The Tank-Armour Intermediate School under the Tank-Armour Corps has the main tasks of educating the elementary-level and intermediate-level tank-armour technical staffs for military units; training the non-commissioned officers, tank-armour crews for military units in the North and the crews of BMP-1 vehicles for the 3^rd Corps; training and evaluating the tank-armour knowledge and skills; training new soldiers and other ad hoc duties. In the current situation, the school’s performance of tasks is greatly affected by its diversity of trainees, its fluctuating staff with inequalities in the level of awareness, its large and disperse area of operation, etc., especially the negative factors from the society. To cope with the situation, together with completely leading and directing all working fields, especially the education and training work, the School has attentively focused on the dissemination and education of law and considered this both the basic solution for the breaking changes in regularity construction, discipline management, safety assurance and the important factor dialectically influencing the implementation of its tasks.

The law dissemination and education has its own important roles. It is a component of the education of politics and thought, a regular task of the party committees, party cells, commands and public unions in order to enhance the awareness of cadres’ and soldiers of the State’s law, Military discipline. However, all law-related contents are hard to learn, understand and remember, which easily leads to the hesitation, ineffective and perfunctory implementation without the enthusiasm. Bearing this in mind, the School has enhanced this task with many methods and solutions to make it interesting and effective with the participation of a large number of cadres, teachers, cadets, workers and soldiers.

First and foremost, it strengthens the leadership and direction of the School’s Party Committee, Managing Board, all-level party committees and cells on the law dissemination and education. On grasping and implementing the seniors’ leading documents and instructions, closely following the School’s features and tasks, all party committees and cells have issued their specialised resolutions on leading the law dissemination and education; offices, faculties and units have built their plans and guidelines clearly defining the suitable directions, tasks, contents, methods, time and participants. In their periodical leading resolutions and conclusions of task implementation, all party cells have exactly evaluated the implementation results, clearly shown the shortcomings, causes and drawn up leading policies and methods for improving the quality of the law dissemination and education, the awareness of observing the State’s law, Military discipline and the school’s regulations. To make it effective, the School has directed the combination of the law dissemination and education with the educational contents, especially the teaching and learning of social sciences and humanities; the implementation of the Project of “Renovating the political education in units in the new period”; the learning and following of Ho Chi Minh’s thought, morality and style; the Campaign of “Promoting traditions, devoting talents, deserving to be Uncle Ho’s Soldiers” in the new era and the Determined-to-win emulation movement. Especially, the School has closely connected the law dissemination and education to the construction of party cells, cadres and party members; taken the effectiveness of the propaganda and education, the observance of discipline and law as the criteria to evaluate the quality of party cells and members in order to continuously improve the awareness and responsibility of all organisations and individuals in the implementation of the law dissemination and education.

To strengthen the leadership and direction, the School has actively issued the regulations and frequently consolidated the Council for coordination, dissemination and education of law according to the regulation of the Ministry of National Defence, the directions and guidelines of the Corps. Reporters and propagandists which have been strengthened have frequently self-improved their awareness and legal knowledge, owned creative thinking and methods in disseminating and educating the law for all participants. The School has frequently conducted preliminary review and review to draw lessons from experience, evaluate the responsibility of collectives and individuals in conducting law dissemination and education and take this as one of the criteria for cadre’s evaluation and commendation.

Leader of the School grants handbook for new recruits

On clearly understanding the requirements and difficulties of the law dissemination and education, the School has actively reformed and “softened” the contents and methods of law dissemination and education. Accordingly, beside the prescribed contents, the School has attentively promoted the self-composition of special subjects of each units; actively and creatively exploited sources of information to edit and build news videos, skits and reports on implementing the new legal documents and hotly-debated legal problems directly affecting soldiers. At the same time, the School has also held activities such as young-officer talk, youth forums, law bookcases together with the regulation of reading legal column on newspapers, listening to the news, the internal radiobroadcast, cultural institutions, etc. This, consequently, has helped to turn the rigid law articles into easier, softer and more interesting ones so that cadres, teachers, cadets, workers and soldiers could acquire them naturally and easily, understand the nature of each issue and make them alive to all soldiers’ awareness and activities.

Together, the School has frequently held competitions on law propaganda. With the enthusiastic and responsible participation of organisations and forces, there have appeared many good models, creative working methods which have been effectively applied in reality. One of these initiatives applied in the whole School and gradually widened in the Corps includes the model of “5 flowers of law”. This is the integration of the law dissemination and education activities into a closed process which is suitable with the cognitive logic according to the motto of being “easy to remember, easy to understand”, “small rain lays great dust”. Based on this model, the School has promoted the activeness and participation of organisations and forces, frequently and constantly maintained the law dissemination and education, making contribution to the awareness improvement of the law and discipline observance for all subjects in the whole School.

Clearly realising the multi-dimensional impact of the social relationships to soldiers’ law and discipline observance, the School has frequently cooperated closely with local governments, people and families of troops to disciplinarily educate and mange soldiers. As being located in residential and industrial areas, the School has paid special attention to propagandising and educating soldiers so that they can strictly follow regulations of public relations in all activities. Simultaneously, when holding activities of law propaganda, especially the theatricalisation, the School has invited the representatives of all local areas, businesses, fraternised units and people to take part in. Through these activities, the School has, on the one hand, improved the awareness of law observance for people, on the other hand, strengthened the unity between the military and the people, promoted the roles of local governments and people in cooperating with the School in order to minimise the negative impacts from the society on soldiers. Every month and quarter, the School has held security briefings; actively exchanged and supplied new legal information, specialised legal contents for local leaders and agencies. At the same time, it has cooperated with the Councils for law dissemination and education of the localities and enterprises to exchange methods and experience on propagandising and educating subjects in the localities, contributing to the maintenance of security, politics, order and safety in its stationing areas, the construction of safe areas and the decrease of bad effects on soldier’s discipline observance.

One important content which has been well carried out by the School includes the frequent coordination with soldiers’ family to exchange and grasp information, encourage, share and manage their thought and discipline; especially for soldiers with difficult conditions, new recruits and the ones selected to be tank crews (who will be in difficult activities or severe environment and prone to bad mood), etc. Through this, the School has timely forecast, detected and solved the incidents, avoided the passive and sudden situations and serious discipline violations.

With the activeness, positiveness, high responsibility, right policies and creative methods, the School’s law dissemination and education has helped make a deep and clear change in the awareness and behaviour in complying with the State’s law, Military discipline and regulations for all of its cadres, teachers, cadets, workers and soldiers; decrease the rate of violation to below 0.2%. These results are one of the important bases to build the pure and typically strong School’s Party Committee, the comprehensively strong, “typical and exemplary” School, successfully accomplishing all assigned missions and ceaselessly enriching its tradition of “Unity, difficulty overcoming, self-motivation, creativity, well teaching, well learning – Surely winning once deployed”.

Senior Colonel PHAN DANG MINH, The School’s Commissar