How had schools in vietnam become an important place for political and cultural battle. Explain?
Answers
Schools in Vietnam become and important place for Political and Cultural Battle Because Of the following reasons
1)Teachers And students did not blindly follow the curriculum. Sometimes therewas open opposition, at other times there was silent resistance.
2)In 1926 a major protest erupted in the Saigon Native Girls School. A Vietnamesegirl sitting in one of the front seats was asked to move to the back of the classand allow a local French student to occupy the front bench. When she refused,the principal expelled her. When angry students protested, they too wereexpelled, leading to a further spread of open protests.
3)Elsewhere, students fought against the colonial government’s efforts to preventthe Vietnamese from qualifying for white-collar jobs. They were inspired bypatriotic feelings and the conviction that it was the duty of the educated to fightfor the benefit of society.
4)By the 1920s, students were forming various political parties, such as the Partyof Young Annan, and publishing nationalist journals such as the ‘AnnaneseStudent’. Schools thus became an important place for political and culturalbattles.
5)The French sought to strengthen their rule in Vietnam through the control of education.They tried to change the values, norms and perceptions of the people,to make them believe in the superiority of French civilization and the inferiority of the Vietnamese.
6)Vietnamese intellectuals, on the other hand, feared that Vietnam was losing not just control over its territory but its very identity. Its own culture and customswere being devalued and the people were developing a master-slave mentality. The battle against French colonial education became part of the larger battleagainst colonialism and for Independence.