From: nguyen@airmics.gatech.edu (Son Nguyen)
Subject: Re:  [EDUC] Private Lessons
Originator: daemon@media.mit.edu
Reply-To: nguyen@airmics.gatech.edu
Organization: N/A
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 17:16:52 GMT


Dear Comrades,

By reading the article below, I can understand how successful the VN
Communist Education system could be.  Now don't forget the first most
important introduction statement: "An ignorant nation is a weak
nation..."

After several decades ruled by the Communist, is Vietnam presently the
weakest and poorest nation in the world? Why? Because it is the success
of our VN Commnunist Education system.

How come with "more than  7,000 Vietnamese have earned doctorates,
mostly in technical subjects, at Soviet universities", the country has
gone to that wonderful situation?

Today, what do you find in the news about Vietnam:  selling RAW
materials, RAW resources like gold, crude oil, precious stones, cheap
labors, etc., and paying debts, and debts, and debts.

They claimed that:

"But by 1989 Vietnam had become the world's third-largest rice exporter
after Thailand and the United States." 

However, what is the percentage of the VN population staying hungry
everyday?  95%?  No, it's too hight, maybe lower.  How about 94%?  What
happens to the 6% percent left?  They are the government, the Communist
party members, the Communist followers, Cadres, etc. you dumb, idiot
asking too many stupid questions.  OK, OK, OK.

What have 7000 Ph.Ds been done for the country?  Why does the
government have to beg helps from the West, even from Mr. Lee Kuan Yew,
its used-to-be number one enemy?  You tell me.

They have to be on their knees to beg the U.S. for lifting its embargo
and normalizing diplomatic ties.  However, while they still have a hard
time to get it, they argue that:

"While waging its war against Vietnam, the U.S. administration
committed many crimes against our people. but...out of compassion for
the unfortunate American mothers and wives (who lost men), our
government has always considered the question of prisoners-of-war and
Americans missing-in-action a purely humanitarian issue, not linked to
politics."

What a smart Communist governemnt! 

What about the Vietnamese mothers and wives? You got to be kidding?

Would you go to "their school" to get a degree?

I know several netters would.

Good day,

Tu+. Ro


 
 > 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'.)
 > 
 > 
 >     "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.
 > 
 >      When Ho made his speech, only 300 Vietnamese had university degrees and
 >      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
 >      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.
 > 
 >      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.
 > 
 >      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.
 > 
 >      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.
 > 
 >      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.
 > 
 > 
 >