Hong Duc University’s Defence and Security Education Centre is tasked with providing defence and security education for about 10,000 students from 13 professional education facilities within the province of Thanh Hoa on a yearly basis. However, facilities at the Centre are inadequate, it has to carry out the teaching work in many places, its teaching staff is limited without any seconded officer, and the distribution of defence and security education reveal shortcomings. It should be noted that recently the COVID-19 epidemic has profoundly changed life and study of cadres, instructors, and students at the Centre and negatively impacted the results of education and training.

Against that backdrop, the Centre’s Board of Directors has proactively grasped documents and directives by the Party and the State on defence and security education, particularly the Circular 03/2017/TT-BGDĐT, dated January 13^th, 2017 by the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) and guiding documents by the Provincial Defence and Security Education Council of Thanh Hoa to adopt various measures synchronously, effectively for dealing with a dearth of facilities, teaching equipment, funding, and human resources and for properly distributing education links. At the same time, it has designed and released the system of documents, including the organisational and operational Statutes, the Regulations on organising teaching and study assessment, and the Regulations on managing students as the basis for managing, inspecting, and supervising its sections. In the process, the Centre has directed its faculties to scientifically formulate teaching plans, assign tasks to each instructor, and require their teachers to grasp the goal and outline of each subject. It has promoted cadres and instructors’ vanguard, exemplary role, closely inspected and supervised their teaching, opportunely rewarded collectives and individuals, and rectified weaknesses. Due attention has been paid to carrying out the work of propaganda to raise cadres, instructors, and students’ awareness of the importance of defence and security education in the new situation, enable them to identify their responsibility for teaching and learning, build up a sense of unity amongst them, and promote the Centre’s synergy. In recent years, as vocational training colleges have been under the management of the Ministry of Labour, Invalids, and Social Affairs, there have been difficulties in directing the distributional work. To settle that problem and ensure the appropriate quantity of students, the Centre has recommended the Provincial Defence and Security Education Council to give instructions to professional education facilities within the province on adhering to distributional plans. On an annual basis, the Centre organises a Conference on linkage of defence and security education with the participation of schools within the province. The conference is centred around assessing students’ study results, strengths, and weaknesses and signing the contract of education with each school in accordance with their training plan and the Centre’s practical condition.

The conference on “raising students’ awareness and responsibility for the Homeland protection in the new situation” (photo: hdu.edu.vn)

To meet the increasingly demanding requirements set by defence and security education for students, the Centre has focused on building a contingent of instructors both qualitatively and quantitatively. Grounded on the task of training high-quality human resources for modernising and industrialising the country in general and the province of Thanh Hoa in particular, the Centre has advised the University’s Party Committee and Board on selecting a number of lecturers with good political qualities and military methodology, recruiting teachers, particularly those who had graduated from military schools, deploying instructors to attend university-level courses on defence and security education, and actively launching on-the-spot refresher courses for staff members. In addition, the Centre has invited top defence and security experts within the province to deliver new, important topics of urgency to its cadres and instructors, such as the building of all-people national defence and people’s security, combination of socio-economic development, defence-security consolidation and diplomacy, and methods of collecting documents and designing electronic lesson plans. To improve the knowledge and capacity of its instructors, the Centre has renewed methodological activities, increased inspections of teaching, teaching rehearsals, and sample teaching, organised discussions for each lecture, and promoted the role of officers in sharing military knowledge and experience. On a weekly basis, the Centre’s Board of Directors and heads of faculties inspect each instructor’s lesson plans and lectures, while attending teachers’ lectures to analyse the quality of teaching, identify weaknesses, draw lessons, and propose remedial measures for their teaching staff.

Furthermore, the Centre’s Board of Directors has required each instructor to chair at least one academic meeting under their own topic, make specialised reports or treatises in specialised scientific workshops at the University level or above, and write scientific articles. As a result, the Centre’s pool of instructors has always been sufficient and qualitative. All of them have held a bachelor’s degree, including one doctorate, 7 masters, and 4 instructors with a secondary degree in defence and security education. 6 instructors of the Centre have won the title of National-Level Excellent Teacher of Defence and Security Education. On a yearly basis, all instructors of the Centre successfully fulfil their teaching task. Many scientific researches by the Centre’s instructors, such as projected lecture, “peaceful evolution” prevention and combat amongst students, students’ perception of defence and security education, and measures to improve military skills have been highly appreciated by the University and effectively employed.

In addition to building a contingent of instructors, the Centre has actively renewed the method of teaching and promoted learners’ ability. Under the motto of “raising the quality of training comprehensively to meet the output requirements and renewing the contents and methods of teaching, learning, and examination to promote learners’ ability,” the Centre has asked its instructors to carefully make their lesson plans and select methods of teaching relevant to each major, educational level, and gender. Instructors have also been required to give instructions to students on self-studying textbooks and collecting documents and information to bring into play their proactiveness and creativity. In the teaching process, instructors have combined theory with practice, given detailed instructions to learners, scientifically organised the practical contents of military techniques and tactics, and divided students into groups to promote collective knowledge and raise the quality of acquiring knowledge. Great value has been attached to maximising specialised classrooms, teaching equipment, particularly visual models and tools, images, and videos, designing electronic lectures, and accumulating teaching resources to maintain readiness for online teaching in case of COVID-19 outbreak within the province. The Centre has adopted various forms of examination, such as multiple choice, oral test, assignment, and report to increase the practicality. After each course, the Centre would collect feedback from students about its teaching method to draw lessons and improve the quality of lectures. At present, 70% of the Centre’s credits are taken by the learner-centred teaching method, while information technology is applied to 40% of the credits. Multiple-choice political knowledge tests are taken on computers. Shooting tests are conducted with the MBT-03 shooting machine to ensure objectivity and equality.

In order to further improve the quality of defence and security education for the Homeland protection in the new situation, the Centre has enhanced the management of learners and trained students’ military manners. To be more specific, the Centre has strictly maintained the study statutes and daily, weekly regimes under the Military’s Troop Management Regulations, while arranging students into platoons and companies. Instructors and cadres of the Centre have closely managed students during and after class. Due regard has been paid to stringently maintaining meetings and daily, weekly reports to opportunely detect and deal with weaknesses in observing the Centre’s regulations. Measures have been implemented to orientate students’ ideology, educate them on the tradition of the local armed forces, localities, and nation, equip them with living skills in the military environment, arouse their patriotism and national pride, and encourage their self-improvement.

To handle the issues relating to its facilities for education, training, and students’ life, the Centre has advised the University on mobilising resources of localities and the MoET to construct messes, training fields with sufficient trenches, gun emplacements, bunkers, and depots, establish the MBT-03 electronic shooting system and large TVs for specialised classrooms, and build a bank of questions for theoretical examinations on computers. On a yearly basis, the University invests more than 200 million VND in upgrading and supplementing uniforms, training equipment, and online teaching software. Currently, the Centre’s facilities could allow 500 students to study and live in the military environment. Teaching and learning equipment are 90% sufficient, with more than 1,200 textbooks and reference documents. Weapons and teaching equipment are basically in a good condition. It is worth noting that the Centre has well carried out the logistics support work, combined direct education with online education, taken advantage of sports fields and zones as the training ground, implemented 5-K measures for COVID-19 prevention and control, and organised training courses within its own place and other professional training facilities. As a result, since February 2020, although the Centre has been used as the province’s  COVID-19 quarantine zone, its task of education, training, and student management has not been interrupted, which has been highly appreciated by the Provincial Defence and Security Education Council.

With the comprehensive leadership, drastic direction, scientific approaches, and staff members’ unity and resolve, since the school year of 2017-2018, the Centre has provided defence and security education for nearly 13,000 students with the increasingly high quality, 41% of them graduating with credit or distinction, making a significant contribution to firmly defending the Homeland and building high-calibre human resources for developing Thanh Hoa into a beautiful, role-model province as Uncle Ho ever wished.

NGUYEN NGOC QUY^*, MA

PHAM VAN HUNG, MA
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* - Deputy Director of the Centre