Debate on whether the poem is 'worthy enough' to be included in textbooks

In recent days, the poem "Sound of Germinating Seeds" by author To Ha (designed as lesson number 5 of week 3 in the Vietnamese textbook for grade 5, the book series Connecting Knowledge with Life) has caused a stir in public opinion with conflicting views.

On some forums and social networks, some opinions say that the poem has many difficult to understand words, complicated sentences, or the entire poem has no rhyme, making it difficult for young students to learn.

The page of the book containing the poem "Sound of Germinating Seeds" was photographed and posted on a social media group and received hundreds of shares and thousands of comments, mostly criticizing and opposing the author's use of words, especially words like "sparkling light", "silent care", etc.

Some even argue that poetry like this should not and does not deserve to be included in textbooks for students.

“Is it really necessary to use those words, when we have completely different words that are still very suitable in this context?” one opinion was given.

However, others believe that the poem may have some uncommon and unfamiliar words but the content and quality should not be criticized. Some people believe that the beauty and meaning of this poem can be felt.

a5b9bed8 3014 40de a3c4 ff84291acdd6.png — One of the comments about the poem "The Sound of Germinating Seeds" on a social networking forum. Screenshot.

Sharing with VietNamNet , the principal of a secondary school in Hanoi expressed his opinion: “From the perspective of a reader, learning about the poem 'Sound of Germinating Seeds', we will see that the author tells about a class of deaf children, with sounds that the children can 'hear' only through the symbols from the teacher's hands. When I know this, I find every sentence very beautiful and full of humanity. Not to mention that the poem was composed by the author in 1974 and the sentences appearing in it must have been from a long time ago, we will understand more clearly if we learn more.”

Professor Dr. Le Phuong Nga (senior lecturer at Hanoi National University of Education) believes that the poem “The Sound of Germinating Seeds” is a good poem, even very “poetic” and completely suitable for teaching to 5th grade students.

Ms. Nga said that, for personal reasons, she personally approached this poem before the textbook was published. “I was 'like striking gold' because I encountered a poetic text with typical characteristics of the poetic form/art. There are 'alienated' words only used in poetry, there are implicit ways of speaking and expressing ideas through images which are typical ways of speaking in poetry."

sound of sprouting seeds .jpg — The poem "Sound of Germinating Seeds" is printed in the Vietnamese language book for grade 5, the textbook series Connecting knowledge with life. Screenshot.

Professor Nga believes that literary appreciation, or more precisely, literary reception, is the process of perceiving the beauty contained in the world of language. Simply put, literary appreciation is the process of receiving, understanding, and feeling literature, the figurative nature of literature, the characteristics of artistic language, and the characteristics of artistic reflection of literature. Students' literary appreciation skills are formed mainly during reading lessons. Literary appreciation exercises require students to detect literary signals, decode literary signals, and evaluate the values of these signals in expressing content.

To practice literary appreciation and reading comprehension skills for primary school students, first of all, there must be sample materials - which are authentic verses, poems, paragraphs, and essays.

"To understand poetic language, it is often impossible to rigidly 'open the dictionary to look it up'. In terms of semantics, words in literary texts have a maximum range of meaning, creating a variety of contextual and figurative meanings. Writers have applied different meanings and used words very effectively. In order to make an impression, writers and poets often 'deviate' from the common standards of popular language, creating many new words that are not in the dictionary. Of course, this creativity is guaranteed not to be so 'far-fetched' that no reader can understand it," said Ms. Nga.

Prof. Dr. Le Phuong Nga.jpg — Prof. Dr. Le Phuong Nga. Photo: Thanh Hung.

From a pedagogical perspective, in response to many concerns about whether teaching this poem is appropriate for 5th graders, Ms. Nga said that with decades of experience teaching primary school students and students of primary education , in her opinion, the poem is "just right" to teach and learn.

The female professor shared: “To determine whether there is a poem that is suitable for teachers of Vietnamese teaching methods at a pedagogical school or not, I verified it by creating my own reading comprehension exercises, responding to the poem and writing the expected answers - these answers must be based on the test results of elementary school students. At the same time, I also sent requests to teachers of elementary Vietnamese at universities and saw that they wrote many detailed answers.”

For primary school teachers, when teaching the topic "Developing Text Reception Capacity for Primary School Students", Ms. Nga let graduate students who were also primary school teachers choose their favorite texts and noticed that many people chose the poem "The Sound of Germinating Seeds" and wrote quite good passages as their expected answers. That proves that the poem creates excitement for many primary school teachers. In particular, there were students who enthusiastically wrote up to 4 different essays commenting on the poem.

Professor Nga also gave some primary school students a test reading comprehension exercise of this poem. “The students who were chosen were in grades 4 and 5, and their Vietnamese was only mediocre, and they were able to do it,” Professor Nga said.

Professor Le Phuong Nga believes that, for that reason, this poem is completely worthy of becoming a textbook.

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