Oct 31, 2012

Vietnam - Creative teaching method faces barriers

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VietNamNet Bridge – Opinions still vary about a teacher in Quang Ngai province, described as “the teacher who likes raising tough questions.” While some educators believe that the teacher follows a creative teaching method, others think that this is “extremely odd.”

The debate about the new teaching method has been raised after TY, a 11th grader of the Tran Ky Phong High School in Quang Ngai province ripped her hand with a razor blade in a lesson, just because she disagreed with the teaching method of the biology teacher.

The action of the student has been described as the behavior to protest the teaching method applied by the biology teacher.

Meanwhile, the former students of Tran Ky Phong School, when asked about the teacher, showed their different thoughts about her.

The portrait of the teacher

Nguyen Thanh Toan, now an architect, working in HCM City, left Tran Ky Phong School in 2004, said he has received a call from the Quang Ngai provincial education department, asking about the characters and the teaching method of teacher E.

Toan said that the teacher regularly raised tough questions to students, such as: why there are few flowers in black color existing in the wild? Or why do people always put in some salt when cleaning vegetables?

Toan and other classmates sometimes got mark 1 from the teacher. Like Y, Toan then met teacher E and asked her to change the teaching method, because the teacher always raised difficult questions and gave bad marks, which would discourage students.

“A lot of my friends disagreed with the teaching method applied by the teacher. I even tried to move to another class, because I thought I could not learn with such a teacher,” Toan recalled the days with the teacher.

One of the students, who most protested against the teaching method was Vo Van Do, a friend of Toan’s. After Do received bad marks, he said loudly in the classroom: “I do not agree with your way of giving marks.”

Meanwhile, other students were less critical when talking about the teacher. A former student said he could not understand why teacher E likes raising tough questions and giving bad marks. However, he is sure that the bad marks then disappeared later from the mark-books. This means that the bad marks were not considered when assessing students’ capability.

The student has affirmed that he regularly got bad marks, but he still got 6.5 marks for biology by the end of the school year, which was high enough for him to be recognized as “excellent student.”

Creative or odd?

Nguyen Kien Giang, Chair of the Association of Tran Ky Phong School’s Former Students in HCM City, who is now a lawyer, said he really felt enjoyable at the lesson run by teacher E. Like many others, Giang also received bad marks from the teacher, but the bad marks were not counted on when the school considered their learning capability.

Unlike the others, a former student said he really liked the creative teaching method of the teacher.

“The teacher’s questions were always very difficult and you would not be able to give answers unless you have deep knowledge and analyzed the facts and figures thoroughly,” he said.

“She did not care much about the marks, but she focused on providing useful knowledge to students,” he commented.

The student went on to say that the teachers like E should be encouraged instead of being criticized.

Compiled by Thu Uyen


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