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VietNamNet Bridge – Schools have been told to compile documents and have enough textbooks for teaching and learning by 2015. However, a lot of schools complain that the task is beyond their means.

The Dong Thap University, which is 10 years old, has admitted that it does not have the sufficient financial capability and the workforce to compile textbooks as requested.

Dr. Nguyen Van De, President of the school, said the biggest problem for the young schools is that the workforce is not qualified enough to compile textbooks. The limited financial capability does not allow the schools to put the textbook compilation on the high priority of the to-do list. 

Compiling textbooks, in the thoughts of the schools, is not an urgent work, because their lecturers and students still can use the textbooks compiled by well- known experts and more prestigious schools.

De said that Dong Thap now has 3,379 sets of documents to serve the teaching and learning, satisfying 77 percent of the students’ demand. About 73 e-lessons have been compiled over the last 3 years which allows improving the quality of learning via Internet.

As for FPT University, the school does not intend to compile textbooks in the first stage of development. 

Le Truong Tung, President of FPT University said that it would be very costly and time consuming for the school to compile textbooks and documents itself. Meanwhile, it would be better to use the materials compiled by the famous authors and being used by many prestigious schools.

Aiming to train the students capable to work in an international working environment, the textbooks and documents should be written in English. Meanwhile, it is nearly unfeasible to hire Vietnamese to compile textbooks in English.

De affirmed that it’s very difficult to choose suitable documents and textbooks for every school.

Since schools cannot compile all the textbooks and documents needed for their teaching and learning, they have been advised to cooperate to write textbooks and lesson plans in order to optimize the strength of the schools’ workforce.

The old schools, where there are leading specialists who are the authors of many research works, could be the sources which provide textbooks and documents to other schools all over the country.

However, De said a problem has arisen that the documents compiled by famous schools sometimes are too heavy for the majority of students. Since the famous schools have higher quality students, the specialists tend to provide too much knowledge in their textbooks, which cannot be used for other students.

According to Dr. Nguyen Van Nha, former Head of the Training Division of the Hanoi National University, who is now the President of the Nguyen Trai University, there are four big existing problems.

First, some good lecturers do not want other schools use the textbooks they write. Second, some educators believe that no need to provide textbooks to students, because university is not a general school. Third, the pay for the textbook compilation is too low, which cannot encourage lecturers and scientists to write. Fourth, not all the lecturers can write textbooks.

Therefore, Nha thinks that small schools should not waste time and money to compile textbooks. They’d better to apply the solutions which are “economical and reasonable.”

GD&TD