Having graduated as a teacher of foreign languages and completed eight years of professional training in the Russian Federation, Ms Hoang Thi Ngoc Mai, Chairwoman of the Board of Directors of Hanoi VIP Education System, has aroused much enthusiasm for Vietnamese education development. She is also an acclaimed successful entrepreneur. She was named a Top 5 businesswoman and represented Vietnam at the Global Summit of Women 2009 in Chile. She has attended many business talks and programmes on HTV television channel. She is also active in charitable programmes and social activities. So, prior to the awarding ceremony of Golden Rose Cup 2013, Vietnam Business Forum interviewed Ms Ngoc Mai, who is totally devoted to the national education. Ha Thu reports.
You took professional training for eight years in Russia and now often go abroad, having chances to get to know about advanced education in the world. Could you please talk about the role of education in Vietnam’s development?
Science and technology are now developing very rapidly and significantly affecting the global economy. Stepping into the 21st century with the aim of national modernisation, we have encountered numerous difficulties and challenges. More than ever, we must set ground-breaking education reform goals on top. Education essentially trains and fosters leaders for the next generation.
Education development is one of top-priority areas for any country. Education is the biggest challenge that every country has to face. It affects the development of the current and prospective society that the entire nation expects from the next generations. Many complex social problems cannot be solved without addressing educational issues. We are transiting from the information era to the knowledge era. In the information era, we face the booming of figures and data but, in knowledge era, we learn to absorb, analyse and collect information and make it complete, understandable and applicable knowledge. Without bold investment for education, we will never dream of building up global capacity and competitiveness.
As an educator using one of the most advanced education models in Vietnam, would you be kind enough to tell us about these fundamental changes in education?
We need a realistic education associated with everyday life, based on science and used science as the key. Besides, we should learn and grasp latest, most advanced inventions of mankind to analyse and apply to the country’s economy. To do so, we need a strong force of capable experts to translate all useful knowledge and add it to training curricula for students to grasp main contents, understand the basic nature of everything and thereby equip the knowledge for their own.
More than ever, to reform education, schools must understand the responsibility of teachers who must have certain education qualification and ethics and act as good examples for their students to follow as Uncle Ho’s saying "a living example is worth one hundred speeches" or folk saying "seeing is believing" and "true coral needs no painter’s brush". But importantly, teachers and parents need to be good examples. Teachers must teach theories and combine them with practice. Parents must spend time to take care of their children, understand their psychology and share joy and sorrow with them. That is the most effective and intelligent education method we should apply. Families, schools and society create good environments and we will have good and prominent citizens. There is no better root of education than practice.
To realise those innovations, how should we change programmes and policies from macro to micro levels?
Education, apart from compiling basic programmes of science, society and nature for students, must add our regime principle values and socialist leadership knowledge to training programmes for students. We do not need to wait for students to reach university level to teach these, as we do now. As soon as they go to school, students must be taught such good virtues as modesty, punctuality, reliability, neatness and cleanness. Students should also be required to adopt higher values like honesty, loyalty, integrity and sacrifice to the fatherland. These qualities are extremely important to social order protection and economic prosperity of any country.
Our education needs to make everyone into winners. The nation must have human resources policies. How we provide access to good education to everyone, not only gifted classes in State-funded schools. In summary, after we have resolutions, we must have methods to carry out those strategies and policies to make dramatic breakthroughs in education, train many talents and elite leaders for next generations, not merely words written in speeches at meetings as we often see. "Education changes the destiny of man," said Belinsky.
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Formally established in 2006, after nearly 10 years of construction and development, Hanoi VIP Education System is one of the pioneer educational institutions to invest in infrastructure, change teaching methods and design dynamic, comprehensive and innovative curricula at four levels.
Using basic scientific background together with modern educational theories like multiple intelligence theory, emotional intelligence theory, brain hemisphere applications, three-brain theory or Maslow's hierarchy of needs, Hanoi VIP Education System builds the L.E.A.D.E.R.S education model to create a developed education environment with three elements, namely Logics (mathematical thinking, logical reasoning and numbers); Exchange (language, communication skills and integration); Acts (physical health, manipulation, movement); Drawing (painting, shaping, space recognition, object); Emotion (perception, emotional expression, music perception, aesthetic perception); Resourcefulness (creative thinking, innovation); and Skills (living, studying and working skills).
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