Moral education or political education in the Vietnamese educational system?

Abstract

Vietnam has experienced the influences of different social standards and values of Confucianism, Communism and several major religions, such as Buddhism and Catholicism, and has also undergone tremendous social change in recent decades. Consequently, moral education in present‐day Vietnam takes various forms and definitions. Nowadays, moral education is incorporated in the formal curriculum and taught as a single subject of study at all levels of the Vietnamese education system. The focus of moral education in primary schools is character and personality building. In secondary schools, the syllabuses focus on citizenship education, emphasising the notion of developing a socialist citizen. In higher education, the ideas of inculcating socialist thoughts and socialist principles are as important as building intellectual ability, thus, Marxist sciences and Ho Chi Minh thoughts are compulsory taught courses and make up 12% of total study hours in the undergraduate and postgraduate curriculum. Therefore, there are two different systems of morality existing in Vietnamese society – traditional morality and socialist morality. Traditional morality is transmitted through informal channels of education, such as family education and religious institutions, while socialist morality is enforced through formal channels of the national curriculum and in various social activities and movements. However, it is still a real challenge for the Vietnamese educational system to redefine the objectives and content of moral education in order to cope with the complexity of a fast‐changing society.