Article: Raising legal awareness for students of Dai Nam University in the current period

Raising legal awareness for students of Dai Nam University

in the present stage

Enhancing the legal awareness for students of Dai Nam university

in the present period

                                                                               TS. Do Thi Minh Thu

Dr. Pham Ngoc Ky

TS. Bui Xuan Duc

_____________________

Dai Nam University

Article published in Education and Society Magazine, Special Issue, June 2020. Download article content here .

Summary

In the context of current educational innovation, legal education (LPE) in universities is an issue of particular concern to the Party, the State and society. LPE aims to equip students with legal knowledge, awareness of the rule of law and minimize violations of the law.

Keywords : Law, legal awareness, raising legal awareness, students.

Abstract

In the current context of educational innovation, the law in universities is an issue of particular concern to the Party, the State and the society. Legal education aims to equip students with legal knowledge, a sense of supremacy of the law and to minimize the violation of law.

Keywords: Law, legal awareness, enhancing the legal awareness, students.

1. Problem statement

Law is a system of general mandatory rules of conduct issued or recognized by the state to regulate social relations, serve and protect the interests of all social classes [7].

Legal awareness (LQ) is a part of social awareness, subject to the provisions of social existence, including legal life. Like all other forms of social awareness, LQ has an impact on social existence and plays a great role in the legal life of society. Improving LQ for students is an important issue that determines the successful implementation of the task of state management by law, building a socialist rule of law state in the current period. In particular, students are the future owners of the country, the main human resource in the cause of industrialization and modernization of the country. Therefore, it is required that they have high legal awareness, which is the main driving force, contributing to maintaining order and discipline of the country and building a fair, democratic and civilized society.

Dai Nam University is a university providing multidisciplinary training services with the core training axis being community health protection and care. The school develops in an applied direction. By 2025, Dai Nam University will become: A training address highly trusted by society for its training quality "learning linked to practical life"; Achieving important achievements in research and technology transfer in the field of science for community health protection and care. Dai Nam University with the educational philosophy "Learning to change" is the educational philosophy of the school. Society is constantly moving and changing under the strong influence of knowledge. Science and technology are developing extremely rapidly, requiring each person to continuously learn to adapt for a living and the pursuit of happiness. Learn anytime, anywhere to have enough knowledge to change thinking, change the way of working and change life[7].

With more than 10 years of construction and development, Dai Nam University has gone through many difficulties and challenges. Under the leadership of a talented and dedicated "captain", Dai Nam University has gradually overcome challenges, built basic foundations to continue to develop and grow stronger. In each step of the University, the University's Board of Directors is always proud and receives great encouragement from the trust of students[7].

In response to the trust of generations of students, the Board of Directors of Dai Nam University always clearly identifies its responsibility to learners: The school will create the best conditions for students to study, conduct scientific research, practice, and work in a professional and modern environment, suitable for practical work requirements. Equip students with basic and specialized knowledge; form and practice professional skills, soft skills, life skills; build the right attitude in studying, working and contributing , especially raising legal awareness to create a successful and solid future life.

2. The role of raising legal awareness for students of Dai Nam University

This is reflected in the following basic issues:

2.1. Contribute to the formation and development of personality of students in general and Dai Nam University students in particular.

Personality can be understood as the characteristic qualities of each individual expressed externally through the specific behaviors of the subject. Those qualities are most fully revealed at specific times and in specific circumstances, requiring the subject to demonstrate the ability to behave and decide on the choice of method of action. Therefore, each human behavior when participating in life activities reflects the nuances of that person's inner self, not the result of an instinctive reaction but fully containing the imprint of that person's own thinking before the fluctuations of life. Personality plays an important role in determining individual behavior. Recent reality shows that the situation of students violating the law in our country is increasing in both quantity and seriousness, posing the question to society in general and those working in education in particular: Why are educated and knowledgeable young people easily drawn into the path of violating the law? One of the answers to this question is: Because students' legal awareness is still limited, improving legal awareness for students will be a premise for the formation of personality and lifestyle, contributing to reducing illegal behaviors in society. When educating and improving legal awareness, we also educate and improve students' understanding of the Party and State's guidelines and policies. Because the law represents moral values such as protecting the good, fighting evil, building beauty, preserving and enhancing human dignity. Improving legal awareness for students is contributing to the formation of a good tendency in their behavior. Activities to improve legal awareness make students better understand the meaning of moral values, moral duties and realize the need to build moral values and have the duty to implement those moral values. Besides, it makes them understand that the law is a tool to maintain and protect ethical values, and that any behavior that violates ethical standards recognized by law will be strictly handled according to the provisions of the law. Understanding and respecting the law will help them always ensure the legality of their actions. At the same time, it will form in them a sense of legality and that awareness will follow them throughout their lives - the future owners of the country.

2.2. Contribute to training high-quality human resources to meet the country's development requirements

Our Party and State always consider the human factor to be central, both the goal and the driving force in the economic development strategy. Therefore, education and training are considered the top national policy, improving people's knowledge, training human resources, and nurturing talents are always given attention. Students are the ones who will become high-quality human resources for the country, the basic labor force in the cause of industrialization and modernization of the country. Raising legal awareness for them plays an important role in equipping them with a high sense of discipline and understanding of the law to meet the requirements for human resources of our country in the new period. Under the impact of the market mechanism, many negative aspects have appeared in society, requiring strict and strict management by law. Equipping people in general and students in particular with adequate legal knowledge is an urgent issue that contributes to limiting the negative aspects and promoting the positive aspects of the market economy. For example, when foreign tourists visit Vietnam, they must constantly be vigilant against acts that threaten the safety of their lives or property, which will leave a bad image of the country and Vietnamese people in the eyes of other countries in the world, and thus we will certainly have great difficulty in integration. Or when we cooperate economically, trade with other countries, if we do not understand or do not have the awareness to comply with the regulations of international trade, we will violate the law and be removed from the list of countries to cooperate, and the consequences will be very serious for the economic development of the country. So, in order to meet the requirements of the integration trend, to successfully implement the revolutionary path that our Party and people have chosen, we must constantly improve legal awareness for the people, including students.

2.3. Contribute to stabilizing national law and social order

Our state is a socialist state of law, so our people cannot do without the necessary legal knowledge to think and act in accordance with the law. In social life, people are always attached to their community, that relationship is always seen as a basic condition to ensure the development of each individual. It can be said that the process of maturity of each individual is the process of receiving and handling relationships through its impact from many sides and from many different levels. To handle that relationship well, people always play a leading role in the process of adjusting their behavior and to achieve this, we need to have a positive legal awareness. The law is considered an effective means for citizens to exercise their right to mastery. With the role of a special tool in establishing social order, the legal system has been constantly improved, and has been making an important contribution to the cause of building and defending the Fatherland. As we know, to establish social order, perfecting the legal system is not enough, but also making it applicable to people's lives, promoting its effectiveness in social relations. To do so, propaganda and legal education work plays a key role in helping all members of society understand the law and voluntarily comply with the provisions of the law. Legal education is an important content, of special significance in raising citizens' legal awareness. In particular, students are people in the age of forming and perfecting their knowledge and personality, with the age psychology of wanting to assert themselves, quickly approaching new things, being easily lured and immature in thinking, being impulsive and rash... therefore, if legal awareness is not high, it can easily lead to violations of the law. In fact, the rate of law violations among students in our country in the current period is on the rise, which seriously affects social order and discipline of the country. To reduce this situation, many measures can be taken, the most important of which is to raise legal awareness for students so that they can correctly perceive the role of the law for themselves and society, understand the rules of conduct according to legal standards, thereby limiting violations of the law, contributing to the stability of discipline, social order and sustainable development of the country. Therefore, the basic goal of legal education is first of all to form legal awareness for students and aim at three contents: Forming, deepening and expanding the legal knowledge system of students (cognitive goal); forming feelings and trust in the law (attitude goal); forming motivation, behavior and habits of legal and positive behavior (behavioral goal).

3. On legal awareness of students in Dai Nam universities

After more than 20 years of implementing the renovation process initiated and led by our Party, we have achieved great achievements, brought the country through the period of socio-economic crisis, maintained political stability, effectively solved urgent socio-economic problems in general and in 10 years of establishment and development, Dai Nam University in particular has also achieved many successes. However, a sad reality is that along with socio-economic development, life is increasingly improved, the situation of law violations is increasing in both quantity and severity. Of which, a large number of law violations are caused by students. The fundamental cause is still due to the limited legal awareness of a part of students. The disregard and lack of dynamism in the work of propagating legal education for students is one of the reasons leading to the increasing number of students violating the law and discipline. That raises the need to realize the important strategic significance of propaganda, dissemination and education of legal awareness in current university teaching. For a long time, we have only focused on fostering and imparting scientific knowledge to the young generation, without paying due attention to legal knowledge and life skills. The lack of uniformity in education has led to serious consequences in that the legal awareness of the masses, first of all the young people, is not high, leading to serious crimes among this group, accounting for a high proportion of the total number of criminals and is on the rise, among which there are many cases due to poor understanding of the law leading to crime. Therefore, in the current situation, raising legal awareness for all members of society, especially for students, is an objective necessity. In fact, Dai Nam University students are generally a progressive social class, equipped with a relatively comprehensive knowledge system, are very dynamic, creative, positive, and sharp in learning, research as well as in social relationships. However, a few students still have limitations and weaknesses such as incomplete personality, rashness, impetuosity, easily agitated, difficult to control, sometimes arrogant, complacent, love freedom, often compete and especially have incomplete and in-depth understanding of the law.

3.1. Legal education in universities through the General Law subject at Dai Nam University

The subject of General Law is close to life, many situations can be built close to social life to help students easily relate, integrate and be inspired to receive. Reference materials for the subject are also very rich. However, teaching and learning the subject of Law is a difficult task for teachers and students. Many students have the mentality of taking the subject lightly, thinking that it is a secondary subject, not important and does not require investing time in research. This has created a bad mindset for learning and researching the subject.

The subject has a lot of content to convey; the texts are too numerous and constantly changing, making it difficult for students to update and grasp in a short time (most universities now arrange 3 credits).

4. Some solutions to raise legal awareness for university students in the current period

4.1. Strengthening the leadership of the Party and direction of the government in raising legal awareness

To strengthen the Party's leadership, it is necessary to thoroughly grasp Directive No. 32/CT-TW of the Secretariat on strengthening the Party's leadership in the work of disseminating and educating the law, thereby creating a change in the awareness and actions of grassroots Party organizations and Party members in the work of educating the law. Party committees at all levels must always identify the exemplary role of Party members and their pioneering role in disseminating and educating the law. Party committees at all levels must also regularly monitor, inspect, and supervise the activities of educating the law, promptly urge and direct the handling of problems arising in the process of educating the law [2].

The content of the GDPL needs to reduce the academic content and instead focus on practicality, and it is necessary to select the really necessary content. In fact, in the past, universities only focused on teaching general theories about the state and law, while the content of positive law was very little, while the important content related to students is the content: Road Traffic Law, Environmental Protection Law, Food Safety and Hygiene Law, Marriage and Family Law, Drug Prevention Law, Civil Code, Law on Civil Servants, Law on Public Employees, Labor Code.... These contents are very important but some of them are not mentioned in the teaching curriculum.

Teaching methods for General Law also need to change in the following directions: - Teachers need to prepare students with a comfortable learning mindset, emphasizing self-study and the learning attitude of students; - Teachers need to increase two-way communication with students, create a friendly and open atmosphere, reduce pressure and fear from students. Use a variety of teaching methods flexibly learning such as: Group discussion, problem-posing, role-playing, writing reports, essays, etc. using problem-posing and situational teaching methods. In particular, teachers are encouraged to use role-playing methods when creating situations. Real-life situations will increase the attractiveness of the subject. In teaching law, nothing is more convincing to learners than presenting real-life situations and clear evidence; - Teachers apply science and technology in teaching: Fully exploit documentary films, images, etc. to enrich lectures; - Increase testing forms (written, oral) in the direction of testing the ability to understand and follow legal regulations voluntarily and consciously. Test content needs to increase practical connections.

Along with providing knowledge, teachers must be the ones to guide students to have good legal psychology. Through each lesson, teachers help students to draw lessons and apply them in real life. The most important thing is that teachers know how to integrate education on law compliance into their lessons.

4.2. Further strengthen legal awareness education for students through extracurricular activities.

Integrating legal education and activities of the Youth Union and Association is quite meaningful and effective. One of the easiest and most popular forms of implementation is through legal knowledge competitions in the form of dramatization. Through these competitions, students have the opportunity to learn more about legal knowledge by topic and directly participate in hypothetical legal situations as legal propagandists. In addition, the Youth Union can coordinate with the Student Association to organize the broadcasting of legal regulations in many fields for students in dormitories. The news pages of the Youth Union and Association and the websites of the Youth Union can have a separate section on disseminating the law to union members and young people.

Since 2013, November 9 has officially become Vietnam Law Day. This is truly a festival for the entire Party and people to implement the Constitution and the law, so in the annual plan of schools, it is also necessary to direct the celebration of this traditional day such as: Introducing legal documents, giving talks, seminars,... to help students get into the habit of studying, learning and raising awareness of respecting the law.

4.3. Improve professional qualifications for teachers teaching Law

Fostering knowledge for the team of legal education workers, in addition to paying attention to providing knowledge, it is necessary to foster and practice legal education skills, not only having solid knowledge but also having the ability to attract listeners and effectively convey legal content. Improving legal awareness for students requires the role of the teaching team, actively participating in professional activities and participating as advisors in student crime prevention clubs... to make class time more lively, students are more interested in studying the subject of Law.

Teacher training must also be oriented towards developing the capacity and career of teachers. Accordingly, those who teach Law must meet the requirements of professional capacity, capacity in understanding and following legal regulations and capacity in organizing legal education activities in practice.

4.4. Encourage students to consciously strive not to violate the law and strictly comply with legal regulations.

In order for legal education for students to achieve practical results, each student must proactively cultivate legal knowledge, practice and cultivate themselves to have enough courage to face the negative actions of the market economy, the lure of crime, stay away from social evils, strictly implement the law, and consciously fight against illegal acts [6].

3.5. Strengthening the dissemination of legal education along with moral education for university students.

In order to train a generation of students who are both talented and virtuous, combining legal education with ethics is extremely necessary. Because ethics is the root, law is the standard. Regardless of the time, law and ethics have a dialectical relationship. An act that violates the law is often an act that violates ethics. Therefore, legal education together with ethics education for students at universities is a very necessary and urgent activity in the current period [4].

Dai Nam University attaches special importance to the dissemination, popularization and education of legal knowledge to students. Regularly organizing sessions to disseminate and educate legal knowledge to new students at the beginning of each course. The school also regularly organizes extracurricular activities to help students learn about the law, thereby raising awareness of law compliance, effective learning and training.

3.6. Innovation in inspection and evaluation of legal education management along with ethics education for university students

The Ministry of Education and Training needs to organize training for teachers of Law in schools at least once a year. Training should be based on each topic and linked to practice; It is necessary to increase the organization of national competitions on popularizing, educating, and learning Law, creating a strong change in awareness and respect for the law.

4. Conclusion

Thus, to improve the legal awareness of students of Dai Nam University requires the synchronous implementation of measures in many different areas, from policies and guidelines to specific measures suitable to specific conditions. In particular, students are the future owners of the country, the main human resource in the cause of industrialization and modernization of the country. Therefore, it requires them to be people with intelligence, wisdom, professional qualifications, habits and awareness of living, studying, working, and laboring according to the law, and having legal awareness.

In fact, educating students about the law is an important and difficult task, requiring efforts and coordination between lecturers who teach law, organizations, families, and schools, closely and flexibly, to help students stay away from social evils, to minimize students violating the law, and to help students of Dai Nam University develop comprehensively and become future owners of Vietnam.

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References

1. Prime Minister, Decision No. 711/QD-TTg dated June 13, 2012 on Education Development Strategy 2011-2020 , Hanoi, 2012.

2. Secretariat, Directive No. 32/2003/CT-TW dated December 9, 2003 on strengthening the Party's leadership in the dissemination and propaganda of law among the people, Hanoi, 2003.

3. Prime Minister, Decision No. 1928/QD-TTg dated November 20, 2009 approving the Project "Improving the quality of legal dissemination and education in schools", Hanoi, 2009.

4. Nguyen Minh Doan, Legal psychology factors in the process of raising legal awareness in our country today , Journal of Legal Science, No. 4/2004.

5. Vu Thi Hong Van, Raising legal awareness of students at Hanoi University of Industry in the current period, School-level scientific topic, Hanoi University of Industry, 2012, Web: www.haui.edu.vn/vn

6. Source: https://nganhangphapluat.thukyluat.vn/tu-van-phap-luat .

     7. Source: http://dainam.edu.vn