07-09/ 2017
The world is getting smaller and smaller and we are in an age when we know so much about the world through technology and various resources thanks to privilege. However, during the summer of 2017, Jasmine Hammond worked in the public schools of northern Vietnam. The buildings of public schools are concrete with no glass in the windows and old wooden doors that even close, sometimes. A lucky class will have a fan or two in the room while they spend endless hours working on their cursive. These students have the best hand writing of anyone in the world but lack in almost most other things. Most of the students I came across had serious decay in their teeth at the age of 7. The day that I brought my camera to document the public schools there were two reactions to the camera. Most students had never seen one before, maybe a camera phone but that’s about it. The difference was in gender. The girls would run away from the camera and shake their head if I asked to take a picture and the boys were, well, definitely not shy what so ever. They would jump in front of the camera whenever possible. I have yet to get to the bottom of why girls and boys in Vietnam act so differently, and how young gender expectations take effect in Vietnamese children. In Vietnam, good education is hard to come by and their parents work extremely hard to pay for extra school time and lessons. Many students still go to school in the summer, and take extra classes in the home of the teacher afterwards. But despite all this, education and the systems around it are terribly lacking. Students memorize verses to repeat after teacher for all subjects, arithmetic to grammar rules of Vietnamese.
As a middle-class, white American female who grew up speaking English I was enraged when I heard this account from one of my Vietnamese co-workers. Many bureaucratic things in Vietnam are based on the bribe system, from government officials to visas. Teachers are not an exception. Parents many times will pay for their children to take private classes in the teachers home after normal school hours. These prices can be high and in many cases, there will be 20 students in one “private” class. But what the money is buying is not education but preferential treatment from the teacher. Students who have these extra class tend to get better results on tests, are disciplined less, and tend to be given less homework.
