DaiViet
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Time for Viet men get pinoys girls. When a country gets positive view is easy for intermarrigares. I like pinoy girls, big butts and boobs.
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All of a sudden I got this nagging fear that we are truly going to be left behind by Vietnam. Not only is the former war torn country beating us in the attraction of foreign direct investments, now they are way ahead of us in education.
The BBC just published a report that gushed about Vietnam’s “stunning” rise in school standards. They are doing so well that they are now beating the US in a standardized test for students in the high school level.
“Participating in the tests for the first time, the country’s 15-year-olds scored higher in reading, math and science than many developed countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom.”
According to BBC, Vietnam scored 17th in math, 8th in science, 19th in reading – higher than the US in all subjects, which was ranked 36th at math, 28th at science, 23rd at reading. “In global rankings published by the OECD in May 2015, based on science and math, Vietnam was ranked 12th, while the US was in joint 28th.
(The rankings: 1. Singapore; 2. Hong Kong; 3. South Korea; 4. Japan and Taiwan; 6. Finland; 7. Estonia; 8. Switzerland; 9. Netherlands; 10. Canada; 11. Poland; 12. Vietnam).
I checked with DepEd and found out that we do not even take that international test called PISA. The last time we participated in an international assessment was in 2003. Just as well. It could have been another source of national shame.
We are not less intelligent than the Vietnamese or any other nationality. Our students have won gold medals in international math competitions. Despite all the lip service everyone gives education, we are just not doing enough to benefit the many.
We should learn from Vietnam. How can a war torn country speed past us in so many development metrics? How could they have made themselves so competitive despite having to repair the physical and psychological damage of a devastating war that raged for over two decades?
Maybe they have better leaders? But they had serious corruption problems too not long ago at the country’s senior leadership level. Unlike us, they managed to fix the problem and got back to the business of making their country highly competitive.
According to BBC, there are three key factors that contributed to the impressive results in education: committed leadership, a focused curriculum, and investment in teachers. “People at the highest levels of government in Vietnam are thinking about the challenges they face in educating their young.
“Very few other countries have shown a similar level of forward thinking and determination. The education ministry has designed a long-term plan. It is eager to learn from the best-performing countries on how to implement that plan successfully and is ready to commit the financial support that is needed.”
Vietnam, according to BBC, spent almost 21 percent of all government expenditure in 2010 to education – a larger proportion than seen in any OECD country. I checked how much we are spending and it is a dismal 14 percent. Sure, it is the largest in our national budget but it is so obviously inadequate.
The other big thing about Vietnam’s approach to education is “a curriculum that focuses on pupils gaining a deep understanding of core concepts and mastery of core skills. These students are expected to leave education not just able to recite what they have learned in class, but to apply those concepts and practices in unfamiliar contexts.”
BBC reports that “in Vietnamese classrooms there is an impressive level of rigor, with teachers challenging students with demanding questions. The teachers focus on teaching a few things well and with a great sense of coherence that helps students to progress.
“Teachers in Vietnam are highly respected, both in society as well as in their classrooms. That may be a cultural trait, but it also reflects the role that teachers are given in the education system, which extends well beyond delivering lessons in school and embraces many dimensions of student well-being and support.
“Teachers are expected to invest in their own professional development and that of their colleagues, and they work with a high degree of professional autonomy. In fact, mathematics teachers, especially those working in disadvantaged schools, receive more professional development than the average in OECD countries.
“These teachers know how to create a positive learning environment, foster good discipline in the classroom, and help to build students’ positive attitudes towards learning.
“This is also helped by the encouragement of parents, who generally hold high expectations for their children, and by a society that values education and hard work.”
That is our key weakness. We lack teachers, as in, we don’t have enough. And the teachers we do have need lots of training. This is why Rina Lopez Bautista shifted the focus of Knowledge Channel to teacher training. Youth volunteers of Teach Philippines should also help.
But we need a more institutional approach to teacher training. We also need to change our attitude toward teachers by upgrading their status in society.
The story is told of a Filipino farmer who proudly related how he successfully got his children through college. There was a lawyer, a doctor, an accountant, a nurse and a teacher. Then he added that the youngest is the least intelligent... “mahina ang ulo... kaya nag maestra na lang siya.” We need our best and brightest to be teachers.
The best way of putting importance to teaching as a profession is to pay them well. It is a horrible national failure that our teachers are leaving the country to take up work as domestic helpers in Hong Kong, Singapore and the Middle East.
They have started to raise salaries of teachers in public schools but we need to do more. We have to make the lives of our teachers more along the lines of the middle class. When my daughter was doing practice teaching at Balara Elementary School, she saw some teachers busy selling food to the pupils. They should be paid well enough to not to have to do that.
I imagine that we are daunted by the enormity of the education challenge. There may even be those in our education bureaucracy who think that it is too much to ask for quality education at our public schools. So long as they graduate so many elementary and high school pupils every year, their job is done.
Now here comes Vietnam and what they have achieved in education in so short a time is way out of our experience. It is also a serious challenge for competitiveness because Asean will be one market soon enough.
What makes Vietnam tick? Rogelio V. Paglomutan, a Facebook friend who has taught in Vietnam commented that unlike us, Vietnam is not afraid of foreign competition. “Vietnam has opened its education to foreign entities (100-percent foreign-owned), thus bringing the best practices in learning and advancement in knowledge and research collaboration.
“Australian, US, Singapore, Thailand and German universities are now operating in Vietnam. Proud to be one of the faculty of the Australian university (recruited around the world) then in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam – the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) International University in Vietnam.”
Another friend commented: “Vietnam also allows 100-percent equity in its entire financial sector. Who knows where else pa? Such self confidence is possible because they managed to beat the Americans in war. Unlike certain other ASEAN countries we know who love to play the victim. Pang telenovela talaga.”
I suspect one other reason why Vietnam has overtaken us is because they don’t have too many lawyers. They have engineers, economists, agriculturists and other useful professionals. There is little argument about attracting foreign capital maybe because they don’t have an economic oligarchy like ours who use the nationalist argument to fend off foreign competition.
In a sense we have squandered whatever advantages we might have had over Vietnam. Take that $1-billion Intel manufacturing facility we lost to Vietnam. I understand that Intel used a lot of Filipino technicians to get that facility running as Vietnam was still gearing up to bring their skills to the required level.
I think this BBC story on Vietnam’s stunning stride in education should make us realize the nature of the regional challenge. Unless we want to be relegated to the bottom half of Asean, we need to match the effort of Vietnam to educate their population.
If P-Noy’s claim that he has solved the classroom shortage problem is true, we should now focus on curriculum development and teacher training. Maybe we should allow independent international testing to benchmark where we are and set targets of where we want to be.
The problem is, doing what we must do has to happen now. Tomorrow will prove to be too late. Let this be an important election issue too.
------------
All of a sudden I got this nagging fear that we are truly going to be left behind by Vietnam. Not only is the former war torn country beating us in the attraction of foreign direct investments, now they are way ahead of us in education.
The BBC just published a report that gushed about Vietnam’s “stunning” rise in school standards. They are doing so well that they are now beating the US in a standardized test for students in the high school level.
“Participating in the tests for the first time, the country’s 15-year-olds scored higher in reading, math and science than many developed countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom.”
According to BBC, Vietnam scored 17th in math, 8th in science, 19th in reading – higher than the US in all subjects, which was ranked 36th at math, 28th at science, 23rd at reading. “In global rankings published by the OECD in May 2015, based on science and math, Vietnam was ranked 12th, while the US was in joint 28th.
(The rankings: 1. Singapore; 2. Hong Kong; 3. South Korea; 4. Japan and Taiwan; 6. Finland; 7. Estonia; 8. Switzerland; 9. Netherlands; 10. Canada; 11. Poland; 12. Vietnam).
I checked with DepEd and found out that we do not even take that international test called PISA. The last time we participated in an international assessment was in 2003. Just as well. It could have been another source of national shame.
We are not less intelligent than the Vietnamese or any other nationality. Our students have won gold medals in international math competitions. Despite all the lip service everyone gives education, we are just not doing enough to benefit the many.
We should learn from Vietnam. How can a war torn country speed past us in so many development metrics? How could they have made themselves so competitive despite having to repair the physical and psychological damage of a devastating war that raged for over two decades?
Maybe they have better leaders? But they had serious corruption problems too not long ago at the country’s senior leadership level. Unlike us, they managed to fix the problem and got back to the business of making their country highly competitive.
According to BBC, there are three key factors that contributed to the impressive results in education: committed leadership, a focused curriculum, and investment in teachers. “People at the highest levels of government in Vietnam are thinking about the challenges they face in educating their young.
“Very few other countries have shown a similar level of forward thinking and determination. The education ministry has designed a long-term plan. It is eager to learn from the best-performing countries on how to implement that plan successfully and is ready to commit the financial support that is needed.”
Vietnam, according to BBC, spent almost 21 percent of all government expenditure in 2010 to education – a larger proportion than seen in any OECD country. I checked how much we are spending and it is a dismal 14 percent. Sure, it is the largest in our national budget but it is so obviously inadequate.
The other big thing about Vietnam’s approach to education is “a curriculum that focuses on pupils gaining a deep understanding of core concepts and mastery of core skills. These students are expected to leave education not just able to recite what they have learned in class, but to apply those concepts and practices in unfamiliar contexts.”
BBC reports that “in Vietnamese classrooms there is an impressive level of rigor, with teachers challenging students with demanding questions. The teachers focus on teaching a few things well and with a great sense of coherence that helps students to progress.
“Teachers in Vietnam are highly respected, both in society as well as in their classrooms. That may be a cultural trait, but it also reflects the role that teachers are given in the education system, which extends well beyond delivering lessons in school and embraces many dimensions of student well-being and support.
“Teachers are expected to invest in their own professional development and that of their colleagues, and they work with a high degree of professional autonomy. In fact, mathematics teachers, especially those working in disadvantaged schools, receive more professional development than the average in OECD countries.
“These teachers know how to create a positive learning environment, foster good discipline in the classroom, and help to build students’ positive attitudes towards learning.
“This is also helped by the encouragement of parents, who generally hold high expectations for their children, and by a society that values education and hard work.”
That is our key weakness. We lack teachers, as in, we don’t have enough. And the teachers we do have need lots of training. This is why Rina Lopez Bautista shifted the focus of Knowledge Channel to teacher training. Youth volunteers of Teach Philippines should also help.
But we need a more institutional approach to teacher training. We also need to change our attitude toward teachers by upgrading their status in society.
The story is told of a Filipino farmer who proudly related how he successfully got his children through college. There was a lawyer, a doctor, an accountant, a nurse and a teacher. Then he added that the youngest is the least intelligent... “mahina ang ulo... kaya nag maestra na lang siya.” We need our best and brightest to be teachers.
The best way of putting importance to teaching as a profession is to pay them well. It is a horrible national failure that our teachers are leaving the country to take up work as domestic helpers in Hong Kong, Singapore and the Middle East.
They have started to raise salaries of teachers in public schools but we need to do more. We have to make the lives of our teachers more along the lines of the middle class. When my daughter was doing practice teaching at Balara Elementary School, she saw some teachers busy selling food to the pupils. They should be paid well enough to not to have to do that.
I imagine that we are daunted by the enormity of the education challenge. There may even be those in our education bureaucracy who think that it is too much to ask for quality education at our public schools. So long as they graduate so many elementary and high school pupils every year, their job is done.
Now here comes Vietnam and what they have achieved in education in so short a time is way out of our experience. It is also a serious challenge for competitiveness because Asean will be one market soon enough.
What makes Vietnam tick? Rogelio V. Paglomutan, a Facebook friend who has taught in Vietnam commented that unlike us, Vietnam is not afraid of foreign competition. “Vietnam has opened its education to foreign entities (100-percent foreign-owned), thus bringing the best practices in learning and advancement in knowledge and research collaboration.
“Australian, US, Singapore, Thailand and German universities are now operating in Vietnam. Proud to be one of the faculty of the Australian university (recruited around the world) then in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam – the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) International University in Vietnam.”
Another friend commented: “Vietnam also allows 100-percent equity in its entire financial sector. Who knows where else pa? Such self confidence is possible because they managed to beat the Americans in war. Unlike certain other ASEAN countries we know who love to play the victim. Pang telenovela talaga.”
I suspect one other reason why Vietnam has overtaken us is because they don’t have too many lawyers. They have engineers, economists, agriculturists and other useful professionals. There is little argument about attracting foreign capital maybe because they don’t have an economic oligarchy like ours who use the nationalist argument to fend off foreign competition.
In a sense we have squandered whatever advantages we might have had over Vietnam. Take that $1-billion Intel manufacturing facility we lost to Vietnam. I understand that Intel used a lot of Filipino technicians to get that facility running as Vietnam was still gearing up to bring their skills to the required level.
I think this BBC story on Vietnam’s stunning stride in education should make us realize the nature of the regional challenge. Unless we want to be relegated to the bottom half of Asean, we need to match the effort of Vietnam to educate their population.
If P-Noy’s claim that he has solved the classroom shortage problem is true, we should now focus on curriculum development and teacher training. Maybe we should allow independent international testing to benchmark where we are and set targets of where we want to be.
The problem is, doing what we must do has to happen now. Tomorrow will prove to be too late. Let this be an important election issue too.
