From: DHLAM@utkvx.utk.edu (Die^~m-Ho^`ng)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
Subject: Re: [EDUC] Private Lessons -- Response to Mr. Quang Le's posting
Date: 13 Apr 92 14:08:21 GMT
Reply-To: DHLAM@utkvx.utk.edu
Organization: N/A
Originator: daemon@media.mit.edu

> From owner-scv@snakepro.media.mit.edu  Wed Apr  8 19:15:32 1992
> Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
> Path: news.media.mit.edu!quangl%tabasco.sps.mot.com
> From: quangl@tabasco.sps.mot.com (Quang Le)
> Subject: Re: [EDUC] Private Lessons
> Message-Id: <1992Apr9.012444.1753@news.media.mit.edu>
> Originator: daemon@media.mit.edu
> Sender: owner-scv@media.mit.edu
> Reply-To: quangl@tabasco.sps.mot.com
> Organization: N/A
> Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 01:24:44 GMT
> Lines: 107
> Apparently-To: scv-relay@media.mit.edu
> 
> Hello, netters
> 
> Thanks VietAnh for posting a comprehensive article about the current situation
> of Vietnam Education. 
> 
>>Excerpted without permission from The Economist (March 28th-April 3rd 1992):
>>(There's also an accompanying picture of Vietnamese schoolchildren running and
>> smiling at the photographer with the caption 'The best days of their lives'.)
> 
> I strongly recommend netters to read "The Economist," a prestige magazine
> from  Great Britain. each issue of "The Economist" usually has one or two 
> articles about Vietnam and its people. Their correspondents come to Hanoi or
> Saigon to collect news and talk with people to compose the story, not sitting
> around Orange County, reading communist newspaper (Tuo^?i Tre?), then  making 
> a reciprocal story such as "Vietnamese miserable girls..."
> 
 
     Are you 100% sure that those news correspondents got the whole truth?
     Do you think that people had the courage to tell everything?  I have no 
     doubt in the newspaper in Orange County, because they didn't make up 
     the story themselves.  Tuo^?i Tre? is a communist newspaper.  Whatever 
     it says, it should be too obvious to deny.  Would Tuo^?i Tre? editor 
     dare to make up the "people deal" story under the watchful eyes of 
     the party?  

>>    "An ignorant nation is a weak nation. That is why I propose to start
>>     an anti-illiteracy campaign, considering illiteracy an enemy as 
>>     dangerous as foreign aggression and famine." Thus Ho Chi Minh in 1945.
>>     The campaign that Uncle Ho launched, and his successors continued, has
>>     been one of the few clear successes of the Vietnamese Communist Party.
>>     The marriage of foreign capital and a large supply of well-educated
>>     workers is the foundation of the party's plan to double GDP per person
>>     by the turn of the century. Some Asian investors believe Vietnam could
>>     then take off, like South Korea and Taiwan, both of them addicted to
>>     education.

     Yes, an ignorant nation is a weak nation.  Do you know that VN now is 
     among the poorest country? and why? and when it gets to be the poorest?  
     Thanks to "Uncle Ho" and his successors, say the closest example, my 
     friends (all very talented) couldn't go to university to fulfill their 
     dreams; they had to do what the regime called "nghi~a vu. qua^n su+." 
     in Cambodia.  One of them got home, bittered with 2 amputated legs 
     for the invading intention of the communist regime.
     Another example, my friend wrote me a letter asking for money to pay 
     for her child's school (or her child would be out of school soon!) since
     she was out of work, and they could not afford to pay the tuition anymore. 
     Is this the good work, the success of the communist party that corespon-
     dent was saying?  Did you have to pay for elementary, secondary, and high
     school under old regime? (ofcourse not, unless you went to private-owned 
     ones)
     So I think what was reported by this correspondent is not reliable.  He
     is what VNese call "thie^n ta?", praises smth that he doesn't know about.
         
> 
>>     When Ho made his speech, only 300 Vietnamese had university degrees and
                                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
     Is this number including people from the south?  
  
>>     95% of the population was reckoned to be illiterate. Today 9m Vietnamese
                                                             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>     children go to primary school and 88% of the population is literate. At
        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

     "95% of the population was reckoned to be illiterate", excuse me, this is
     the number of the year 1945.  Should he quote some new number like, say of
     the year 1975?  9 mil. Vnese children go to primary school over how many
     mil. children?  Be specific, please.  I think without money from abroad
     many children would have to quit school.  Should you read the stories
     written by the communist writers about the drop-out children in small 
     cities, you would not believe in everything those foreign correspond-
     dents wrote.  I don't mean to discredit them as bad reporters; I just
     think they need to live in VN for a long, long time as a VNese to write
     the whole truth.
   
>>     the top, more than 7,000 Vietnamese have earned doctorates, mostly in 
>>     technical subjects, at Soviet universities. In the middle, the government
>>     frets that only 72% of children go on from primary to secondary school.
>>     By contrast, in Thailand, where GDP per person is ten times higher than
>>     in Vietnam, only 28% of children go on to secondary school.
> 
> A non-communist government, as in Thailand, never has the same mean with 
> democracy, development, and a literate population. Anyone can point out any
> nation in South East Asia have a real multiparty politics? The monopoly of
> power is a disease of any developing country. South-East Asia is no Eastern
> Europe. The communist government may be the worst choice, but it still lives
                                                            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> comforable in a geopraphical area like that for a long time. 
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

     This is the clearest proof for the dictatorship of the communist.  When
     Dr. Nguye^~n DDan Que^' protested peacefully for multiparty politics, for
     human rights, how did they treat him?  You answer it! (Note that he is
     somewhat lucky, though.)  And please don't think the same way H.H. Nguyen 
     compared prostitution in VN and other countries.  Every country has its
     own culture, tradition.  The number of children go on to secondary school
     in VN might be higher than that in Thailand, but you have also to consider
     the VNese tradition (truye^`n tho^'ng hie^'u ho.c).  And again, can you 
     believe in the number the communist government gave out?  You may not be
     familiar with their lies, but a lot of people are.  We used to hear some
     thing like "na<m nay chu'ng ta sa?n xua^'t lu'a vu+o+.t chi? tie^u..."
     from the public speaker every morning, and the fact was that we did not 
     have enough rice to eat (ddo^.n khoai, ddo^.n bo bo da`i da`i!)  The 
     bigest lie is the Geneva accord one.  I bet everybody can remember that!  
      
> 
> If one chooses neither to cooperate nor fight ( by real firearm, not by net
> flame :-)))the VN communist government he could help their own people by
> buying 30-year bonds. The bonds will mature as the same time the communists
> agree to give up power!


     When will they give up power?  Do you think they will give up power at
     will?  I am not flaming here, but just wondering if buying bonds would 
     help. 

> 
>>     The bad news is that Vietnam's educational achievement is at risk. Years
>>     of subsidies for inefficient stated-owned enterprises have drained money
>>     away from the social services. A report by the education ministry admits
>>     that school premises and teaching aids are "miserably poor", primary
>>     schools are short of "tens of thousands of teachers", and the teaching
>>     methods of teachers tend to be too "conservative". In Nghe An province,
>>     the birthplace of Ho Chi Minh and today the poorest part of the country,
>>     a representative from the People's Committee, which runs the province,
>>     explains the problem. The committee would like to be able to pay teachers
>>     more than 60,000 dong ($5.22) a month, he says. But there is no money.
>>     Most teachers in the province raise chickens and pigs to make ends meet.
> 
> That is a sad true. But what could we do to help them? Buy eggs and porks???

     What can you do to help them and help the miserable girls who had been
     sold to other countries?  Buying eggs and pork, or bonds would not
     help them.  I am afraid we have to, again, look at the root of the 
     problems. 

> 
>>     Low pay is a problem throughout the system: a professor at Hanoi Univers-
>>     ity is paid only 150,000 dong a month. The shortage of money has made the
>>     government quietly drop one of the proudest boasts of socialism, free
>>     education for all. Schools and universities can now charge fees in order
>>     to top up teachers' pay.
> 
> Dropping free education, free health care, free housing, and guarantee of
> employment, the current government of Vietnam moved close to militarilism as
> in Thailand as ever. 
> 
>>     Hanoi has a private university, the Thang Long (Soaring Dragon). It is
>>     temporarily housed in a half-finished building, in Hanoi's western sub-
>>     urbs, which would have been the Pushkin Institute if the Russians had not
>>     abandoned it. It admitted its first students in 1989 and now has 147,
>>     studying applied mathematics, computing and English. Each pays 50,000 dong
>>     a month. There was not a computer to be seen in one computing class. But
>>     the students and their professor, who was moonlighting from the state
>>     university for 10,000 dong an hour, agreed that the standard of education
>>     at Thang Long was much higher than at the state university.
> 
> In my heart, I heard a lot of "Help!," from students and professors in this
> school. Could anyone please point out a safe and efficient to help them?
     
     A safe and efficient way to help them and the next, next generations is 
     to get rid of the communist regime.  Say if your house had been robbed;
     the robbers had sold your valuables to feed themselves, starving your
     children, would you just stand outside, reading articles which praise
     them, buying bonds, waiting for them to get out?  And I should remind
     you the FACT that Vietnam is among the top ten (if not top five!) coun-
     tries with largest army, armed force, next to North Korea.  And you
     believe it when the VNese communist regime drags about being poor, not 
     having enough money for education?  Please give me a break!  You don't
     want to help them to paint their face nicely so that they have enough 
     time and money to maintain power to rule over your people, do you?
        
> 
>>     There are three private secondary schools in Hanoi and another four in Ho
>>     Chi Minh City (Saigon). Despite, or perhaps because of, their successes,
>>     "the leadership is afraid of private schools," says a senior academic in
>>     Hanoi. After all, not many parents want to pay to have Marxist-Leninism,
>>     disguised as "civics education" and "collective activities", drummed into
>>     their children, as still happens in state schools.
> 
> Just a little fun. Is it the same reason that American parents want to send
> their children to private school here?
> 
> Have a nice day.
> Tha^n,
> Quang Le
> 
> PS. Besides Nhan Tran's News, I think that there will be a mutual benefit if
> many of us type and post interesting articles about VN to this forum. 
> 
  
      Just a little thought of mine to you and other people who still believe
      and indirectly help the communist regime painting their face, destroying
      our country.  Also, I think you have something which people call "Vo.ng
      ngoa.i".  I am saying this with no mean intention.  A lot of people like 
      you are ready to believe in foreign news sources and to discredit news
      from their own people.  What I am trying to say here is that we have to
      listen and JUDGE with our knowledge.  Should I remind you that during the 
      war of Kuwait and Iraq, Dan Rather of CBS had to apologize for giving
      a false news, false report, too.
      If you don't agree with what I've said, I am happy to discuss it 
      further with you.  

   DH    (IN%"DHLAM@utkvx.utk.edu")