Education: Pass or Rot

In South Viet Nam a student who passes an exam is a dau; a flunkster is called a rot. A schoolchild clever enough to remain a dau through 13 years of classes and pass his bachot (baccalaureate exam) becomes a tri thuc (intellectual), and has few further worries. The young nation has a shortage of scholars and a Confucian reverence for learning, and young male tri thucs get autos, villas and high-paying jobs from rich parents of marriageable daughters.

But Viet Nam inherited a rigid, rigorous school system from the French. Huge hoppers of facts must be memorized, and exams are tough. Students cram ceaselessly, go without vacations to study. Only 2.6% are able to cram in enough to pass their ninth-year exams, and only a minority of these survive their bachots four years later.

Eighteen-year-old Coed Bui Thi Oanh was one who did not survive. Voltaire and Confucius confounded her, and she failed her baccalaureate. In shame and despair, she swallowed 40 quinine pills and died. Since her death several other teen-age rots have committed suicide, and last week one enraged rot attacked his mathematics examiner in the street.

Lately Saigon newspapers, alarmed at the rot mortality rate, have urged parents to drive their children less harshly, play down the necessity of remaining daus. Educators argue that much of the blame for failures must be laid to crowded classrooms and ill-educated teachers. Happily for future rots, the government is planning alternatives to suicide: vocational schools and schools for social service.