For a long time, exams have always affected teaching and learning. However, this year, when the first batch of students are preparing for the high school graduation exam according to the 2018 General Education Program (new program), the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has not yet announced the exam orientation and sample exam questions, making teachers always in a state of anxiety and passivity.
This year, when preparing the 11th grade math outline for the trigonometry section, a teacher asked questions in a multiple-choice format, and 100% of the students in the class used calculators to calculate the results. To adjust the questions to an essay format like before would be very cumbersome and time-consuming.
The problem is that textbooks orient students to answer questions that require thinking. Therefore, if teachers only focus on teaching for multiple-choice tests, students will lose their thinking skills and just need to use a calculator to complete the task. On the contrary, if teachers teach to develop thinking, students will lose the skill of using a calculator - which is a powerful tool when taking multiple-choice tests!
The Ministry of Education and Training announced that all subjects will be tested in the form of multiple-choice tests (except literature), even though it has already happened, it still makes teachers worried. Multiple-choice tests will mean that students only need to use computers. Meanwhile, in the teaching process, teachers are required to comprehensively develop students' thinking and abilities. If exams only require the use of computers, where will the thinking be? If the test results are not high, families and students will blame them, and teachers will have to bear more pressure.
That is just a very small example when teachers teach, test and evaluate according to the new program. The new program is understood to be a program that will reduce academic knowledge and increase practical application in students' lives. However, when implementing the program, the textbook replacement roadmap is divided into many phases, each year changing books for each class at each level. The "broken" and disjointed textbooks also make students feel lost.
For example, this year's 12th graders only study the new program for 3 years, which creates knowledge that they have not learned due to the discontinuous structure of the textbooks. For example, the 12th grade math subject requires knowledge about cylinders and cones, while the new program structure brings this knowledge down to grade 9, but when they are in grade 9, they are studying the old program, which does not have that knowledge! Teachers have to frantically supplement the missing knowledge for students. Not only math, many subjects are in a similar situation.
With the goal of reducing academic knowledge, textbooks and instruction books are not designed in a uniform manner, not reflecting the program's goals. The requirements in each lesson seem to be easy, students only need to understand a little because many questions have been cut and omitted, but that is only a mechanical way to reduce the load, not complete and comprehensive. From this reality, teachers have to supplement because although the content of that knowledge is not presented in the book, the examples are asked, making students not understand and not have a general direction. Teachers have to supplement in many ways and forms with the motto "it is better to teach too much than to miss out".
If the Ministry of Education and Training does not provide a test matrix, teachers will not know what to teach. They can only teach everything, teach enough, teach according to the manual, and refer to it. This is no different from teaching according to the old program, pulling students into the competition for exams, and therefore, reducing the program load is still a difficult goal to achieve.
Source: https://nld.com.vn/ca-thay-lan-tro-deu-choi-voi-196240929205301177.htm
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