulsorysubject in high schools.
Giving her opinion on the issue, NA deputy Nguyen Thi Kim Thuy said that all basicand core knowledge about Vietnamese and world history had been made compulsoryat the secondary school level.
If history becomes a compulsory subject, the whole curriculum must be revised,according to Thuy.
At the high school level, history has been currently built into topics ofpolitical history, economic history, civilisation history and cultural history.
These are in-depth content helping students, who are oriented to study thehumanities and social sciences, to approach their future careers.
New grade-10 textbooks had also been written following the direction, she said.
“We could not use the in-depth textbooks of history to teach allstudents,” she said.
Thuy said the process of developing and promulgating the new general educationprogramme had consulted all relevant agencies before being implemented.
History, before being announced to be an elective subject, also received theconsensus of the Association of Historical Sciences, she said.
“We need to consider carefully whether the change that regulates history as acompulsory subject is appropriate or not with just three months left before theschool year begins,” she said.
Earlier education authorities announced a new general education programme underwhich from the school year of 2022-23 there will only be five compulsorysubjects, and the rest will be elective.
History will be among the elective subjects with other social sciences likegeography, economics and law.
The National Assembly issued Resolution 88 on November 28, 2014, on therenovation of the general education programme and textbooks.
It stipulated that the 12-year general education consisted of two stages: thebasic education stage, made up of five years in primary education and fouryears of secondary education, followed by three years in high school that areoriented towards careers.
Under the new general education programme, history is tasked with educatingpatriotism and inspiring national pride. History will be taught at secondaryschools for all grades from six to nine. Students will be equipped with basicknowledge of world and Vietnamese history.
History will be taught with in-depth content in high school education, helpingstudents better understand the knowledge they had learned. The subject is amongfive social science subjects.
Nguyen Thi Viet Nga, NA deputy of Hai Duong province, who also agreed thathistory should be a compulsory subject, said: “History education is neverunnecessary.”
Nga also said the research shows that currently, students are not interested inthe subject. The reason is not that the subject is not attractive but becauseit is heavy on academic knowledge, complicated and the presentation is quiteboring.
At the same time, the subject’s teaching and examination still follow the oldmethod. They still require students to memorise facts and numbers.
She suggested changing in the direction of encouraging children to see andevaluate historical events, and not just learning in a passive way.
Chairman of the committee Nguyen Dac Vinh said when history was madecompulsory, it would not mean that all students would be forced to learn allthe in-depth content of the subject's programme.
At the same time, he also suggested that the ministry continue to direct theinnovation of teaching and examination of the subject instead of only requiringstudents to remember numbers and events, he said./.
VNA
