Philosophy teaches us many things, but first we don't understand, second we understand but don't remember, third we understand but can't apply.
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| Dr. Tran Thi Hanh |
4 reasons why students are bored
A reader commented like this: "Just because they think those subjects are irrelevant, students graduate without knowing what to do, because they don't know who they are, where they stand in society..."...
- Exactly. With philosophy, the first questions are“Who am I?”, “What is the world?”, “What am I in this world?”, and "What should we do?”.
Philosophy not only answers theoretical questions but also answers practical questions such as“How should we live?”, “What do we do before nature and society?”.
And philosophy is also the answer to our relationships with family and society. For example, women cannot escape from their families, we can be businessmen, politicians, journalists, teachers, but when we come home we must know who we are. It sounds funny but that is philosophy.
So where does student boredom with philosophy come from, madam?
- I can say this: Philosophy, as a basic science of the country, has always been invested in and developed. However, for a long time, society has recognized and students have a very low desire to study philosophy, because they do not imagine what they will study and what they will do after graduation. In recent years, thanks to the media, this field of study has become more widely known.
The second, more difficult, task is teaching philosophical principles at universities. The reasons why students mostly learn philosophy but do not remember anything, are not enthusiastic, or, more extreme, hate the subject, come from the curriculum, the training management, the teachers and the students themselves.
Regarding the curriculum, due to the integration, the amount of time for each subject has been reduced. Previously, philosophy had 90 periods, political economy 75 periods, and scientific socialism 60 periods. Since 2008, when these three subjects were integrated, philosophy has 30 periods, political economy and scientific socialism have 45 periods.
So, imagine that when teaching a philosophy subject with a history of thousands of years, it is impossible to teach anything thoroughly in 30 periods. Many schools consider philosophy a minor subject, taught only to complete the task.
Regarding the lecturers, I affirm that they are all very dedicated, qualified, professional, and receive annual training to acquire new knowledge.
However, now with the credit-based training method, classes of non-specialized schools have up to hundreds of students sitting in a hall because the schools want to concentrate them for convenience in management. Lecturers use projectors to teach.
I know that lecturers are very dissatisfied with this form of teaching, because philosophy teaching must be accompanied by discussion. In a class size of hundreds of people, discussion is impossible.
Some teachers confided in me that teaching is very boring, teaching a whole hall, there is little interaction between lecturers and students, when writing essays, students get them from the internet or go to essay markets, doing it perfunctorily, not of good quality.
What about the students, madam?
- Students are not enthusiastic about studying because first, they are in high school, and the learning method at university is completely different.
On the other hand, this is a theoretical subject, very abstract, so students are extremely confused. And this is also a subject related to practice, students do not have life experience, so when teachers give examples to illustrate socio-economic issues, students almost do not know.
And philosophy usually falls in the first semester. Of course, when students have not found a way to study, combined with the above reasons, when their study results are low, they will be even more bored, have to retake the exam, re-study, and start to hate the subject.
There are also opinions that the reason students do not like philosophy is because of the teaching content...
- I understand, this opinion is about the fact that philosophy in schools mainly teaches Marxist-Leninist philosophy.
It must be affirmed that Marxist-Leninist philosophy is a very complete system from dialectical materialism to historical materialism, which needs to be studied completely, fundamentally, and firmly. Especially the historical materialism part is the cornerstone for social sciences and humanities.
But to understand it, we need historical references, so that students can thoroughly understand its origins, the conditions of its formation, how classical German philosophy was, and how Western, Greek, Roman, and Renaissance philosophy were... When Marxist-Leninist philosophy entered Vietnam, we had to understand Eastern philosophy.
The curriculum before 2008 had a section on the history of philosophy, which students really liked. And there was another section on epistemology and logic as a tool for cognition, which students also really liked. But later, when implementing the integrated program, almost everything was removed, leaving only the philosophy section of Marxism-Leninism. And so, as we understand it, now only the tip of the iceberg is taught.
To make the subject not "boring"
- I want to say that philosophy is very attractive and very interesting. It's just that it's not shiny and sparkling so that people can recognize it right away. It needs a teacher to guide it.
The current training program devotes a lot of time to skills and specialized subjects, so it is impossible to demand more time for philosophy. What I wish is for philosophy to stand out as an independent subject, because it has been a science for ages.
In this capacity, we will restructure the framework program of the Ministry of Education and Training, then schools from that framework will prepare specific lectures for students according to the cultural and artistic blocks, technology blocks, natural sciences blocks, and social sciences and humanities blocks. If there are specific lectures for each group of students, the quality of teaching as well as the effect on the subject will certainly be improved.
But if we don't get cooperation from students, then no matter how much change we make, it will fail?
- It is true that we need to create attraction, liveliness, and interest in students first, then lead them to science.
Science is not something that is easy to attract people. So the important thing is to change the students' attitudes. Right from the beginning, if students have a prejudiced, discriminatory attitude, have been locked in this subject as terrible, terrible, boring, and fail a lot, then they will not have the motivation to study.
I always say that love for philosophy, seeing the value of philosophy does not come immediately but it takes time to absorb.
That is why there is a second phenomenon like this: Philosophy is also a common subject in graduate school, but students really like this subject. Because they have reality, life experience, experience... and especially graduate students have stumbled, stumbled, faced a certain incident that they do not know how to explain, or have not found a way to escape. Only when encountering such situations, they feel that philosophy is very necessary, like you.the chairman of that commune.
Thank you!
According to Vietnamnet