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6 - “They Think We Don't Value Schooling”: Paradoxes of Education in the Multi-Ethnic Central Highlands of Vietnam
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- By Trương Huyền Chi, Harvard University
- Edited by Jonathan D. London
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- Book:
- Education in Vietnam
- Published by:
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Published online:
- 21 October 2015
- Print publication:
- 28 January 2011, pp 171-211
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- Chapter
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Summary
Based on a sociological survey and ethnographic field research conducted in 2005 in Đắk Nông Province, this chapter places education at the intersection of ethnicity and class in Vietnam's Central Highlands, a region that not only integrates with national and global markets, but also hosts intensified interaction between indigenous peoples and multi-ethnic migrants. Examination of two prime agents in education — teachers and parents — and their views of education and of one another — reveals that instead of being a site of cultural transmission or a meritocratic springboard for upward mobility, schools in this multi-ethnic setting reproduce existing structural inequalities among ethnic groups.
Following a brief introduction to Đắk Nông province and its education system, I detail the ways in which teachers and parents there perceive and talk about themselves and each other and the kinds of expectations parents have for their children. By identifying areas of convergence as well as disagreement among the concerns of and about teachers, I suggest that parents and educators are not communicating effectively and, in fact, are not engaged in a genuine dialogue. The missing dialogue between these two groups of education agents, I contend, stems from a more fundamental distance between indigenous residents and migrants that is in turn rooted in the recent history of the local political economy.
This chapter also links M'Nông's schooling outcomes with their social mobility, or lack thereof. As discussed by M'Nông parents and observed through ethnographic fieldwork, the paradox of centralized examinations and diploma-based recruiting policy of local enterprises is complicated by on-site ethnic tensions. I argue that the existing mode of education not only fails to transform interlocking ethnic class divisions, but breeds exclusion, as is seen in the failures of schools to produce M'Nông graduates to fill a wide range of jobs that are increasingly available in the fast industrializing local economy. The chapter shows how ethnic and class relations shape schooling outcomes and how education is a social field in which differences and inequalities are lived and felt.
5 - Winter Crop and Spring Festival: The Contestations of Local Government in a Red River Delta Commune
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- By Truong Huyen Chi, Vietnam National University
- Edited by Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet, David G. Marr
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- Book:
- Beyond Hanoi
- Published by:
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Published online:
- 21 October 2015
- Print publication:
- 22 September 2004, pp 110-136
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- Chapter
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Summary
For nearly two decades, the Vietnamese countryside has experienced momentous socio-economic change. Decollectivization in agriculture has given rise to the household economy as well as the increasing participation of people in the political process at the local level. The countryside has witnessed not only improvements in material living conditions but also a revival of religious rituals and communal activities. These economic, social and cultural changes have attracted scholarly interest across a wide range of disciplines, from political science and economics to history and anthropology. There are additional scholarly works that focus on the relations between the government and its citizens at the national, regional and local levels. While some scholars look at the impact of renovation on socio-economic life, others search for ways in which the dynamics of life at the local level contribute to changing policy. Other scholars look at different arenas of contestation, such as land conflicts between villages or between households. Some ethnographers pay special attention to the ways in which local governments incorporate cultural norms and meanings into the political process whereby leaders are selected.
In this chapter, I discuss the interaction between local government and authority and local people by providing an ethnographic case study of Dong Vang village (Hoang Long commune, Phu Xuyen district, Ha Tay province). The chapter focuses on two major Hoang Long projects that occurred during the past four decades: an attempt to boost agricultural production through the enforcement of winter crop yields; and the control of religious practice in villages. By showing that intracommune differentiations embed these two projects in history, I demonstrate how these policies fall into two arenas of contestation between local governments and their people. Based on extended research in the village in 1998–99, I argue that the relations between Dong Vang villagers and Hoang Long authorities have been contentious, at times even hostile, not only because authorities attempted to implement central policies that were not well received among villagers but also due to deeply rooted prejudice of commune authorities against Dong Vang.