The teacher came in wearing his army uniform. I wasnt really used to seeing a uniformed teacher. He was lecturing the class about the importance of military studies and I could see no one in the whole class was interested in what he has to say. In fact, everyone was doing their own work. The teacher seems to know it but he just droned on and on in his seat. I did not have the textbook so I stared at him, staining to catch some words and practising listening for my Vietnamese. And a funny thing happened. I was scolded by him for not looking at the book but staring at him!! haha, i though he would have praised me for being the only one paying attention. Turn out that he thinks everyone looking down at the desk is paying attention to him and reading the textbook. One of the club member, Phuong, immediately pulled a book out from her bag and asked me to pretend reading it.
In the end, we spent the military class passing messages to each other across the table. I even helped them to do their english readings. I sort of pitied the teacher course I dont really think that my classmates are intersted in what he was saying. But I would have enjoyed the practical part of the module better as we will be allowed to shoot using rifles! However, the girls are more worried than enjoying the class. If they fail their military class, they would not be able to pass their University examinations and might have to redo it again.
Judging at the history of warfares in VIetnam, i think that having military lessons is actually jusitifed. It is better to be ever ready so that no one will take Vietnam by surprise. : )
-shi lei
Went to attend a Vietnamese lecture class today, thought it was a history class, but it turned out to be a military class. Well. As I didn't really understand most of what the lecturer was talking about, I shall just write about the observations that I made with regards to classroom culture!
The University in Vietnam does not go according to modules that are taken with different classmates. Rather, the structure is that each student has a fixed class of students that have similar subjects of study, making it sort of like a classroom environment, something similar to the junior college and secondary school system in Singapore.
Also, unforeseen circumstances could happen, such as power shortages, which can be quite a regularity, this would results in class being shortened or canceled. In this case that I attended, class was shortened.
The general atmosphere was ok, like a normal school atmosphere. Like Singapore, students did not need to wear school uniforms. However this varies abit between Universities as at Bach Khoa University, I noticed that students had to wear the school t-shirt for exercise periods. Again, something different from Singapore Universities in that they have physical education periods as well as military training and theology periods, sometimes including visits to the army museum.
In high schools and universities students would be encouraged to wear "Ao Dai" or the national costume of Vietnam during special occasions, a symbol of Vietnamese culture.
Students wearing Ao Dai
Overall, I couldn't say that I really enjoyed the lesson because I didn't really understand it, but it was nice eye-opener to see how University is like in Vietnam.
Cheers,
Daniel Foo
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