MEETING REPORT

1. Time
- Date: Tuesday, September 25th
- Time: 1 pm-4pm
- Location: Meeting Room B XYZ High School
Chairman overview: The purpose of the meeting is to discuss the current problems of
todays teaching and studying of History in high school and find some new solutions for
it.
2. Attendee:
- Representatives of Ministry of Education, Headmasters, History teachers, 2
students and parents from all High School in Ho Chi Minh City.
+ Present: 6 over 6
+ Absent: None
+ Total number of attendee: 6
3. Chairman: representative of Ministry of Education.
4. Items discussed.
Representative of headmasters: some information about todays situation.
-From the past to the present, the teaching History has been imposed in textbook.
-Almost all lessons have to be learnt by heart and the lessons are not creative.
-History is an assistant subject so that students often do not care about it.
-Last year, some students of Nguyen Hieu High School tears History documents and throws into
the school yard. This proves that they didnt care about History.
Representative of students: some feelings and thoughts about History
-History helps to know and understand value traditional culture, memorize the sacrifices of the
national heroes.
-Provide information to understand clearly the developments of each social system.
-According to traditional values, we can form personality to conform to national culture.
-However there are a lot of students who dont like History. Because it has too much information
and events so most students cant remember. Besides, the current teaching method makes student
feel sleepy or not interesting.
Representative of History teachers: By throwing the history document after heard the new that
history wouldnt be available in high school graduation exam, students hadnt respect the history
and this gave the big trouble in our history value. Our country has very long and heroic history,
many people has felt down for that, but those students had forgets all of things which their
previous generation had done. Moreover this means some of students hadnt had any gratitude
and patriotism and this fault is one part of our education. If we dont do anything, valuable
values of Vietnam will be lost in a near future.
_ Government invested billions dongs from renew and appointed many history teachers all over
Vietnam combined rumor areas, this was a really big resource but the effect is not what the
education leaders expected. Many students considered history is just only a forced course and
they just learn because they had to pass. Our resource is not small but the effect is not fit.
_Our education leaders strategy aim to make all students know strongly about Vietnam and other
countries in the world history to make them feel proud of the country , built the patriotism in
every student and make them has a wide look from the past to present. In the other hand, that we
mentioned before this is not make them feel like that but this give them pressure about the course
and strategy went bankrupted.
_Make the student love the history subject , understand clearly the historic story can be done in
our abilities if we has effort and find a good way to do it, many country nearby has success by
doing that like China and Japan. The thing has to be done is that improve the education quality
start from the teacher, followed by the student. Teacher has make the subject more colorful and
easier to remember, make them proud of great victory in the past, student have to have a serious
thinking when studying history. This is in our abilities at all, if this situation keeps remain, I
think there would a big trouble in our society also in our destiny of Vietnam
Representative of parents: some benefits of todays method.
- Teacher and students will find it easy to teach and study: no extra materials/classes needed,
easy to verify historic information based on books.
- The government can orient the students thoughts and develop their personalities to the ways
the government want, such as patriotism, spirit against foreign invaders, revolutionary spirit.
- The Ministry of Education wont need to think about a reform or a cut in study program. It can
help to save the National Budget and the amount of knowledge can be kept large and complete.
- Teacher can mark the students scores easily based on the information on the textbook only.
- With the drawbacks of the current teaching method, the teachers have to be creative in finding
new ways of teaching to make the students feel excited about the subject. The students also have
to be energetic and active in class to study better.
Representative of students: opinions on the current History problems and some ways to
improve todays History teaching and studying quality.
a) Problem.
-Doing jobs depend on history cant earn as much as others subjects and now many people want the
jobs that can bring to them a great amount of money.
-The duration of class is so short that teachers cant express all the knowledge of every lecture.
-The only document used is the textbook but the knowledge in the textbook is so large that students
and even teachers cant remember.
-The methods of teaching History is foggy, students are under high pressure of exams so they must
learn by heart everything to get high scores but they dont understand the content.
-Lacking of teaching equipment in almost all schools lead to the lack of vivid lessons and students
will fall sleepy.
-Many teachers dont have passion with History they just read from textbook and students write
down, learn by heart that will make students feel sleepy and boring.
-Not many extracurricular activities are applied, so students dont feel impressed by History.
b) Methods.
- Increase the value of History and the jobs depended on History so that more students and
parents can realize that learning history can also bring money and improve their status as
well as other subjects.
- Improve textbooks, reduce the amount of knowledge, add more pictures and increase the
duration of History classes so that teacher and students can study all the knowledge in the
textbooks.
- Improve the content of textbooks to allow teachers and students to express their opinions,
to promote students thinking ability and creation rather than learning by heart.
- Improve the quality of history teachers. Only recruit teachers have passion with history.
- Improve methods of teaching, the subject must focus on the student have more
extracurricular activities so that students can know more about the history.
- Reduce exam pressure for students to take advantages of the time course to get
knowledge rather than trying to memorize to get good grades.
Representatives of Ministry of Education: After all, relying on different opinions, there are
many problems must be improved or renewed and, some problems is not really right.
First of all, lets get started talking about subject of history and studying this subject. As we
knew, subject of history is very important like any other subjects which students should study. It
helps people develop knowledge of past about any certain area, such us the building of society,
the development of economy, the world or, even existence of animals. Those are very much
objects in this subject. However, how to do it to get easy for studying?! That is also worthy
concerned thing.
Next, we discuss about problems of studying history. On textbook, following direction of
current education association is still continuing cutting back some contents and, reforming more
completely step by step. This thing now is quite good. However, many students, their parents or,
even teachers, are still feeling big weight of this subject. There are many reasons. For teachers,
they have worked not really right to responsibility. Teaching this subject is not still effective. For
students, they dont recognize good sense about this subject. For schools, they dont prepare
plans to help their teachers and students work more positively. All of problems make a hard
challenge for this subject.
Conclusion, we will have requirements to the department of history, dealing quickly with
these troubles around. Plan to designate wrong steps, recommending to teachers for effectively
teaching methods, reducing and reforming the textbook and, growing up instruments serving
education, educating and supporting students more better senses.

5. Conclusion.
-Chairman: agree to carry out all new solutions
- Voting result: 80% agree
20% disagree.


Secretary Chairman