President Ho Chi Minh-Starting to Build Vietnamese National Education

Abstract

Having successfully pacified Vietnam, in order to facilitate its rule, the French colonialism carried out that is known as obscurantism. They abrogated the old educational system and founded the new one. At the elementary level, the French set up few schools in order to train stooges, interpreters or normal officials who were necessary for the colonial government. The danger of this education was that learners were taught to praise the powerful countries and to love the nations other than their own motherland. At the superior and higher education, the French founded the Indochinese University (L'Université Indochinoise), aiming to train Vietnamese people for the secondary position in the colonial bureau and, more importantly, to prevent the Vietnamese from studying abroad. After the triumph of the August Revolution in 1945, President Ho Chi Minh has proposed the new government to build the national education, to develop the popular education and train talents, and more urgently, to fight against the illiteracy. This was the urgent requirement of the government. First of all it was necessary to open the anti-illiteracy campaign, establish the popular education to the masses, train talents at colleges and universities to serve the resistance war. The nature and structure of the Vietnamese national education were therefore changed to meet the requirement that everyone had the right to learn, to upgrade their knowledge etc. in order to build a new society.