The Delta dropout

According to a local resident, 94 of the village’s 98 families are in the throes of poverty.

The hard way

Duong Dinh Huan had to leave the village for the provincial capital city of Ca Mau after ninth grade as the area had no high school. After completing high school there, he then planned to study medicine and technology in Ho Chi Minh City.

However, his mother used to pray that he would fail the university entrance exam because the family was too poor to afford the tuition.

“He would only agree to quit studying if he failed the exam,” says the mother. “We would be hurt if he passed but couldn’t attend university because we couldn’t pay for it.

“I know him, he prefers studying to eating.”

Huan then passed the examination and his family was not able to afford the expenses.

Instead, Huan’s two little sisters quit school and started working so that Huan could study English at the Ca Mau Community College in the provincial capital. Still, Huan is the only student from his village to study beyond ninth grade.

The long way

“Local children have to wake up at 4.30 a.m. every day and walk with lanterns 7-8 kilometers to school,” says Ca Mau Province resident Le Hong Tuoi.

“Many local parents work very hard but are still unable to afford their children’s schooling fees,” he adds.

Many students stop studying to find work and support their families.

Nguyen Van Duc, from Ngoc Hien District’s Mui Village, has nine children and all of them quit school as teenagers to help their parents’ business survive.

Around 4,100 students dropped out of the province’s secondary schools and high schools in the first semester of the 2007-2008 academic year, according to the Ca Mau Province Department of Education and Training.

Else where in Kien Giang Province, Nguyen Van Trung from Kien Hai Island District’s An Son Commune says his two eldest sons quit school when they were in the ninth grade.

To attend 10th grade, they would have had to go to Rach Gia or Hon Tre Commune, each of which are an expensive two-hour boat ride away, he says, adding that his family business needed them to stay home and help.

At Kien Hai High School, many students begin the school year weeks or even months late as they work overtime at family business before quitting work for the school year.

Tran Anh Can, principal of the An Son Secondary School in Hon Tre Commune, says most of students are from nearby islands and are absent for a couple of months every year as they help their parents move houses during rough storms.

After the long absences, Can says the students can’t catch up with their peers. He also says many students drop out each year when the fishing season begins.

With four communes and more than 21,000 residents, the island district has only one high school in Hon Tre Commune. Local residents in two other communes have banded together to set up unofficial “makeshift high schools” but it’s still not enough.

Many students from surrounding areas must travel one to five hours to reach these “schools.”

Knowledge prevails

In Can Tho’s Thay Ky Hamlet, many families have only one hectare of land, yet they have five or six children attending universities.

Pham Cong Luan, the fourth son of Mr. Huong and Mrs. Nhu in the hamlet, has just passed entrance exams at HCMC’s two leading universities – the University of Medicine and Pharmacology and the University of Technology.

But he hesitated to attend as his family has less than one hectare of farm land. With only two crops per year, providing sufficient meals for a family of seven is no easy task.

Not to mention that Luan also has a brother and sister already attending universities in the southern hub.

To make sure Luan got his education, his parents decided to sell their house and move to the fields to pay the tuition.

“We spend all we earn buying knowledge for our children,” Luan’s mother says. “There’s nothing to be worried about, as long as they have an education.”

Hoang Van Nhon, Nhu’s neighbor, took more than VND20 million (US$1,226) out in loans from a local bank so that his four children could attend universities.

All but two of the hamlet’s children are in school, says Do Thanh Lien, vice chairman of the Thanh An Town Educational Committee, which oversees Thay Ky Hamlet.

Every year, around 100 children in the hamlet graduate high school and 20 to 30 of them pass university entrance exams, according to Lien.

Two hamlet natives have obtained PhDs, while the ten have become medical doctors and 150 have graduated university.

“It is not a big deal for people here to sell their houses to pay for their children’s schooling,” says Nguyen Van Cau, Thay Ky Hamlet head.

“People here respect each other for their intelligence, not for their house sizes.”

Source: Tuoi Tre