Illustration by Trịnh Lập

Anh Đức

Việt Nam's first illiteracy removal campaign was started on September 8, 1945 and now almost 80 years later, the country is progressing with an education reform.

But the actual change in education cometh not from the alphabets, nor the mathematical expressions, not from the rewriting of textbooks, nor the rearrangement of curricula, but rather, from each person's simple ideas and actions.

The past week for the education sector in Việt Nam was not a good one.

In the biggest mishap since the 2018 exams scandal, 2,750 middle school students in Thái Bình Province got their high school entrance exams grades misplaced, to the point that 243 students who passed the exam were wrongly listed as 'failed'.

The investigative board, in a statement to the press, found that the exam organisers :"Knew about the mistakes, but did not make a record... and the head of the exam steering committee did not take any action to fix the situation."

2024, the Year of the Dragon is currently seeing a baby boom, the last of which happened 24 years ago also in another Year of the Dragon: 2000.

Students born in this year are perceived as the beginning of Việt Nam's Generation Z and some of them were victims to the scandal of the 2018 exams, where blatant cheating was found and many students' grade were wrongly manipulated, leading to students who should've passed, failing and vice-versa. Students who had their grades manipulated were later expelled after the investigation was completed.

The scandal ended with corrupt exam officials put on trial and receiving lengthy sentences. But the effect still lingers on.

As a millennial and with the chance to get to know many Gen Z youngsters, I always felt a glimpse of cynicism even in the most brilliant and positive thinkers. There is hope, there are the life goals, but none dared to dream bigger, some did not believe in the goodness of the world and thought that life was rigged.

One of life's cruelest lessons, in my opinion, is that no matter how hard you try, there is that possibility of failure.

Things would never go exactly how you want it to go. But there's a catch.

Everybody must have a fair chance to at least try, otherwise the feeling of post-failure sadness turns into hatred, anger, distrust against life, should someone find out that another person cheated them out of that opportunity. And that hatred and distrust, is something much more scarier than failure itself - it eliminates hope, an element that guides people in the darkest of times.

A worker finishing his job early, got screwed by another worker down the line out of sheer disdain and has to work longer, found out about the screwing and lost faith and the motivation to work.

A student bawling her eyes out to her teacher that she did her very best, but her classmate who fell asleep in the exam passed with flying colours, lost hope in her future and the fairness of education.

A young karate athlete in Bình Thạnh fought her way into the city finals, only to be announced by the organisers to have forfeited the final. Her father fought to have her fight in the finals fairly and the young girl's wish was granted only to face a rigged referee, who blatantly favoured the opponent. Will the girl and her family's belief in professional sports persist? What will happen to the other girl in the final going further into her sporting career?

Those situations, sadly, happened in real life, and got me thinking: What are we, as adults, teaching kids these days?

That adults are prone to mistakes, but did not take any action or responsibility to fix them?

That those who work hard eventually get their achievements undone and taken away by those who cheat?

Elementary knowledge is important, sure, but the knowledge of ethical values must be in the utmost pivotal and crucial focus. We can fix a person who is flawed in knowledge and skills, but it's almost impossible to turn an unethical one around.

I have been closely following the media, both nationally and internationally and whenever Gen Z is mentioned, it is often combined with negative and cynical adjectives. It's ironic that some of us adults are at fault for selfish actions that sucked the hope, the dreams out of the young generation way before they get into the labour market, and now we complain that "the young generation is bad".

The strength of Việt Nam, cometh not from its land, its seas, but its people. If Việt Nam were to develop further, we need the future generation to have hope, to have the motivation to make Việt Nam and the world a better place and to contribute to society. But to do that, we need to let them dream, let them try their best and create a fair environment for them to achieve their potential. Children should be taught that when they dream something and work their best to achieve it, the dream eventually will come true.

79 years ago, just six days shy after declaring Việt Nam's independence, one of President Hồ Chí Minh's first acts was to start a nationwide literacy campaign, an act to show the importance of education in Việt Nam.

79 years later, it is up to us to continue that struggle, but in a new form, with a new mission, to reignite the dreams of future generations, those with growing and wider access to knowledge.

Dear parents, please try your best to foster and protect your children's dreams, like the karateka's father. Dear teachers, please remember no amount of wealth or title will be equal to the achievement of helping to create a person that would contribute to humanity. Who knows? That little girl or boy you are teaching might one day invent the cure for all diseases.

And to the young ones reading this piece : Sometimes you would realise that the world is not perfect, but despite that, hope on. Someday it will be the world you dreamt of, and that day is why we kept on living our lives to the fullest.

I believe that we can achieve that world we all dream of and soon and we know what to do to make it happen.

VNS