Last week, the online media as well as the press were abuzz with controversy over a guiding document of the Ministry of Education and Training, signed and issued by Deputy Minister Nguyen Huu Do in early October, with the regulation of “absolutely not teaching content outside of textbooks”. That is document No. 4612/BGDĐT-GDTrH (Regarding the guidance on implementing the current general education program in the direction of developing students’ capacity and qualities from the 2017-2018 school year). The official document was posted here.
 The part of the instruction that has attracted public attention is in paragraph 1, section a, the original text is as follows:
 Effectively implement the development of school education plans

1. a) Continue to review the teaching content in current textbooks, streamline the teaching content that exceeds the required level of knowledge and skills of the current general education program; adjust to avoid duplication of content between subjects and educational activities; supplement and update new and appropriate information to replace old and outdated information; do not teach content, exercises and questions in textbooks that exceed the required level of knowledge and skills of the current general education program; absolutely do not teach content outside of textbooks;

 
 
The emphasis on the two words "absolutely" in the last sentence of the paragraph conveys a clear and definite meaning that teachers are not allowed to teach content outside of textbooks. Discussing this meaning, many experts in the education sector, teachers, principals, and vice principals of schools have responded with many different opinions, but most of them expressed disagreement with this regulation.
 While the perfection and accuracy of current textbooks is still the goal, and the Ministry of Education itself has continuously made changes and reforms to perfect textbooks in recent years but has not been really effective, the viewpoint of emphasizing "current textbooks" as a kind of "canon" is clearly unreasonable.
 In response to mixed reactions from public opinion, Mr. Nguyen Xuan Thanh, Deputy Director of the Department of Secondary Education, responded to the press on the afternoon of October 17, saying that public opinion had "misunderstood" the above document, because it was not the "guiding spirit" of the Ministry of Education. According to Mr. Thanh's explanation, the last sentence of the above quoted paragraph a is "to emphasize the requirement not to teach beyond the required level of knowledge and skills of the current general education program". (See source here).
 However, from a sentence with a fairly simple structure of "absolutely do not teach content outside of textbooks" , we must infer and interpret in such a way that we can "correctly understand" (not misunderstand) the meaning as "emphasize the requirement not to teach beyond the required level of knowledge and skills of the current general education program", I'm afraid that the Ministry of Education has made it difficult for all experts in Vietnamese language and literature, not to mention teachers or students. And so, if the “guiding spirit” of the Ministry of Education is correct, there is no problem in this document, as explained by the Deputy Director of the Department of Secondary Education, then it is clear that the people who drafted and signed the above document must have had some problems, because they used a sentence that is completely unrelated to the intended meaning.
In fact, finding the “problem” in the above document is probably not too difficult, because although it is a document with the content of “implementation instructions”, the words used express very contradictory meanings. Using the semicolons in the short text above to divide, we have the following ideas:

1.  streamline the teaching content that exceeds the required level of knowledge and skills of the current general education program;
2. adjust to avoid duplication of content between subjects and educational activities;
3. supplement and update new, appropriate information to replace old, outdated information;
4. Do not teach content, exercises, and questions in textbooks that exceed the required level of knowledge and skills of the current general education program;
5. Absolutely do not teach content outside of textbooks;

According to the above analysis, the fourth idea repeats the first idea, both requiring elimination (simplification, not teaching) some content that exceeds the level. The second and third ideas require change (adjustment, supplementation, updating) some content in textbooks when they duplicate or are out of date. Both of these ideas are completely contradictory to the last one, because if information outside of textbooks is not used, where will users get information to adjust, supplement, and update?
For many years, the view of using textbooks as a rigid framework has made teaching and learning increasingly dry and uncreative. Recently, many teachers have "spontaneously" gone beyond the framework to try to make knowledge transfer more lively and effective. However, their methods only exist because of the "ignorance" of leaders and have never been recognized as a correct way out to revive the education sector. The monopoly in compiling, printing and distributing textbooks remains an unchangeable principle, even though issues such as book quality, book prices and book content all have many shortcomings.
In fact, the history of the propagation and development of Buddhism over the past 25 centuries can help provide an answer to this problem. If we look from the perspective of an educator, we will see that education in Buddhism is also based on "textbooks", which are the Sutras and Vinaya. Regardless of the sect, the Vinaya and Sutras are always considered the unchangeable standards for Buddhists to practice and pass on to the next generations. However, besides that, there is also a massive, rich and continuously developing Abhidharma system over time. These are the works and explanations of masters, clarifying the meaning of the teachings in the Sutras as well as the regulations in the Vinaya. Furthermore, to a certain extent, these explanatory works also play a role in adjusting the understanding of the Sutras and Vinaya to be more suitable to the spaces and times in which Buddhism is developing. Therefore, thanks to the Abhidharma Pitaka, "textbooks" in Buddhism are not rigidly framed. Instead, these "textbooks" play a major role as a model from which all perceptions, thoughts, and inferences of Buddhist students can be developed.
Imagining a new direction of educational development according to this model, our textbooks will not need to be as detailed as they are now. Instead, experts need to focus on compiling in a way that outlines a standard framework, summarizing the most basic training requirements. Such a set of books would certainly not be as "massive" as the current reality, when even a first grader has to carry on his back a volume of books almost equal to his weight (!). When using such a general and concise set of textbooks, teachers will have more ability to apply their own knowledge to teaching, instead of having to strictly follow the textbooks. In addition, experts, intellectuals, and scholars in society must be given the right to compile different "theses" to form a rich reference library that expands the educational topics in textbooks. Users will have the right to choose between different authors, and according to the law of natural selection, good and valuable works of discourse will be chosen by many people and will also exist for a long time.
 It is in this way that Buddhism has formed countless Buddhist works outside the system of Sutras and Precepts, helping readers, depending on their background and level, to still be able to access Buddhism to learn, but that richness still does not distort the spirit of the Dharma that the Buddha taught in the past.
 Comparing this open and flexible trend with the closed and rigid education system in recent years, we can see why the education sector has been struggling to innovate so many times without really seeing any new results. And only then can we see that the Buddha and the Patriarchs in Buddhism are truly great educators.