Readings in the new English textbooks mention feminism, an issue related to social justice.
Social issues such as poverty, climate change, gender equality and high-quality education have been included in the 2030 Agenda by the United Nations since 2015 as sustainable development goals of the era. In Vietnam, promoting social justice is also one of the key goals that the government is aiming for.
Although social issues have been studied and included in textbooks in many countries around the world, they have not received adequate attention in textbooks of the new general education program in Vietnam. This is clearly shown in English, a subject expected to be a "bridge" between Vietnam and the world.
Occupies a "quite small" proportion in some textbooks
Currently, high schools are allowed to choose one of nine English textbooks to teach in the new program, of which three are Global Success (Vietnam Education Publishing House), Bright (Hue University Publishing House) and C21-Smart (Ho Chi Minh City National University Publishing House). These are also the three textbooks that the group of authors have researched and evaluated.
According to the survey, the coverage of social justice issues in the readings accounts for a relatively small proportion, an average of 21% compared to the total reading texts of the 3 types of textbooks studied. Specifically, 32% for English 10 Global Success, 24% for English 10 Bright and 5% for English 10 C21-Smart.
Social justice topics such as gender equality appear in new curriculum textbooks but at low density.
In parallel, the frequency of topics appearing is not equal between books. For example, the number of topics on social justice in English book 10 Global Success, Bright is twice that of English book 10 C21-Smart. The topics mentioned are mainly related to gender equality between men and women, focusing on aspects such as safe living environment, income, job opportunities, and access to education. In addition, all 3 books focus mainly on adult women and men, followed by children and people with disabilities.
It can be seen that textbooks have been reformed with the aim of helping students prepare well for the challenges of the 21st century. However, the issues in the books are not enough to provide students with an updated and comprehensive view of the current global situation. Specifically, the rights of the LGBTQ+ community, social network crimes, domestic violence, women trafficking, child abuse... are completely not recorded.
What are social justice issues?
When people think of social justice, they often think of common themes such as gender inequality, racism, and voting rights. However, the issue extends to many other aspects, including access to health care, social security, and safe living environments; inequality in quality education and access to knowledge; equal opportunities in employment; inequality in income and wealth, and opportunities to participate in the political apparatus.
In Vietnam, the topics that are receiving attention include gender equality, LGBTQ+ rights, ethnic minorities, environment and sustainability, housing, labor and employment, education, and healthcare.
Teachers want to integrate social justice into their teaching
Integrating educational equity topics is considered a teaching trend that is not too new in education around the world, but is still a strange form in Vietnam.
In a survey conducted by the authors, many English teachers expressed a desire to teach and integrate more social justice topics beyond textbooks in their high school classes.
Many English teachers want to integrate social justice into lessons to foster intercultural competence, critical thinking and reasoning in students.
Teachers believe that this helps them to motivate themselves to learn and improve their social knowledge regularly, enhancing their self-study spirit. At the same time, with each lesson design and classroom activities, their pedagogical skills are also improved. Self-study, equipping with social knowledge and intercultural competence are necessary when the role of teachers in the new era is not only to guide, but also to operate the educational process.
More importantly, teachers see that by communicating social justice issues, students can improve their intercultural communication skills. Specifically, they are exposed to and increase their awareness of social issues around the world; they are equipped with the knowledge necessary to become global citizens in the future. From here, they can also develop critical thinking and skills, confidently expressing their personal views on today's social issues.
What is the solution?
Despite the perceived benefits of integrating social justice topics into the classroom, teachers still face many difficulties in applying and approaching them in practice.
First, teachers can flexibly change and add or remove teaching materials, but this takes a lot of effort and time. Because teachers currently do not have a specific training program or guidance on adding or removing social justice topics into their lessons. This leads to teachers having to proactively learn from colleagues or the teacher community on online platforms.
An English exam preparation class in Ho Chi Minh City
Second, teachers must consider integrating social justice based on each student group, in order to balance the development of their language skills. In fact, each standard lesson only lasts 45 minutes, so to be effective, the lesson requires a lot of effort from the teacher and cooperation from the students.
Accordingly, for good students, teachers can easily organize in-class activities such as building discussion content and presentations. However, this will be impossible for students with weak language skills who only want to focus on studying and reviewing grammar and vocabulary to prepare for school tests.
From the above-mentioned outstanding issues, the group of authors proposes that there should be training programs and workshops to equip and support teachers to effectively integrate social issues into their lessons, in order to create a balance between social knowledge and students' language development.
In addition, this training should start from pedagogical students, not just for teachers with teaching experience. Teachers themselves should also have the spirit of lifelong self-learning, proactively improving their social and professional knowledge by constantly updating social news and reading specialized books and newspapers.
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