The theme for this week’s reading is miseducation, with an emphasis on Hmongs in the U.S. I felt that the analysis that Kaozong Mouavangsou did in Hmong Does Not Mean Free: The Miseducation Of Hmong Americans regarding the attitudes between Hmong men and women towards education is very similar to the attitudes shared by Vietnamese men and women.
To use a personal story, I have two brothers and a sister. My younger brother is pursuing a vocational school. My older brother, my younger sister, and I are pursuing higher education, although we all go to different universities. Both of my brothers had a “chill” attitude towards education similar to the Hmong boys that Mouavangsou interviewed; they did not take many advanced placement classes and “played” more than I did. My sister on the other hand, excelled in school and almost became the valedictorian of my school. This may have to do with the fact that despite my high school having a diverse population of 4,000 students, there were only about 50-60 Vietnamese students. I knew of the other Vietnamese at my school, but was not close friends with them. Most of my friends either Filipino, Latino, or East Asian. I tried very hard to avoid interacting with the other Vietnamese students because I knew most of them were able to speak Vietnamese, unlike me and my siblings. I felt like I did not belong in their group despite sharing a common ethnic background, and most of them did not take advanced placement classes, so I did not have to interact with them in class. I feel ashamed to admit that at one point, I thought that I was somehow superior to the other Vietnamese students because I put a higher priority on education. I did not consider the fact that the education system may have been putting effort into creating a divide between us.
Although not surprising, I found an info-graphic showing that Southeast Asians on average, do not do as well as Whites in the American education system.
Have there been similar studies done for Vietnamese Americans? I feel like this study done for Hmong Americans has helped me better understand that the current education system does not help people like me.
Sources
White House, O. (n.d.). [Education Disparity between Whites and Southeast Asians]. Retrieved January 20, 2019.
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