Traditionally, ethnic minority groups often face serious problems and Vietnamese Americans are not an exception. Probably the most serious problems they faced and are still facing in education that actually reflects all other problems this ethnic group suffers from in the US.
Problems and difficulties Vietnamese Americans faced in the past
First of all, it should be said that ethnic minorities traditionally were in a disadvantageous position compared to the dominant ethnic groups. The US is not an exception, though a lot of efforts were made to change the situation for better and make American society more tolerant and provide all ethnic groups with really equal opportunities. Nonetheless, the position of Vietnamese Americans was quite difficult, especially in the past.
It should be pointed out that the mass immigration from Vietnam to the US was marked by quite a negative attitude to Vietnamese arriving to the US because of the Vietnamese war which took lives of many Americans. At the same time, Vietnamese arriving in the US were really strangers for the local community because they had different culture, language, traditions, mentality. Moreover, the negative past experience of extremely complicated relations between the US and Vietnam did not contribute to the easier integration of American Vietnamese.
Speaking about their problems, including those related to the sphere of education, it should be said that one of the major problems was the language. For instance, in 1990 Vietnamese children lived in families where the heads of the households basically had poor English proficiency . This was particularly widely spread within the families of the first generation of Vietnamese Americans, i.e. families that just arrived in the US and their children were born in the new country or arrived at an early age.
Obviously, it was quite difficult for these children to get integrated into American life and achieve positive results in the education, i.e. have academic because they lack the knowledge of English which was the basic language used in schools. In fact, the proficiency in English was and actually remains one of the basic conditions of successful learning because even though children may have equal academic abilities they can be less successful in learning because of language problems.
Not surprisingly, that Vietnamese Americans were less likely to have a college education or a professional education than whites . In this respect, it is worthy of mention that poor English proficiency was not the only reason. In fact, one of the most important factors that prevented Vietnamese Americans from receiving higher education was their socio-economic position. It is not a secret that the vast majority of Vietnamese immigrants were poor and belonged to lower classes. Naturally, they could not afford educating their children similarly to the upper classes of American society. This is why many Vietnamese Americans were simply deprived of real opportunities to receive good education because of their poverty. Moreover, their poor social status also contributed to the negative attitude to Vietnamese Americans from the part of other students and lower self esteem of children representing this ethnic group compared to white and black Americans.
Finally, they Vietnamese Americans faced a very serious problem of racism that was really disturbing. For instance, in 1992, University of Miami pre-med Vietnamese American student Luyen Phan Nguyen, 19, was chased and beaten to death outside a Coral Springs, Florida, college party by the mob of about 15 young white men who used their fists, feet and beer bottles. Actually, he was slaughtered only because he had protested an insulting reference to his Vietnamese origin earlier at the party. What is even more shocking is the fact that the party crowd ignored the murder .

Page 1 of 2 :: First | Last :: Prev | 1 2 | Next