Western education is neither perfect nor poor

However, after she moved to live in a Western country, she now thinks Western education is very poor, and students there are bad at math and comprehensive reading, and so the West is having to attract talent from countries like Vietnam.

Both opinions are extreme and misleading. Western education systems are not perfect, but they are not poor either.

In 2000 the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development started the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) to measure the academic capability of 15-year-old students in countries and territories within and outside the OECD in mathematics, science and reading.

PISA 2022 results showed that countries considered poor at math such as Australia (487 points) and Canada (497) have a big gap with China (552) and Japan (536) but are still better than countries that study math diligently, like Vietnam (469).

Reading comprehension results were similar.

The fact that my friend feels that Westerners are bad at math is due to two reasons.

First, she was comparing herself, an elite student in Vietnam, with the surrounding environment, which may not be the elite student environment of that country. Second, people often tend to make generalizations. Just like I once met some Australians who believed that not being able to speak English fluently meant being poorly educated.

Just because countries have policies to attract talented people, it does not mean their education system is incapable of training talented people.

Students of Dinh Tien Hoang Primary School in HCMC's District 1 in 2022. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran

Western education has its pros and cons. Overall, these education systems are not necessarily more effective than Vietnam’s if we take into account the huge investment for education in developed countries.

In 2022 Australia spent $88.4 billion on educating four million students, while Vietnam invested $12 billion for 18 million students.

And, Australia’s education system is still far from perfect and has problems. Its PISA results over the past 20 years have actually gone down, not up.

Australia also has a shortage of teachers. Educators have warned that this will drag down the quality of teaching, because teachers, in addition to imparting knowledge, also need to convey a passion for learning to children.

In 2019, during the campaign for the Australian general elections, candidates from both parties asserted that Australian education was unfair and far from the best in the world.

Finland is praised by many scholars and was recognized by the World Economic Forum in 2018 as the best education in the world.

But based on the graduation results of more than 400 high schools, I see that Finland's scores are as normal as that of any other country, including Vietnam. The best school has an average graduation score nearly double that of the worst school (5.98/7 compared to 3.13/7).

There is no such thing as all schools are the same.

Therefore, when adopting advanced education, a certain level of alertness is needed. We need to know what to choose to learn from advanced education systems.

Vietnam's great strength is studiousness. Generations of Vietnamese people have stayed up late and gotten up early to study.

What we still do not quite have yet is a highly effective, pragmatic education system that helps learners become highly capable.

*Dr To Thuc graduated from the University of Queensland, Australia, in 2015 with the title of UQ Future Leader. He participated in academic editing for the Union of Innovative Research Universities. He is currently in charge of coordinating the civil engineering training program at James Cook University in Australia.