It's been said before, but ignorance. One of my reasons for leaving Vietnam was that I was working on a project to create an awareness of what was going on outside the borders of the
Socialist Republic of Vietnam.. We spent six months surveying about 50,000 unsuspecting people in Saigon, Vung Tau, and Long An province. Long An province, site of Long An University (where I was Associate Professor of Communication and Culture), was probed probably harder than any place. I had a TV class that aired 7:45 pm Friday nights on the regional TV station called
Bad English. The idea of the program was that most Vietnamese speak such perfect, pure English that the only people who understand them are English teachers who speak at an astonishing slow rate of speed. When I arrived in Manila, everyone complained in this country that I speak too slowly!
The Vietnamese want to learn English but it's more of a status symbol than anything else. They want nothing to do with the culture that goes with the learning of a language. My performance reports at the university (filed by the president of the university) were complimentary in that I can teach anyone at any level to speak English which will be understood by anyone. My reports filed by the department head complained that I didn't spend enough time teaching students fundamentals, which have been driven into the ground since they began learning English in elementary school.
After six months of my study, the government education department concluded that the people are happy in their ignorance... that the only people they really care about who speak English are the Hollywood celebrities who adopt unwanted children in Vietnam and get them the heck out of the country. (I'm referring to Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, whom the Vietnamese revere highly.
) Handicaps and learning disabilities are a stigma in Vietnam and the country loves it when someone takes people with those problems away from there because they clutter the streets begging.
Sure, you see beggars here in the Philippines, too. But you also see handicapped lawyers, blind librarians, and others whom would be considered unwanted in neighboring countries.
My Vietnamese ex-wife couldn't stand that I accepted her handicap. She couldn't accept it herself. Since I took her to 10-15 doctors who said her condition could never be improved, I was happy with her as she was. Unfortunately, she saw this as my rejection for what she really needed in life. Having a mother who has been confined to a wheelchair since she was 36, I have always considered disabled people to be no different than anyone else. I even brought my bride one of my mother's old wheelchairs (a lot more comfortable than what they have in Vietnam!)
Going back to the idea of Vietnamese education, I often sat in classes offered by my university which taught students how to pass the ToEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language). It was very difficult for me not to get irritated. One problem was, they actually taught the answers to the test. The worst thing is that they didn't tell students anything about how a class outside Vietnam operates. To have fun in the classroom is considered to be a grand waste of time. Students are routinely ridiculed and NOT challenged in the right way.
Glad to be out of there.
