ANH PHAM

Not to over-stereotype, but being an Asian, it is difficult not to take education seriously. In Vietnam especially, a large part of our culture is all about “striving for the best of the best in the sea of knowledge”. What I mean by that is the more educated a Vietnamese person is, the more highly revered he or she is in our society.

It’s been known in history that Vietnamese people has tremendous love for learning and huge respect for teachers and educators in general. When we were colonized by various enemy countries in history, their supposed best weapon against us was illiteracy, because when you are illiterate and do not know and understand various general topics, you are in a very disadvantaged spot as it is easier to be manipulated. You cannot have an opinion on your own and it is very hard to distinguish what is right and what is wrong. Knowledge is truly power. Therefore, you will lose all power to fight back against the colonizers and slowly become one of them, meaning that you might slowly lose the sense of who you are. Losing your self-identity is, to me, one of the most devastating thing that can happen to a human being.

Being very aware of this aspect of my culture from a very young age, I have the opportunity to react very strongly to education injustice that happens in any societies today. For example, Vietnam students has a very important examination in their education journey, which is university entrance exam happening in summer every year. The result of this exam determines what university they can get into, the highest the score is, the better and more prestigious university they can enroll in. Recently, exam scores for Hoa Binh and Son La provinces were found to be among the highest in the country for university admission exams in 2018, which prompted the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) to re-grade the tests. And it has been found that both families and teachers have been guilty of cheating their way into getting their kids into very high scores which they don’t deserve. Up to 140 tests taken by 56 students were found to have been modified to get better scores. The final scores varied and were improved by 0.2 to 9.25 points. The modified tests were to be dismissed and so are the cheating students in their enrollment (Source: Asia Times). Those superficial high grades do not mean anything rather than show how money and power can manipulate justice in society, as we all know sadly. It stems from the deep-rooted belief in the importance of grades and schools to a person’s worth of Vietnamese society. Just like how the women in “Hegemonic Relations and Gender Resistance” (Macleod 1992) are expected to dress a certain way to fulfill societal expectations about women, a person’s worth is determined by his or her education. Cheating their way to the top just diminishes other student’s day and night efforts and undermines one of essential points of education: learning to learn as well to be a better person. It also just shows how corruptive the current education system is – even the people who are supposed to set a role model for their own students.

This phenomenon happened everywhere, not just my home country, allowing me to see the big picture and reflect on it with my own culture and beliefs. It is reported lately that Lori Loughlin, who starred in the famous sitcom “Full House” as Aunt Becky, and Felicity Huffman, who starred in “Desperate Housewives - famous Hollywood actresses have used their money and power in society to get their children into top universities by faking their application, boosting their achievements, test scores and so on. In this case, the parents are the ones who set the wrong example for their children as to what social justice really is.

My culture’s aspect of appreciating knowledge prompts me to engage with this problem by asking the right questions to first solve the core of the issue. It is the system that reinforces a long-standing thinking about education where high academic achievements should be used to prove a citizen’s worth, especially to younger people. If we can change it, we can solve the problem right from the ground and hopefully defeat it. I am sure many other young people have the same thoughts as mine. Therefore, collectively we – the younger generation – are all aspiring problem solvers, and it is our cultural beliefs that indeed play a role in helping reinforcing this positive mindset.