Learning is for life, not just for tests

This was the fateful day that claimed over 100,000 lives in South Asia.

While playing with her mom and seven-year-old younger sister that day, Tilly noticed the sea changing color, large bubbles rising and the tide receding suddenly.

She recalled these as tsunami warnings from an earthquake from a geography lesson taught by her teacher Mr. Kearney just two weeks earlier.

It could be said that Tilly applied knowledge and skills learned in school in real life. What she learned was not just stored away in her memory; it was used to recognize the incoming tsunami and take action.

This story brings us to the state of her peers in Vietnam.

Before the 2018 General Education Curriculum, Vietnamese students followed a knowledge-heavy learning approach, memorizing lesson materials like computers.

During exams, students would recall and reproduce that information. These tests were simply memory tests, where the input and output were just knowledge. Instead of understanding the fundamental essence of the knowledge learned, teachers and students often focused on complex, tricky calculations.

Thus, many students struggled when faced with new scenarios not found in textbooks. While solving those mathematical problems could develop basic thinking skills, these skills are still limited.

This explains why Vietnam, despite frequent wins in international Olympiads, has no Nobel laureates, few global contributions and no world-renowned brands.

Students review their test questions after the 2024 high school graduation exam in HCMC. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran

The 2018 curriculum aims to change this, encouraging students to learn as Tilly did, focusing on building capabilities and thought processes through activities rather than forced learning.

The updated education curriculum focuses on building well-rounded individuals with clear skills, not just subject lists.

The new curriculum aims to help students gain more than just knowledge; it also aims to inculcate qualities and skills.

Student competency is assessed through specific indicators in each subject.

From 2025 high school graduation sample exams will not demand complex calculations but will ensure students understand concepts.

Real-world and scientific contexts will replace rigid questions, allowing students to demonstrate their capabilities.

One example: instead of listing adaptation processes, a test may ask about pollution in Manchester, England, and its impact on birch trees and caterpillars before and after 1848. Before, when the environment was not polluted, birch trees were white and caterpillars were mostly light-colored. After 1848, due to coal smog, the trees turned dark. Fifty years later dark-colored caterpillars accounted for 98% of the population.

Similarly, students might be asked how doctors use radioactive elements in cancer treatment, including body absorption rates. Calculating the heat output of a school's water heating system could replace calculating the heat transferred when a red-hot ball is dropped into a cup of water.

This new direction matches competency-based testing standards, making old exam formats obsolete. Embracing this shift means guiding students toward a new education era. Students no longer have to grind pointless calculations and instead can learn new concepts like real scientists do.

However, even good ideas like the 2018 General Education Curriculum face obstacles in practice.

But, if implemented as intended, this curriculum can shape a generation that learns for life, just like Tilly Smith.

*Dao Tuan Dat is a physics lecturer at the Hanoi University of Science and Technology and the principal of a private high school in Hanoi.