The School of Foreign Languages is going to provide a series of workshops on European culture and education from 17 May to 4 October 2016. All workshops will be held at the School’s Workshop room B11.209 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. every Tuesday.

Our workshops allow participants the opportunity to discover the essence of European culture and education by engaging directly with our experts in the field. Mr. Valentin Garnier, a French scholar earning his MA in Educational Sciences from Lyon 2 Lumière University, will lead the workshops. The workshops are designed under five theme areas:

•    Introduction to Anthropology
•    North America: From Christopher Columbus to Donald Trump
•    A history of Antiquity
•    European Literature
•    European Education and Pedagogy

These workshops are offered free of charge. Participants may attend as many workshops as they like.

The purpose of the first topic – Introduction to Anthropology is to understand the meaning of every human action: in the group, the society and individually by discussing from simple questions such as “Why and how do we brush our teeth?”, “What and how do you cook and eat?” to complex issues as “What is culture?”. Such in-depth discussions will help the participants understand more about human culture and civilization serving as a mean for us to understand each other, and to communicate inter-culturally.

The second part of the workshops focuses on the history of North America. Participants will learn how such a big continent as North America was created as it is now.

The third theme, A history of Antiquity, is designed for those who want to learn about the history of Antic Greece: from myths to real history, through well known philosopher, mathematicians and poets. Additionally, what happened from time of Alexander the Great to Rome as well as the history of Egypt and all the stories around this period in Europe will also be introduced in this part of the workshops.

Participants, specially teachers and scholars finding European literature interesting shouldn’t miss our fourth topic – The European Literature.  Our expert will reveal the reasons why Jean de la Fontaine is one of the most influent French poets whose work entered the status of “French Culture”.

The fifth topic of our workshops, Education and Pedagogy, specially designed for Vietnamese teachers and researchers wishing to explore issues of education by deep conversations on burning issues such as: “What does it mean to be a teacher today?”, “What kind of responsibility do we have”, “What are today’s questions around teaching, and the end, why, what and how do we have to teach”. All of these questions will be discussed through the lens of the European influential educational theoretical frameworks from Freinet to Montessori through Itare, Pestalozzi, Neill, Korczak.

These workshops are open to anyone interested in learning more about the European Culture and Education. Come and discuss with our experts.

By: Huynh, Ngoc-Tai, School of Foreign Languages