(kontumtv.vn) – In the article “Lifelong learning”, General Secretary To Lam emphasized: Only through lifelong learning can each individual adapt, enrich their intelligence, perfect their personality and stand firm in the face of all challenges. That is the key to self-development in modern society; more importantly, this is the important key to improving people’s knowledge and training human resources, promoting socio-economic development, the only way, the inevitable direction of every country to ensure prosperous and sustainable development.

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General Secretary To Lam. Photo: Lam Khanh/VNA

Expressing his appreciation for the article, Dr. Dong Van Ngoc, Principal of Hanoi College of Electromechanics, said: For a country to develop sustainably, education needs to create the most convenient lifelong learning opportunities for its people. It is necessary to design a national education system that ensures that anyone, of any age, can study.

Open up more flexible and open lifelong learning opportunities for learners

“… If you want to know, you must compete to learn. Learning is never-ending. Keep learning to progress forever. The more you progress, the more you see, the more you have to learn”; “The more society advances, the more work there is, the more sophisticated the machines are. If we do not learn, we will fall behind, and if we fall behind, we will be eliminated, we will eliminate ourselves” – this is the advice of President Ho Chi Minh when launching the movement for the entire people and army to eliminate illiteracy, mentioned by General Secretary To Lam in his article. Besides, Lenin advised us to “Study, study more, study forever”. The Resolution of the 13th Party Congress affirmed “Promoting the building of a learning society, lifelong learning”.

Regarding the lifelong learning policy, Dr. Dong Van Ngoc believes that it is not necessary for everyone to pursue learning in accordance with the trend: Going to university, college or at all costs achieving a certain level. What is important is the ability of the person to contribute to creating material wealth, making themselves always feel happy and satisfied with what they have done. The success of each person is not just having to study at this level or that level. In some aspects, for people with simple abilities, they only need to learn short-term professions (for example, hairdressing, makeup, goldsmithing, etc.) but they have succeeded. At some point, wanting to study at a higher level is the right of every citizen, or the so-called right to lifelong learning as stipulated in the Constitution.

Starting from March 1, 2025, the vocational education system will be assigned to the Ministry of Education and Training by the Prime Minister. Integrating vocational education into the national education system helps create a unified, interconnected learning path from general education to university education and vocational education. This facilitates the development of training program standards, ensuring quality and interconnectivity between levels of education; in addition, it enhances cooperation and linkage. The transfer facilitates cooperation between training institutions with universities, research institutes and enterprises. This helps improve training quality, better meeting the needs of the labor market.

Typically, nowadays, a college student who wants to go to university still has many difficulties. Partly because the quota of universities is sometimes limited; furthermore, the training program of colleges is not suitable for universities, leading to waste for learners as well as training institutions. State management of vocational education under the Ministry of Education and Training is also an opportunity to design training programs to overcome limitations and difficulties, opening up more open and flexible lifelong learning opportunities, so that everyone can easily access at any level of education and age.

We need to consider each person's capacity as the core.

According to Dr. Dong Van Ngoc, in the article "Lifelong Learning", the General Secretary pointed out many limitations in lifelong learning such as achievement disease, degree obsession, learning not going hand in hand with practice...; this is absolutely correct. Vietnam's national education system needs to change, design an education system with connectivity and flexibility, and need to consider human "capacity" as the core. No matter what level of education we study, if capacity does not bring value to the individual, to the family, to the society, it is ineffective; the capacity of each person is demonstrated and brings about labor productivity (efficiency); optimizing resources to bring true value (effectiveness), bringing high efficiency and value to the individual, family, society and the country (effectiveness) is the core value and limits "achievement disease".

Dr. Dong Van Ngoc analyzed that being able to enter high schools, especially high-quality high schools, is the desire of most parents and students. Except for a few students who want to study at international schools or non-public schools, there is a large number of students who choose to study at vocational training institutions. The educational system that I have designed for students to choose from is very good, that is, students study high school at vocational training institutions or at intermediate schools, vocational colleges. Studying at vocational training institutions means studying in parallel two intermediate programs and the regular high school program, helping students who graduate from lower secondary school after 3 years to be awarded an intermediate degree or after 4 years to get a college degree, then apply for a job. Studying in this system, students have early access to careers, hone their skills, come into contact with businesses, and form the habit of working in a production and business environment early. At the same time, students have the opportunity to access regular general education programs, then transfer to colleges, universities and the desired level. If they do not have the conditions, when they reach the age of 18, they can completely participate in the labor market, create material wealth, enrich themselves; at a certain point, when they feel the need to study, they can study at a higher level according to their needs, in accordance with the lifelong learning policy. Besides, there are many students whose learning ability is not good, they can completely choose to study according to their ability, not just according to the expectations of their parents and family. Allowing them to choose the right learning path is very important. Therefore, parents need to guide their children: There is no discrimination, as long as everyone has a legitimate job, has the ability to enrich themselves, their family and society, that is a happy life.

Innovate to adapt in the 4.0 era

The category of science and technology development is very broadly expressed in the article of General Secretary To Lam. Taking a practical example at Hanoi College of Electromechanics, Dr. Dong Van Ngoc affirmed: The school has taken part in and applied digital transformation quickly, and is proud to be one of the first schools applying artificial intelligence, virtual reality technology, and augmented reality for students.

The school has implemented an AI application solution to personalize learners. A class of 30 students, not all students have the same learning ability, each student has their own ability. With the application of this technology, teachers only need to spend a very short time to assign exercises and monitor results, and guide each student in the class. For each student, the school equips and guides them with skills to study on the basis of digital transformation technology, artificial intelligence technology, virtual reality, as well as augmented reality. The school also changes the training program to apply more to students so that later, no matter what position they work in the business, they will have studied the training program that the school cooperates with the business to adjust to 4.0 technology.

Currently, the field of 4.0 technology and artificial intelligence AI has penetrated and developed, popularized everywhere, everywhere, every corner of social life, in civil and industrial life. At this moment, anyone who is slow to approach AI technology will lose opportunities. That is why the General Secretary's article also mentioned that if you do not learn, you will be backward, if you do not learn, you will lose opportunities. And losing opportunities is sometimes elimination and self-elimination - Dr. Dong Van Ngoc clearly stated.

Phuc Hang (Vietnam News Agency)