The tension between the traditional attitudes of Asian parents and the reality facing Asian teens today has always been a tightrope that international schools in the region have had to walk, and never more than now.
There is now a real and widening generation gap on a wide range of issues, from smoking, drinking, underage sex, teen pregnancy, LGBT students, teen relationships, viewing pornography, and the Internet.
Here in Vietnam, a country I have called home for the better part of the past 17 years, my job as an English teacher puts me on the front lines of the intergenerational battle currently raging in homes and schools across Southeast Asia.
Middle-class Asian parents, raised during the austerities of post-Cold War poverty, have worked hard to give their children a better life. Convinced by traditional Confucian ideas about the importance of education, they have encouraged their children to study hard, take extra classes, complete loads of homework, and get good grades, while equipping them with iPhones, laptops, and all modern conveniences, in an effort to give their children what they themselves could never have or afford when they were younger.
However, all of this comes at a cost. The long hours spent running businesses selling second-hand Chinese-made T-shirts in clandestine joints located on busy streets filled with motorbike traffic have led to today’s modern Vietnamese teenagers being raised by the hired housekeeper, who cooks and cleans for them while mom and dad are out earning money.
Thus, while middle-class parents can now afford to send their children to mid-budget “international” schools that offer a combination of the Vietnamese national curriculum and a hastily cobbled together, credit-free English, math, and science program taught by expatriate foreign teachers, their children have grown up surrounded by modern millennial attitudes toward subjects that would have been shocking in their parents’ day.
Allowed to go out at night without adult supervision, alone to deal with the stress of upcoming exams, these teens now frequent shisha lounges, smoke pot, enjoy casual, no-strings-attached sex with minors, get pregnant at weekend parties at friends’ houses, watch Mia Khalifa on Pornhub, and drink vodka Cruisers during homework time, among more normal things like listening to K-Pop, learning to dance hip-hop, and playing basketball. .
What have these international schools done about it? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. In a quest to gain accreditation with international bodies such as the Council of International Schools (CIS), there has been a tightening of school rules, where students are punished more often for minor infractions, while, at the same time, schools strive to look their best externally, making cosmetic changes to curriculum design by placing foreign teachers in “subject head” positions without any increase in pay and with the expectation of spending more and more hours of free time in an effort to meet “international standards”.
More serious for students, however, is the way in which schools trample on the individual rights of adolescents. Schools in this budget range are much more expensive than Vietnamese state schools and, at the same time, of much lower quality than the ultra-exclusive “American high school in Vietnam” experience offered by IB World Schools to the super-rich Vietnamese, where one-year tuition amounts to more than $20,000 a year. Middle-market schools like the one I worked at are terrified of modern teen issues, gossip, and scandals, as they risk alienating the existing client base of older-generation Vietnamese parents. Internal scenes of occasionally unruly classrooms lead to students’ mobile phones being snatched by Vietnamese teaching staff, “officially” because bringing mobile phones to school is against the rules, but really because the school is terrified students will upload the photos to Facebook for parents and the world to see.
Perhaps the most serious threat to student safety at the school where I worked came in January 2016, when, after a boy attempted suicide the previous month after splitting up with his girlfriend, the school announced to students that from now on all their Facebook accounts will be stalked and if there is any sign they have boyfriends or girlfriends, the school will call their parents, claiming their grades are slipping. This has since led to several students being physically and verbally abused by parents. Of particular concern is the LGBT student community, as such a policy is likely to force LGBT students to “come out” to their parents before they are ready, possibly putting them at risk of serious domestic violence and abuse.
The tension is near breaking point as the traditions of the older generation come face to face with a new generation that has no complexes about casual sex, Internet dating, viewing pornography, recreational substance use and hanging out with their LGBT friends in the classroom.
SO WHAT IS THE ANSWER? As a frontline teacher, life coach, and qualified youth counselor, my contribution is to provide timely and sometimes direct and accurate advice on teen self-esteem, personal development, health, wealth, sex, dating, and relationships, while at the same time advocating and supporting my teens in whatever way I can, sometimes in the face of hostile reactions from school administration and other teaching staff.
I NOW HAVE A PLAN to establish an after-school activity center near the school where I worked, where my teens can learn the life skills and knowledge they need to change their lives, break their most negative habits, and choose new ones that will lead them to take the necessary steps to lead the life they have always wanted and achieve their personal goals. Based on the American youth organization 4-H but “Vietnamized” and more focused on personal development and learning business skills that will be valuable in the online marketplace in the future, my vision is to create an exciting, values-driven informal education hub that enables my teens to believe in themselves and make their dreams come true.
To do this, I intend to crowdfund the creation of the hub through the IndieGogo crowdfunding platform, but to do so, I need a multitude of fans, supporters, and supporters willing to donate. To that end, I have become an author and will soon be publishing my first novel about the issues my teenager is facing. The novel is called “Shisha Girl” and the cover of the book is the image at the top of this article. Released soon as a series on Wattpad and as a print book and Kindle on Amazon, I hope the book gives me the fans I need to run a successful IndieGogo campaign.
Please see the Slideshare presentation below for a brief overview of my work to improve the lives of my teens. It’s time to make a difference. It’s time to switch things up, shake things up and start something new. Let’s have a new generation of young Asian millennials accepting the realities of life in the 21st century. Century, while giving them the inspiration and courage they need to achieve levels of success their parents could only dream of. LET’S START NOW!