Vietnam - Teaching students at nursery schools: children become guinea-pigs

VietNamNet Bridge – Realizing the high demand for learning English for pre-school children, a lot of kindergartens in HCM City have been taught English as extracurricular activities. However, this has not been applauded by educators and psychologists.

The problem is that the kindergartens’ English teaching programs have been going in a spontaneous way, with different curriculums applied and teachers recruited from different sources. Meanwhile, no one can be sure if it is advisable to teach English to children at the small ages.

Teaching English for two months and then… stopped

In October 2011, the HCM City Education and Training Department allowed South Korean Poly Education Service Company to teach English on a trial basis at four kindergartens in the city, including the HCM City Kindergarten, Be Ngoan, Tuoi Tho and Vang Anh Schools.

Each of the schools chose 30-40 children randomly to form up two English classes. An executive of Poly said after two months of teaching in the pilot period, it would make some changes to the curriculums based on the suggestions of teachers and children, to create a perfect curriculum which would then be applied throughout the city.

However, the English teaching has stopped after two months, thus raising worries to parents.

HM, a parent, said she really wanted her child to get familiar with English when the child goes to kindergarten. However, she wonders if the curriculums have been examined by the watchdog agency, and she cannot understand why the English teaching was implemented for two months only.

“I don’t know what curriculum my child should follow now, and if a new curriculum would have contradictions with the Poly’s one?” she said.

Nguyen Thi Kim Dung, Head of the Pre-school Education Division of the HCM City Education and Training Department, said she finds the Poly’s curriculum okay. In fact, Poly can cooperate with kindergartens to teach English without noticing the education department, because this is just an extracurricular activity.

To date, the English teaching at kindergartens has been going in a spontaneous way. Dang Thi Anh Mai, Headmaster of the Mang Non 1 Kindergarten in district 10 in HCM City also said the school has joined forces with CIC to organize English teaching, just to help children get familiar to pronunciation and letters.

However, an official of the education sub-department in district 3 admitted that the curriculum appraisal and teaching assessment have been left “open.”

It’s too early to teach English at pre-school education age

When asked if the English teaching at kindergartens would be applied in a larger scale, an official of the HCM City Education and Training Department said the department has not made any decisions.

Meanwhile, districts’ education sub-departments have said the city’s department has started the English teaching at kindergartens in some districts, deciding to use Cambridge curriculum of the British Council as the official curriculum.

According to Vo Ngoc Thu, Head of the District 5 Education and Training Sub-department, three kindergartens in the district have registered the English teaching, However, the teaching would be carried out only with the support of the parents.

Meanwhile, a lot of educators have voiced their protest against the plan to teach English to nursery school children. Dr Vo Van Nam, a lecturer of the HCM City University of Education, said that children need to be taught Vietnamese language first.

Nam has warned that bad consequences may occur, if Vietnamese children begin learning foreign languages soon before they can speak Vietnamese fluently.

Compiled by Thu Uyen

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