The Future Wrapped in a Plastic Bag

By Anonymous / Spring 2022

Four years ago, I saw a video about a Vietnamese kid wrapped in a plastic bag. Then, a man tightly sealed the bag with one hand. The man waved his other hand against the water to swim. After fifteen seconds, he successfully brought the kid to the other side of the river. Then he got back to bring another kid. Kids were waiting for him to cross the river, as well as a teacher. No words can describe how I felt. I held my breath while watching, hoping that the man could hold the bag strongly enough, the current of the water would not suddenly become faster, and the plastic bag that got reused many times from the beginning of the day would not be accidentally torn apart. The video made me appreciate what I had and raised many questions inside my mind. “Why are there no bridges? Why is it so hard for these kids to get an education? What Is their future going to be like?”

I was born in a low social class family. When I was in middle school, once, my teacher asked me about my birthday to fill out some paperwork, but I did not remember it. So I had to call home to ask my mom. My teacher asked me if I was serious. Honestly, I did not know my birthday at the time simply because I just did not care about my birthday as my family never celebrated birthdays. I did not know my parents' birthdays as well. Once, when my close friend asked me about my parent's birthdays, I jokingly responded: “Well, how am I supposed to know since I did not give birth to them.” We were poor. Birthdays, holidays, and special events were like every other day.

Although my parents were poor, they tried to provide me with the best they could, especially food and education. I remember seeing my mom eating the meat left from the fish bones while giving me all the fish filet. As a kid, I innocently asked her why she would not eat the filet. She told me that she enjoyed the meat left on the fishbone. I then tried it, but the meat left in the fishbone was not that good. Also, sometimes, the small pieces of the fishbone that looked like needles might hurt your mouth. So, I did not understand at all why she enjoyed it. But, gradually, the more I grew up, the more I understood how much my parents had sacrificed for me.

My mom stopped her education at middle school. My dad is luckier since he got a chance to finish high school. My mom told me her story that even when she finished middle school, she didn't even know how to multiply or do simple calculations properly. The teachers passed her because they understood her circumstances. My mom showed me her legs, which were full of scars. She had to go around her neighbor as a kid to collect food remains, put them into a bucket, and bring them home to feed the pigs. She failed a lot, especially times she had to climb through the walls to get the food remains her neighbors left in the front yard or when she tried to bring the heavy bucket home. Although my parents did not get enough education, they always emphasized how important education was to me and wanted to give me the best education they could. My dad tried to find the best Math teacher in my area by going around the neighborhood, talking to other parents who had kids who succeeded and had awards in Math, and then enrolled me into the class, giving me a better chance to succeed.

When I was in middle school, my school was not good in my area. So, I met many types of bad students there. At the end of the school year, students would be rated based on their academic performance and their behavior. I remember my class only had four students rated as good out of almost forty students, which made my class even become the worst in the school. Since good students in my class were rare, I usually got attention from my teachers. So, I used to believe that I was superior than my classmates. When I saw a friend struggling to solve a math problem on the blackboard, I viewed him as lazy. I would say, "I can do ten problems like that when you finish one.” My class also had the most “gangsters” in school. Some of my classmates started smoking in seventh grade. After school, they got engaged in fights with other groups. Sometimes they fought with people in our school and students from other schools. When I heard them talking, I could not count how many bad words came out of their mouths after they finished a sentence. I believed those classmates were bad people, and I should never spend time with them. On the other hand, as someone from a low social background but a good student, I always thought that anyone could be a good student like me, and there were no excuses not to succeed academically.

If I had not witnessed what bad “students” in my class have to do after school, I would still think they were “bad students by choice.” Once, I saw a “bad student” in my class stacking up boxes onto a motorbike. He kicked hard at the kickstand and jumped on the motorbike. It seemed that he almost lost his balance and fell because of the weight of the motorbike and boxes. “It is illegal. You are too young to drive a motorbike,” I thought. Another time, I saw my classmate, who just got a zero because he could not solve a basic math problem, helping his mom prepare the dried fish to sell in the market. Eventually, I realized that I was not better than them. I was only luckier. My classmates were also not “bad students.” If the school evaluated students based on how they worked and helped their parents, I would be a bad student while my friends are exceptional. As parents, everyone wants their kids to succeed and have a better future. However, sometimes, education is not the most prioritized thing. Shelters and food preoccupy many families before thinking about education. Thus, the kids lose their chances to become successful in school.

The education system in Vietnam is not fair, which makes not only students but teachers become victims. The teachers’ salaries in Vietnam are very low. So, they must open classes at home or academic centers to earn more money. They include exclusive materials that may appear on tests to attract more students. Those teachers, whose goals were to deliver knowledge to later generations, now the main concern is money. So, sometimes, I would see problems never taught in class in exams. Fortunately, I could solve them since I had worked on similar problems in my private math class. However, many students were not that fortunate. To students who do not have an opportunity to enroll in private sessions after school, those problems look strange. I imagine this problem creates a circle, making it hard or even impossible for students stuck in it to break out. If a student cannot access good and exclusive resources, then he can not understand the materials deeply. Then, he cannot do well on tests, leading him to doubt himself or even think he is not smart. That demotivates the student more, makes him lose interest in pursuing education, and gets even worse results later. On the other hand, what if a student receives good and exclusive resources for studying? Then, the student would feel more interested in the materials and get good test scores. Since he feels he is good at it, he studies more and more, making him successful academically. Thus, the gap between the students who have better resources and those who don’t become more significant over time.

The good students in middle school would get a better chance to get into a good high school. To get into high schools in Vietnam, students must take entrance tests. The scores on the test decide the quality of the high school that the student will attend. There is an even big difference between a good and a bad high school in Vietnam. I still remember when my mom asked my neighbor’s daughter about what school she was going to. She replied, “I honestly feel ashamed when someone asks that question. There is a stereotype about students in our high school that girls would get pregnant before graduating high school and getting married.”

The education inequality is even more distinct between big cities and rural areas. After finishing middle school, I had a chance to visit my grandmother’s hometown. My parents were so proud of me and kept talking about my achievements. On the other hand, the parents in my grandmother’s hometown talked about how hard-working their kids were, such as waking up at four in the morning to take the cows out and feed them, then going to the river to catch fish. Their kids are only one or two years younger than me, but they look small like those in elementary schools. Their skin was so dark because of going to the farm every day. Also, they did not have enough nutritious food to grow as usual. As a result, most of them stopped education and planned to move to cities and become physical workers in the future. Looking back at the image of the kid wrapped in a plastic bag to go to school, we can see a distinct difference between kids in rural areas and the cities. Sadly, about two-thirds of Vietnam's population lives in rural areas.

My teacher said our country was poor because of wars. I hear it every year. When I was in twelfth grade, I heard the same thing, “Our country stopped the war in 1979, so we didn't have time to grow economically”. At the time, the teacher said 35 years. How many years is enough for us to grow? Were wars the main problems?

When we look at rich countries, we can see that they focus a lot on education. However, looking at the statistics from Vietnam, only 58 percent of Vietnamese children graduate from high school, which is low. Also, most students do not choose to go to university after graduating from high school.  According to Tuoitre, a famous e-news in Vietnam, Vietnam is one of the countries that has the lowest rate of students who go to universities in the world. Without education, it is hard for a country to prosper.

To understand why the education system in Vietnam is not good, let’s look at how the government has been spending money as a poor country. Every year, the government-owned companies report losing billions of dollars even though they exclusively control essential products such as energy, natural resources, etc. Also, even though the Vietnam government states that it is a socialist country, it is, in fact, a crony capitalist country. Big private companies in Vietnam are backed by the government and owned by the relatives of leaders in the Communist party. There are many contracts between the government and those companies. Those contracts cost a lot of taxes money but bring little value or nothing to the country. Also, the Vietnamese government has been wasting a lot of money doing nonsense things. For example, many provinces considered poor spend millions of dollars on building statues of communist leaders while people are still hunger and kids do not have a chance to go to school. If the government stops wasting the taxes money, we would have a lot more resources to improve education and people’s lives.

To deal with the problem, we need to raise our voices against inequalities and corruption in Vietnam. Imagine what we could do with the money we lose due to corruption. We can build many bridges so that students in rural areas would not risk their lives going to school. We can build infrastructure and public transportation to help the kids go to school easier. Also, we can raise teachers’ salaries and improve the quality of the resources and lectures in school so that kids have equal chances to succeed, shrinking the gap of knowledge between students who do and do not have an opportunity to take private sessions after school. Many Vietnamese people keep thinking, "It is not my problem. Let the government take care of it”. However, since the government has not been doing a good job, we need more voices to fight against the inequalities. Looking at the image of the kid wrapped in the plastic bag, I feel sad and see how fragile my home country will be in the future. We will someday be the past, and the kids will lead and build the country. Thus, we need to invest and protect them more right now to help them grow and succeed, which is indispensable for the country's growth in the future.

Works Referenced

Anh, Viet. “Just 58 Percent of Vietnamese Children Graduate from High School.” VN Express.

Tuổi Trẻ News. “Tỉ lệ người học đại học Việt Nam thuộc loại thấp nhất thế giới.”

Youtube. “Vietnam Student Floated Across River in Plastic Bags.”