By Roger Cohen, The New York Times
Saigon, Vietnam — The American dream may be battered at home but it is alive and well in this city that fell to the Communist North Vietnamese Army almost four decades ago, evident in the upscale Phu My Hung neighborhood where a house, a yard, a state-of-the-art barbecue, a jeep and a Domino’s Pizza at the corner fulfill the aspirations of a burgeoning upper middle class. Perhaps this is what is meant by losing the war and winning the peace.
Kindergarten students in Vietnam playing with blocks. Photo from Little Genius International Kindergarten.
Or perhaps not, seeing that Vietnam is a one-party Communist state along Chinese lines where the very notion of checks and balances dear to the framers of the United States Constitution is alien, and things function the way they do in the absence of such competing institutions, that is to say with little transparency and plenty of greasing the wheels. But then again, perhaps any attempt to categorize systems makes little sense in a post-ideological world dominated by invisible networks.
Stroll around Phu My Hung in District 7 and what is most striking — aside from the proliferation of coffee shops serving iced lattes — is the number of schools with names like “Little Genius” or “Homework Center” or “Cornerstone Institute” promising to give the offspring of the upwardly mobile the foundations of success, including excellent English, perfect SAT scores and habits of hard work that will take them to the summit.
American students scratching their heads about why college entrance has become so arduous, with ever smaller percentages of applicants admitted to the best schools, could do worse than take a look at this little corner of Vietnam.
A 13-year-old Vietnamese boy managing the reception at the Homework Center told me in perfect English (he started learning it at age two) that children attend after school between the hours of 3 p.m. and 9 p.m., bringing their daily studies to around 12 hours. He spoke with earnest precision and eerie assurance. And where, I asked, would he like to go to college? “M.I.T.” he shot back without hesitation.
At Little Genius — motto “Kids want to fly!” — the push for academic excellence begins at an early age with a computer room designed for three-year-olds and filled with state-of-the-art equipment. Mastering English and technology is a sine qua non for such global wunderkinds growing up in a Communist state with a fiercely capitalist system, and imbued with the Asian values that put the success of the young generation first.
Read the full article by Roger Cohen from The New York Times.
