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Joseph Pham

Maura Tarnoff

Creative Thinking and Writing I

November 18, 2019

Which Came First: The Vietnamese or The American?

As a first-generation freshman in college who is rolling through all of the obstacles, joys,

and tumble of higher education, a lot of firsts are being accomplished. Unlike my parents, who

never had the opportunity to attend college, I am fortunate for having a relatively normal

childhood. However, some of their own beliefs, which stem from the bitter aftermath of the

Vietnam War and their experiences of working hard in order to support a family, have always

presented a contrast to what I feel and believe in life. Many of the ideas and concepts,

particularly the intersection of culture, public education, and higher education were not easy to

relate to. While my other classmates whose parents had more fortunate backgrounds chatted

about all of these new terms and events in college, I merely only listened, hearing all of these

foreign ideas being so easily thrown around in conversation. But when I watched the film

Precious Knowledge, I deeply connected with how the teachers capture the students’ attention by

embracing their respective cultures while integrating the necessary material through that

perspective itself. I think that is a really powerful method of teaching, and it is something that

should be implemented in schools, because it is important to understand one’s own background,

and I believe that education should reflect that.

Everyone takes history courses throughout their educational career. It’s also one of the

most boring classes that most people do not like. But the important of history that no one seems

to understand the most is that if we are able to understand history, then we can come up with
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better solutions to today’s problems so that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past. But what

happens when you only educate today’s children with one perspective of history? History

classes always embellish American history to its students, but many of its students struggle to

relate to it because of their diverse backgrounds, ethnicities, and socioeconomic status. In class,

I often struggled to pay attention, thinking instead about my own history as a Vietnamese

American, and wondering how any of this applied to my own life experiences. I do say that I

have learned about my own culture through my parents’ life experiences, when they fled the

Vietnam War and struggled under a Communist government. But when I watched the film

Precious Knowledge, I appreciated how the students were able to learn about their cultural

history. I enjoyed watching students recite and read Mexican-American literature, instead of

being forced to read many American classics. I also appreciated how the teachers tried to relate

much of their learning to modern problems, such as the issue regarding racial discrimination and

incarceration. When the M.E.S.A students were relating their own culture to their education,

they inevitably were becoming increasingly educated and better as individuals. The most

powerful part about being able to integrate one’s culture with their education is the fact that not

only does it increase the amount of passion and interest that is invested into the learning, but it

also creates an environment for growing creativity, diversity, and acceptance. For instance, I

have sometimes struggled with reconciling my own identity with education because my own

culture was glossed over, and thus it was hard for me to be invested. However, Precious

Knowledge struck a chord within me because the way the teachers oriented their curriculum is

something that I myself would have liked to have seen even an aspect of in my own education.

The problem with the American educational system is the fact that it still attempts to

employ the model of “one size fits all”. I suppose I should introduce the idea of ethnic
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marginalization in American education as well. It is easy to only emphasize history from the

viewpoint of the American colonies, and from what happened then on. It is thus especially easy

to integrate bias in which history is again emphasized only in the light of white Americans. And

perhaps in the past, when most Americans were white, it made sense to teach history that way.

But America has by far expanded beyond that paltry definition. The United States is now

composed of many groups of individuals whose stories, backgrounds, ideologies, ethnicity, and

status lend to the whirlwind of creativity and diversity. And yet, just like in Paolo Freire’s The

Banking Concept of Education, we insist on objectively trying to shovel the same pieces of

dribble—and its American white traditionalist dribble for much of it—into students and

expecting them to merely say “thank you” and get on with it. That is the antithesis of what the

United States is, and it is only crippling the younger generations’ ability to think creatively and

critically, and that is important. With the diverse world people live in now, critical and

innovative thinking is how society will continue to adjust and resolve its problems as they come

up time and time again. But yet it still happens. And because in particular the American

education system has a focus with a lens on traditional white American values, inexplicably,

many other groups are thus deemed invisible, and their own stories and perspectives are filtered

out of the system. And that right there is inequality at an academic level. That right there is

marginalization, but no one necessarily objects to it. That is why there is an unequal learning

environment, and only certain groups of students benefit from this system, whereas others are

isolated. Even then, everyone is still force-fed deposits, and expected to let it sit there and make

interest.

Another video that also sits very well with my view of this particular problem is

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk “The Danger of a Single Story.” In her talk, Adichie
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reminisces about her educational background as a youngling, and how whenever she read

literature, it was always about white boys or girls who played ball in their front yard. She was

always confused about why she read these pieces of literature when it had no relevance to her

life and circumstances. She lived in a drastically different environment with different

expectations, and yet she was learning material that did not fit her own background. I can

connect to Adichie on a deeply personal level because I have that struggle myself as well. While

I learned about the glory and loss of the American soldiers during the Vietnam in my AP US

History class, I spent more time asking my parents about their traumatic time fleeing from the

aftermath of the same war. My parents’ experiences were so much more intimate and personal,

and by sharing their stories with me, I was able to live through their memories and experience an

entirely different dimension than what I was learning in the classroom. Every time I heard a dull

statistic or whatnot in class, I thought about how my parents took a boat in order to even leave

the country, and how they sought safe haven in the refugee camps in Malaysia. Granted, there

are very good pieces of work that were analyzed and read during my educational career, like The

Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, but that does not make up for the lack of three-

dimensionality in the stories that the education system tries to impress onto its students. Of

course, given the diversity of today’s society, it is impossible to accommodate everyone’s

backgrounds. If it was attempted, then there would not be a standard of learning, and it would be

difficult to essentially teach everyone the necessary basics of becoming an educated individual.

But at the very least, consider everyone’s backgrounds, and do not attempt to project the idea of

one unifying story, when in fact that “one story” is composed of everyone’s complex and diverse

stories.

That’s why it’s so important to attempt to engage everyone in learning by intersecting

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both education and identity. When young students are given the environment in which they can

feel comfortable and safe with their identity, and when their identity and background is being

acknowledged in the learning, then students will be more proactive in taking charge of their

learning. And as they become more proactive, they inevitably become more educated, and as

they become more educated, they are effectively prepared to take on the problems that the world

has in store for them.