Vietnam | ETEC 521: Indigeneity, Technology and Education (September 2013)

I thought about the question posed by Marker (2006) “Can school be a place to be indigenous, a place to be non- homogenized, a place in which all children learn, question, and grow from a position that values and builds upon who they are (487)?”

I think this can only happen if education is geared towards teaching methods and content which is reflective of the culture of children being taught. I do not think that mainstream education can address all the needs and differences indigenous children have in order to “build upon who they are.”

I currently live in Vietnam, there are millions of indigenous peoples living in the mountain ranges through Southern China, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Burma speaking more than 1,000 languages. These cultures have suffered a lack of education, health care and social services and have been either marginalized or forced to assimilate to the mainstream cultures.

This website is an article written by UNESCO addressing the problem of education of South East Asia’s indigenous peoples. It was stated that most education is taught in another language other than the indigenous student’s mother tongue, and most content is usually irrelevant to the students. This has resulted in astonishing rates of illiterate men and women. Due to this problem, the UN is trying to fight for the rights of indigenous people by encouraging education to be taught “in their own languages” and “in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning”.

In advocating education to be taught in Indigenous languages and incorporating cultural methods, this may help break the cycles of poverty suffered by Indigenous peoples in South East Asia. It will be a difficult task to change mainstream attitudes towards these cultures through appreciating diversity and accepting different worldviews.

I think it is very important to provide education in a child’s mother tongue and to teach curriculum that is consistent with one’s own culture. I think that through assimilating all children into a mainstream classroom children are unable to be successful and results in increased poverty rates and marginalization due to lack of cultural understanding.

http://www.unescobkk.org/education/news/article/why-we-should-support-mother-tongue-based-education-for-indigenous-peoples/

Many of the struggles that Canadian indigenous people endure are shared by other indigenous cultures throughout the world. Since I am living in Ho Chi Minh City, I felt compelled to explore the current conflicts facing Viet Nam’s indigenous people.

In comparing the two indigenous cultures, I found there to be many similarities. Viet Nam’s indigenous people are marginalized and live in greater poverty than the rest of the population – as is the case in Canada. Throughout history, they have been discriminated against and treated as ‘second class citizens.’ There is also a significant disparity in education.

UNICEF recently conducted research in Viet Nam and discovered that “school dropout among ethnic minority pupils has become something like a predestined fate.” Even though the government mandates that primary school be free to all citizens, corruption runs rampant and many public schools will not accept students without bribes, which most indigenous families cannot afford. Due to poverty, most indigenous children feel pressure to dropout and begin working at a young age.

One notable difference between the plights of these two cultures may be the degree to which the government supports their freedom of expression. In one of our discussions, Keith explained that the Canadian government does not allow indigenous communities full Jurisdiction over their education system. In Viet Nam, the socialist government has full control over mass media, how information is portrayed and how its population is educated on the matter. This lack of freedom of expression certainly prohibits Vietnamese indigenous people from sharing their values, their feelings of bitterness or their stories of unfair treatment.

http://www.crin.org/docs/resources/treaties/crc.32/vietnam_indigenous_ngo_report.pdf

ETEC 521: Indigeneity, Technology and Education (September 2013)

Tag Archives: Vietnam

Module 1: Post 1: Indigenous Peoples of South East Asia

Connecting Canadian Indigenous Issues to Viet Nam