Week 7-Vietnam
A reformation of a country in order
to fit into the global modernization, lately utilizes education as an incentive
to be accepted into the modern world. In Vietnam, the current model is similar
to the brain drain of that other countries such as China and the Philippines.
The Vietnamese government backs a system which allows western education to be
more favorable to the Vietnamese. With western influence and rewards system in
place, more and more people from Vietnam are drawn to going overseas to get
their education. This, however, is comes at the cost of an erasure of culture
and the spread of westernized dominance. Already the standard of learning is
set at the western ideals and practices. This ignores cultural and indigenous
practices and teachings making them near last in the value of education hierarchy.
Instead, at the top of the education pyramid are skills and teachings which
value vocational work or fields of STEM.
What’s
happening to Vietnam is just another example of many countries who are still a
victim of brain drain and erasure of cultural and societal values. Families get
separated making familial and cultural values change and becomes transnational.
The educational drain to overseas schools also sees a diaspora of people who
end up changing, assimilating, and planting roots in countries other than their
initial countries.
Question:
Can we categorize the preference and emphasis on
importance of westernized education as a form of neo-colonization? Conforming
to western ideals creates new forms of culture and education but at what cost?
Sources:
Valverde, Kieu-Linh Caroline. Transnationalizing
Viet-Nam: Community, Culture, and Politics in the Diaspora. Philadelphia,
PA: Temple University Press, 2012. i-28. Print.
Image:
http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/images/2013/12/blogs/banyan/vn_tests_000_hkg7971094_595.jpg
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