Be careful with non-textbook materials

A Literature class of students at Giang Vo Secondary School (Ba Dinh District, Hanoi). Photo: NTCC.

Many conflicting views

Recently, a parent shared her opinion about the poem “Sound of Germinating Seeds” by author To Ha in the Vietnamese textbook for grade 5 of the Connecting Knowledge with Life series as being complicated and difficult to understand. After that, on social networks, many people spoke out against why this work was included in the textbook when the poem has no rhyme, making it difficult for young students to learn. In particular, the appearance of words like “anh oi” and “lang cham” in the poem was “criticized” for being uncommon, rare, difficult to read, difficult to remember…

However, immediately after that, a series of opinions from poets, literary critics, education experts, Vietnamese textbook compilers, teachers... analyzed the unique and creative features of the poem and affirmed that the work was completely worthy of being included in the textbook. Specifically, Associate Professor, Dr. Bui Manh Hung - Main Coordinator of the 2018 General Education Program Development Board, Editor-in-Chief of Vietnamese Language - Literature Textbooks, the book series "Connecting knowledge with life" analyzed some of the reasons why the poem became a "stormy" topic in public opinion because the poem was read hastily, without understanding the work, and hastily judged. The concept of poetry is outdated, especially poetry used in textbooks.

According to many people, poetry must have strict rhyme, and if it rhymes, it must be the main rhyme; poetry taught to students must be easy to read, easy to understand, and the content must be clear. Besides, the concept of education is still stereotyped. Many people only want students today to learn the poems that they learned in the past, despite the fact that many things have changed today, such as students like to listen to different types of music, and their preferences in clothing, cuisine, etc. are also different.

In fact, if anyone reads this text with the suggested lesson in the textbook, it will be very clear that this is a poem about a deaf class and the words used in the poem are very suitable to describe the students in the class. 5th grade students, with the guidance and suggestion of the teacher, will feel the unique words and meanings of the poem with deep humanity and education. Through that, they learn to sympathize and share with disadvantaged children.

Looking back over the past 5 years when the 2018 General Education Program with new textbooks was officially introduced into schools, public opinion has been stirred up by the materials appearing in Vietnamese books. For example, before that, the poem "Bullying" by author Nguyen The Hoang Linh printed in the Literature textbook for grade 6 in the book series Connecting knowledge with life also caused controversy for many days. New works can easily cause mixed reviews even though to be included in the curriculum, these literary texts had to go through many rounds of rigorous assessment. Part of the reason pointed out by experts is due to the "traditional" concept of teaching Literature and literature that makes many people unable to immediately accept new texts, especially poems with flexible rhymes and rhythms that are different from the works they already know and have learned in previous textbooks.

Challenges for teachers and schools

With the goal of innovating the teaching and learning of Literature that the education sector is setting, the Ministry of Education and Training requires that textbooks not be used to make Literature tests for middle and high school students starting from the 2024-2025 school year. This is to overcome the situation where students only memorize lessons or copy content from available documents.

The policy is clear, but when implemented in practice, difficulties will arise, because not all teachers can find suitable sources of texts to include in the test. In particular, to avoid duplication in test questions for classes in the same grade, between this school year and the next, teachers will have to continuously update different texts to innovate the test questions. This is clearly a big challenge that requires teachers to have enough professional capacity to evaluate and accurately select appropriate materials as well as dedication to the profession. As shared by Associate Professor, Dr. Bui Manh Hung, just a few texts, usually literary texts, with different opinions can create waves of public opinion. The newer the work (maybe newly composed or little known to the public for a long time), the more likely it is to cause conflicting assessments.

Currently, documents on the internet are very available, but in the midst of that sea of ​​information, choosing a text that is suitable for the purpose and requirements of the test is really not easy. Just one mistake such as choosing a text that is too long or too much for students can cause "storms". In order to avoid such mistakes, Mr. Tran Van Toan - Head of the Literature Group (Quoc Hoc High School for the Gifted in Hue) said that it is necessary to strengthen training for teachers on the skills of selecting materials, asking questions, and giving accurate questioning commands, in accordance with the culture and standards required by the Ministry of Education and Training. In addition, schools need to focus on periodically reviewing test questions, not allowing the situation where everyone does things on their own, which can easily create unfortunate "mistakes".

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According to Ms. Nguyen Thi Van Hong - Principal of Chuong Duong Secondary School (Hoan Kiem District, Hanoi), when choosing materials outside of textbooks, teachers must have the qualifications to understand the materials they use. The board of directors and professional groups must closely monitor the selection of materials to ensure that they are accurate. It is possible to apply the method that when the school chooses textbook A to teach, it can choose materials from textbook set B to create questions to ensure pedagogy and accuracy in terms of sentences. In addition, choose diverse materials from authentic works. For example, when teaching the work "Dat rung phuong nam" but we can take materials from other excerpts not in the textbook of the same work. With this method, according to Ms. Hong, it will help limit the selection of inaccurate materials.

Source: https://daidoanket.vn/can-trong-voi-ngu-lieu-ngoai-sach-giao-khoa-10292377.html