I looked up this article in my files when I created the prior post of my YouTube video of the students in the school at Ban Tha Din Daeng Tai. I was sort of surprised when I read the article because it was so forthright, not always what you see in a government sponsored newspaper. But what you see in the video clips is mirrored in what the author of the article writes. And after being in schools when we were in Laos in December, the teaching methods haven’t changed.
Vientiane Times
Lao students are now becoming parrots
Written by Anoulack Khammalavong
If a person says “keo”, the parrot will say “keo” and if the teacher says “Laos is abundant in natural resources”, the students will surely repeat it after them with no words missing.
All students are now preparing for their first semester examinations and all of the students must chant like the monks learning their sermons. Most secondary students are now closing their bedroom doors, reading loudly. They read one line and repeat it. Then they read another line and repeat from the first line. They do that until they remember the whole text or the whole book. Many of them who are lazy to do so have to prepare materials to cheat in the examination.
But why are Lao students being taught to repeat like parrots? Because they do not understand what they have jotted down. The teachers enter the classroom with a textbook in hand or some teachers do not use the book at all as they remember all the words in the book in their minds due to a long period teaching. Most of the teachers write the title of the lesson and explain a few words before starting to dictate. Some of the students have to rush to record and some miss the words dictated. Many of them do not record anything at all, but pretend to jot down in their books since secondary schools are very crowded so teachers cannot observe all of the students. After the two-hour dictation, the time is over and the students have to close their books and have a break before they continue the next lesson with another teacher.
At home, most students do not care what they have recorded, but they have to parrot it out again at the end of each month when the monthly test is held. This kind of test is not very difficult because only tow or three topics were dictated, but many students still seek ways to cheat in the test. However, the semester test is on so many lessons that it overloads a students’ ability to remember them all. The students with a good memory and patience are able to review all the lessons dictated, but they cannot keep those lessons for a long time. They forget them as soon as the test is over.
Is this kind of learning useful? The answer is “not very” because it will lower the level of education among the graduates and slow down the human resource development efforts. These days Lao students are very poor on general knowledge as they have a very poor background of history, geography and general information. Many of them do not know who is their current President.. Many say that are not taught, but when looking at the texts in the course books a lot of information is printed. If the students could record about 30 percent of what they have learned in their mind, the level of Lao human resource development would be much higher.
The teacher-centered learning style has been practiced in Laos for over a century and now the student-centered method is being promoted. However, very few teachers use it and very few of them understand it thoroughly. Some teachers say the lack finances to prepare teaching aids and some say they do not have time to prepare. Many say “kho pen khoi pay (step by step).” Education in the developed countries does not khoi pen khoi pay, it jumps and flies. So why does least developed Laos khoi pen khoi pay?
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