Today, the press wrote wildly about the French Minister of National Education being a Muslim woman who is only 38 years old (born in 1977). She was praised for being very beautiful, highly talented, and a rising star on the French political scene.
I wonder if the press knows that the Minister of Human Resource Development (equivalent to the Ministry of Education) of India, Smriti Zubin Irani, is also a 39-year-old woman (born in 1976)? She was also a famous Bollywood movie star and a well-known model. And especially, she never graduated from university.
France and India, two major world powers, dared to place terrifyingly immense responsibility on two (young) women and didn’t mind at all that neither had much experience in this field.
There was no need to be a professor or PhD, no need to go through endless rounds of political infighting. There was no need to have gone through all kinds of positions here and there.
What they needed was breakthrough and creative thinking to address major issues in education. The appointment of these women itself demonstrated breakthrough thinking from the leaders.
That is why in India, there are universities even harder to enter than MIT and Harvard, with tuition fees that are practically free; there are classes taught in English at a cost equivalent to three ice cream sticks ($7–10/month), with general education curricula in English replacing entire major international curricula (IB, IGCSE) made available for free online; with effective educational solutions whose costs are shockingly cheap. Decades ago, India was famous for the Green Revolution. Now, India is famous for the educational revolution: elite-quality education for the masses. All of this comes from revolutionary thinking!
Conversely, with expensive, conservative, self-serving educational thinking and an irresponsible attitude, a country will forever be stuck with textbook development projects costing hundreds of billions of Dong with dozens of brain-confusing criteria that I bet will certainly lead nowhere; with English programs costing millions of Dong a month; with tablets priced at hundreds of dollars that parents are forced to buy, while children read until their eyes burn… The consequence is the corruption of the educational market, which is even more terrifying than in the banking or arms trading sectors!
For Vietnam, the biggest obstacle to educational revolutions from the private sector is that educational management agencies solely use judgments and criteria full of “qualitative” rather than “quantitative” measures to manage. Meanwhile, the worst aspect of educational business in Vietnam is forcing the sale of low-quality educational products by exploiting the deepest fear and anxiety of parents: their children’s future.
Criteria full of qualitative language erect barriers against any effort or proposal aimed at reforming education. Superficial responses based on emotion, such as “not aligned with educational purposes” or “not suitable with Vietnamese culture and mindset,” while lacking serious research and evaluation of proposals, are precisely the reason why no outstanding initiative is ever approved.
Vietnamese parents, almost all of whom fear their children won’t receive a proper education, wander around protesting, but ultimately still say “Yes” to everything. As long as a teacher says this program is good—even if a bit expensive—they will still swallow hard, grit their teeth, and pay for their children to study. When public opinion rumors that a certain school is good, they panic-queue and go through the back door just to get their child in; as for several electronic book sets, they just buy them recklessly to get it over with. Fake universities, unaccredited programs—just because of a “renowned” label, parents still submit applications so their child can study for “prestige”… Fearing a lost opportunity, they fear regret later.
This market manipulation will spread further and further, partly due to the fear of parents and the vagueness created by the educational management agencies themselves. If a product is bad, in other typical markets like finance or electronics, consumers would boycott it immediately; how could it possibly be allowed to sell or continue its service in schools?
In summary, as someone dedicated to the educational profession, I earnestly hope the State will firmly change its approach to receiving proposals, establishing a fair and insightful evaluation process for genuinely high-quality submissions. Eradicate the market corruption caused by unscrupulous education companies; open the doors to breakthrough reform programs that promote true educational values and bring real meaning to students.
