Concept of 'Socialisation' in Vietnam
From leductony@yahoo.com Fri Apr 1 06:00:39 2005
Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 06:00:01 -0800 (PST)
From: Anthony Le <leductony@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Vsg] Concept of 'Socialisation' in Vietnam?
Hi group,
I am having some trouble to understand completely what is meant by socialisation of education in Vietnam. The use of the term here is not what is usually meant in the West, and is more like 'mobilisation' of society in order to implement a collaborative effort in providing education for all. However, listening to Vietnamese leaders, there are still some ambiguities for me on what exactly socialisation entails. I'd be grateful if members of the group can break down this idea for me.
Anthony
From minhnguyet80@yahoo.com Fri Apr 1 06:22:11 2005
Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 06:21:45 -0800 (PST)
From: Nguyen Nguyet <minhnguyet80@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Concept of 'Socialisation' in Vietnam?
Hi,
As far as I know, socialisation of education in Vietnam can be rephrased (roughly) like: every individual, corporate, class.... in the society must contribute to education. In the past, education in Vietnam was free of charge, there was no private schools. Now, people have to pay tuition fee, there are private schools. Moreover, individuals and organisations are encouraged to give financial supports (scholarships) to learners, esp. those who are in weak positions: poor, disabled... We are discussing a plan to give students loans during their education. Those things seem not to exist decades ago, though it's common in the West .
Nowadays, there are various scholarships in VN, sponsored mostly by companies and govermental bodies.
Hope this help
Nguyet
Nguyen Thi Minh Nguyet,
Faculty of Foreign Communications,
Institute For Journalism and Communications, Hanoi, Viet Nam.
From rolf.herno@get2net.dk Fri Apr 1 08:16:28 2005
Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2005 18:15:17 +0200
From: "Rolf [ISO-8859-1] Hernø" <rolf.herno@get2net.dk>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
Subject: RE: [Vsg] Concept of 'Socialisation' in Vietnam?
Hi Anthony and list
Excuse me if I sound cynical, but is "socialization" not primarily a euphemishm for privatization? Naturally, the latter concept does not sit well with collectivist values and whatever is left of the socialist ideology. It seems that many cases of socialization entail complete handover of responsibility for services to private entities that are only nominally run by the users and fee payers, such as the parents in the case of new private schools, kindergartens, clinics, etc.
It is particularly interesting if the Vietnamese term socialization (xa hoi hoa) is the same as the now all but forgotten Marxist term. In neo-Marxist terminology, socialization (also) described a tendency in late capitalism to increasing support from society for the reproduction of the labor force. I.e., capitalist enterprises would not accept their social responsibility and rely on the welfare state to provide education, care for the sick and elderly, etc. It would be surprising if the Vietnamese leadership had picked the same term for what it seeks to portray as a healthy and desirable policy. But that I don't know...
Regards,
Rolf
From jhannah@u.washington.edu Fri Apr 1 09:20:53 2005
Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 09:20:19 -0800 (PST)
From: Joe Hannah <jhannah@u.washington.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: [Vsg] Concept of 'Socialisation' in Vietnam?
From personal experience as uncle and guardian to a high school student in HCMC, "socialization" meant that we parents had to come up with a significant amount of money, paid directly to the school, to ensure their child got an education. It means, roughly, that the State is retreating from providing these services, and the "society" has to make up the difference.
I do not know about corporations or others creating scholarships -- they were not visible to me as a proxy-parent.
And I would not go as far as to say that "socialization" means complete "privatization" of education. Public school is still the norm, though there are, of course a growing number of private schools. In essence for us, "socialization" amounted to a user-tax.
Joe Hannah
From jcobbe@mailer.fsu.edu Fri Apr 1 10:58:27 2005
Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2005 14:01:29 -0500
From: Jim Cobbe <jcobbe@mailer.fsu.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: [Vsg] Concept of 'Socialisation' in Vietnam?
"User tax" is a pretty good way to put it, although outside cities there is more flexibility about the implicit compulsion is my impression. This is somewhat reminiscent of the old Bagehot distinction between 'ceremonial' and 'efficient' -- for rhetorical purposes, public statements by leaders suggest mobilization and collaboration to improve and universalize education; the reality on the ground means it is a way to shift costs to students, their families, and local communities, so that the State Budget no longer has to bear them. There has been a lot of debate and dispute within the education and training establishment about the appropriate extent of 'socialization,' in the efficient sense of cost-shifting away from the State Budget, and my very superficial impression is that there may be a slight tendency for the pendulum to swing back toward less reliance on parents, at least at primary school level in rural areas -- but the evidence is very patchy and not consistent, and that could well be wrong. Parents, and even sometimes the commune People's Committee, often supply surprising amounts of resources to primary schools, compared to the non-salary total of State Budget resources reaching the school from the District.
Jim Cobbe
From vern.weitzel@undp.org Fri Apr 1 15:31:11 2005
Date: Sat, 02 Apr 2005 06:30:45 +0700
From: Vern Weitzel <vern.weitzel@undp.org>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Cc: Phan Duc Thang <phan.duc.thang@undp.org>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Concept of 'Socialisation' in Vietnam? - clarify in Vietnamese please
It may help some of us if the terms used are clarified in Vietnamese. I understand the term to be Xa~ ho^.i hoa'
I refer to the Development Glossary produced by UNDP (in fact my manager, Mr Phan Duc Thang <phan.duc.thang@undp.org>): http://www.undp.org.vn/undp/docs/2003/gloss/DevGlossary03.pdf
Here, socialiastion is identified as:
(In the Vietnamese context, socialization means the sharing of social costs in undertaking development activities between the State, Non-State sectors and population, e.g. the ~ of cultural and sport activities.)
The glossary was last updated in early 2003 and I am sure terminology is moving on and the book can be revised. So do have a look. I am sure that Duc Thang will appreciate your comments.
Best, Vern
From leductony@yahoo.com Fri Apr 1 16:19:42 2005
Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 16:19:14 -0800 (PST)
From: Anthony Le <leductony@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: vern.weitzel@undp.org, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Concept of 'Socialisation' in Vietnam? - clarify in Vietnamese please
From these statements, it seems that the UNCDP definiton of 'xa hoi hoa' is indequate in that it only refers to the sharing of cost.
For example:
Nong Duc Manh said:
"xa hoi hoa giao duc (socialising education) is not only mobilising the people to contribute financially but rather to connect closely the parents and students with the community and with society to actualize the idea that education is of the people, for the people, and because of the people." (nguoi lao dong, 15.11.2004).
Assemblywoman Nguyen thi HOng Vy (Son La): Socialisation of education is a good policy, but it has not been understood in all its facets. We have only implemented socialisation of education in mobilising the people to build schools but have not mobilised the various social levels to participate in planning and evaluating education programs, building a system of gathering, dealing with, and supplying information about education for everyone." (Vietnamnet 15.11.2004)
These statements clearly indicate that those people pushing the policy of socialising education have more in mind than just shifting the costs to the people, although this has been pretty much the case. The rhetoric calls for democratising of education by giving the different sectors a voice in how education should be organized. Whether this will only remain on the level of rhetoric or there will ever be a conscientious effort to realize some of these ideals is somewhat uncertain to me since the government continues to have a tight grip of education planning in all its facets.
anthony
From NLan@ifc.org Fri Apr 1 23:59:23 2005
Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 14:58:42 +0700
From: Lan Van Nguyen <NLan@ifc.org>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: [Vsg] Concept of 'Socialisation' in Vietnam?
Socialization of education could mean "privatization", "equitization" or "user-tax" or the active involvement/contribution of different classes, sectors to the education process, depending on how you look at it. However, socialization of education is a good thing in Vietnam. As the state was unable (will never be able, I believe) to provide education at an acceptable level, it's better for others to join in. I understand that there are negative consequences/ impacts, especially in this transitional period, but in general, it is a positive development. I hope the government will speed up the socialization process. Quality of education in Vietnam is alarming!
Roft is absolutely right to refer/trace the term "socialization" to its "Marxist" original. However, as always, meaning is "undecidable", floating from culture to culture, context to context. The meaning of many "Maxist" terms were lost in translation from German/ Russian to Vietnamese
Lan
From OJHM.Salemink@fsw.vu.nl Sat Apr 2 06:09:39 2005
Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 16:09:13 +0200
From: Oscar Salemink <OJHM.Salemink@fsw.vu.nl>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: [Vsg] Concept of 'Socialisation' in Vietnam?
The concept of 'socialization' is not only applied to education but also to health care, arts & culture policies, and to other sectors in which services used to be delivered and/or financed by the state. Like Rolf Herno, I often had the impression that the concept was often used as a euphemism to cover a practice that in other societies would perhaps be described as privatization. To some extent, however, 'socialization' was often seen by those working in the sector as a welcome way to free themselves from all sorts of state-imposed shackles (and as a way to shore up budgets and - more cynically - incomes). When speaking to people, they often opposed the policy of 'socialization' to the 'che do bao cap' - the old state subsidy system which had given way to new financial arrangements which were often invented as the subsidies crumbled. Hence, I think, the oft-heard remark by senior cadres and officials that they needed to "study" what socialization meant and how it should be implemented.
That said -- and granting the specific Vietnamese modalities of 'socialization' and the like -- we should not forget the bigger picture of structural adjustment and the neoliberal turn of the world economy which contextualize local (i.c. Vietnamese) attempts to come to terms with the consequences.
Oscar Salemink
From markustaussig@mac.com Sat Apr 2 08:53:40 2005
Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 11:53:12 -0500
From: Markus Taussig <markustaussig@mac.com>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Concept of 'Socialisation' in Vietnam?
To further support Lan's position, I think it's useful to ask what the State was putting into education (and other areas now going through "socialization") 20-30 years ago and what people were getting out of that State investment. It appears to me that the answer is largely that both of these amounts have changed little. I think we can say it has grown somewhat, but nowhere near at the pace of growing demand from growing opportunities in the work place. In this way, it's less a process of the State democratizing or privatizing the way it does things, and more a process of the demands further and further outstripping the State's capacity. As such, it seems "socialization" is less a purposeful strategy, i.e. something that is being "implemented" by the State, than it is a coping mechanism occurring due to the State's limited capacity. To put this in a more positive light, we can commend the Vietnamese State for being practically minded enough to allow society to fill in this gap.
The fact is the Vietnamese State, like most developing countries, still does not collect sufficiently substantial revenues. Of course, we would all prefer that the State used its scarce revenues more efficiently and better targeted them at important basic public services and infrastructure like universal primary education. But doing so would make Vietnam unique among developing countries and, in fact, quite unusual among even more developed countries (note the US' deplorably insufficient public investment into the bulk of its public schools).
Socialization, as such -- again, as Lan points out -- seems to be a pretty good second best, i.e. an effective coping mechanism until Vietnam is able to effectively undertake the enormous task of broadening and deepening its ability to collect revenues from the evolving market economy. Any critique of this existing approach therefore would ideally need to put forth some suggestion on how any alternative would be financially feasible.
_______________________________
Markus D. Taussig
Private Sector Development Research
VoIP (Global Access) Tel: (202) 204 0963
Vietnam Mobile: (84) 903 25 8774
markustaussig@mac.com
http://homepage.mac.com/markustaussig/
From jhannah@u.washington.edu Sat Apr 2 09:50:19 2005
Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 09:49:58 -0800 (PST)
From: Joe Hannah <jhannah@u.washington.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Concept of 'Socialisation' in Vietnam?
As another personal aside, here in Seattle where our son is attending public school, idivdual schools must sponsor several large fundraisers, seek corporate and private foundation grants, and request outright donations from parents in order to remain solvent, to buy classroom materials, or in order to finance "extra" activities such as art and music classes.
America's "depolorably insufficient public inverstment" in our schools (as Markus so aptly termed it) means that parents and local communities must subsidize the US "public" education system at increasing levels. In our case, our school serve an essentially middle-class neighborhood that can afford extra donations to their children's education. I cannot imagine what is happening in poorer neighborhoods.
I ageee whole-heartedly with Oscar's comment that the issue of "xa hoi hoa" in Vietnam cannot be divorced from larger global issues, just as Doi Moi itself cannot be divorced from the advance of the neo-liberal paradigm generally and within the major development agencies specifically. The retreat of the state -- accompanied, I would agree with Markus, by the increased demand pressures from society -- works to create similar shortfalls in social services in the US and in Vietnam.
Joe
From leductony@yahoo.com Sat Apr 2 13:13:33 2005
Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 13:13:05 -0800 (PST)
From: Anthony Le <leductony@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Concept of 'Socialisation' in Vietnam?
While shifting financial responsibility to the people and various social sectors as a means to recover costs and stay afloat seems to be a wise 'coping mechanism' (to use Markus' words), it seems to me that people cannot help but feel somewhat resentful that the voice they have in the development of education is so limited compared to the size of the burden placed on their shoulders. I don't doubt Joe's account of schools in the U.S. having to do fundraising in order to maintain operations, however, I also believe that the individual schools and the citizens in the community have a much more active role in how education takes place than in Vietnam where education continues to be dictated from the top down. At the present, while the cost of education for the people continue to climb, the rhetoric calling for democratisation of education remains at a standstill.Decisions continue to be made at the top and handed down to the local levels where they can't get implemented effectively because they are not relevant to the local context. I think this imbalance between financial responsibility and active participation by the community in the process is one of the major weaknesses in the present educational reform effort.
Anthony
From markustaussig@mac.com Sat Apr 2 18:49:12 2005
Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 21:48:49 -0500
From: Markus Taussig <markustaussig@mac.com>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Concept of 'Socialisation' in Vietnam?
I'm not sure if this makes a difference, but my impression is that the costs that directly come from the public education are not increasingly nearly as much as the costs that are associated with the private tutoring (taught by the same individuals who teach the classes at the public schools). as i see it, this is proof of the demand-led increases in costs: i.e. people want/demand more from the education system now than they used to and they are willing to (or, in more negative terms, feel they must) pay additional funds to ensure their kids get better educations.
I say this again to support a position that the State isn't really following a particular strategy with regards to education, basically standing fairly still (due in large part to resource constraints, but also probably due to bureaucratic uncertainty over what is appropriate in a changing political environment) while society continues to change at a very rapid rate.
_______________________________
Markus D. Taussig
Private Sector Development Research
VoIP (Global Access) Tel: (202) 204 0963
Vietnam Mobile: (84) 903 25 8774
markustaussig@mac.com
http://homepage.mac.com/markustaussig/
From cwheeler@uci.edu Mon Apr 4 00:03:07 2005
Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 14:59:35 +0800 (SGT)
From: Charles Wheeler <cwheeler@uci.edu>
Reply-To: cwheeler@benfranklin.hnet.uci.edu, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Concept of 'Socialisation' in Vietnam?
My apologies for indulging a tangent, but I find the US analogy quite entertaining. The only thing you missed about the US case, Joe, is that parent donations to schools do not fund education, we fund the education fund-raising industry. Gift wrap you never wanted, discount coupon books to malls and restaurants I would never have thought much about. Ask your principal how much of that money actually ends up in the school's treasury, you'll be appalled. At least this is the case my southern California school district. And the consequences of this in terms of equality of education (never achieved in the first place) is evident here, and appaling.
The point is, in both cases, we see the exploitation of public institutions masked by euphemisms of social welfare (eg., "for the children" in the US) in order to advance agendas that seek to undermine public-financed education (the state's retreat from social welfare) and promote the individuals or businesses who seek to profit from the consequent crisis. Thanks Anthony, you've shown me yet another global phenomenon. Welcome to the new world.
Regards,
CW