[Vnbiz] Exam and cheating

[Tran Dinh Hoanh]

Dear CACC,

As everyone can see every day, exam and cheating in Vietnam has become
a never-ending saga.  Exam cheating has become a million-dollar
industry (Tax folks, try to tax them income tax for the national
budget! :-)  Every day on the newspaper, there is at least one article
about exam cheating.

Should we start to dissect this issue seriously and solve it?
Especially now that we have a new Minister of Education and Training?

My first question is:  Why do we need so many exams?  Especially so
many national exams?  Should we start to look at the exams themselves
before going further?

As far as I am concerned, Vietnam education is a relic of the French,
which is at least 60 years behind the time.   And the French system in
Vietnam was not even the real French.  That was a system designed to
keep us stupid and to produce a handful of "yes-men" to serve the
French.  Why are we still keeping it after 60 years of independence
from the French?  Shouldn't we dump it into the garbage dump and start
a new system?

The old French system was designed (1) to make you stop thinking.
Just sit and listen and say "yes" and learn by heart what your French
teacher told you, and (2) to reduce talent to the maximum and to allow
only a handful of people to obtain a degree.  Lots and lots of exams
were placed at every stage of the education process to chop heads, to
KEEP PEOPLE OUT of the system, to keep people out of school, to give
only a handful of people the economic and political privileges that
went with a degree, and not to prove that the students had gained
enough fundamental knowledge to function well in the society.

So what we need to think now is the entire education and exam system.
What exams we need?  What we don't need?  And when we need an exam,
how it should be done?  These are the question we need to address to
revolutionize our system.  And I say "revolutionize."  We need a
revolution in our education system, to bring it to the modern time.  A
little bandage here, a little bandage there won't work.

Now let's start with the easy one first: College annual exams and
graduation exams.  Do we need them?  Or shouldn't we just stick with
each course's result.  Each course will have its assigned homework,
class attendance record, quizzes, exams at the end of the course
(usually at the end of each semester), in a small class setting, in
which there is no motivation and no ability to cheat.  This would
require the students to work all year round instead of playing all
year round and cramming of the exam at the end only.   And when a
student is done with all the courses, why can't he graduate instead of
sitting for another graduation exam?

Now college entrance exam:  Why do we need to have a national college
entrance exam?  What's wrong with the student's high school record and
the student's resume?  If there is some standard test to prove
"general competency", can we have a private company doing the testing
instead (like TOFFLE test)?  The private testing service (usually a
not-for-profit corporation) will set up its own exam schedules
throughout the year for the students to take in small groups.  No
possibility for cheating.  And the student will pay a fee for the exam
(so the government doesn't have to spend money). The testing company
will meet all international standards of testing procedures.  The
students will just submit the "general competency test" result, along
with his high school record, his resume, his reference letters, etc.,
to the college he wants to enter and let the college decide

And each college just has to decide how to structure its admission
procedure: Does it want an additional exam for the students who submit
entrance application?  Or just rely on the students' existing record?
Does it want to interview each student?   How much weight it wants to
give to the student's working experience? Etc...

I am just throwing some ideas here for us to think about and to
discuss.  Whatever we want to do, there is one thing we need to do for
sure:  We have to revolutionize our education system.  The current
system is at least 60 years behind the time and it sucks!

You brothers/sisters in this forum, most of you have studied abroad
and have traveled abroad intensively, so please address this issue
seriously.  We need to solve our education problems.

Have a great day!

Hoanh
-- 
Tran Dinh Hoanh, LLB, JD
Attorney of Law
Washington DC