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Education is the only way out of poverty!

Free school teaches hope
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A group of students sits in front of a school’s locked doors around 6 a.m. in Ho Chi Minh City’s Binh Thanh District.

Busy doing his math homework with a notebook on his knees, 14-yearold Hung looks sleepy.

He says every night he walks over four kilometers from his boarding house to Binh Quoi Resort to work collecting balls at a tennis court.

“It’s always really late when I come back from work,” Hung says. “I have to go to school very early in the morning for extra tutoring from my classmates before school begins.”

Like Hung, the other 91 students at the Ward 25 Compulsory School of Love are studying and working at the same time.

The school’s 100 students receive all their books, notebooks and uniforms for free.

Each student has a unique story, teacher Pham Thi Ngoc Doan says.

Some are orphans, while others are without personal identification having recently-migrated from rural Khmer. Most of them are older than normal school children, according to Doan.

At 14, Tien should have been in the eighth grade, but he is now just learning to read the alphabet. Doan’s first-grade class has 22 students, only four of whom have parents. Three of them are aged 26 to 28, she says.

Twelve-year-old Hoang, a third-grade student, has been working as a lottery ticket seller for three years. Every afternoon he wanders District 2 streets after a morning at the school.

“I have to study because my mother is illiterate. She can’t find a job,” the boy says, adding that some of his classmates work the same job as him.

However, Doan says not all her students seem to understand the value of school like Hoang does.

She says it’s too easy for them to fall in with the wrong crowd on the streets.

Keeping kids off the streets is one of the reasons the school was established 10 years ago.

In 1999, Doan’s uncle, who was then a teacher, wanted to provide free schooling for local children as the district was home to a large number of immigrants who couldn’t afford an education, she says.

A group of Ward 25 citizens then sponsored the construction of the school. Doan, meanwhile, spent six months visiting students’ homes in wards 21 and 25 to convince them to go to school.

The first course was opened with 170 students, Doan says, adding that six of the first students are now in grade 12 and are set to take university entrance exams this year.

“We want to create an environment in which the students can play and be taught right from wrong in their life as well as their work,” the teacher says.

Keeping hope

Teacher Le Thi Ngoc Khanh, who is in charge of the school’s third-grade class, says one of her secrets to keeping students in school is to do what she promises them.

She says 11-year-old Thoa asked her single mother to buy a bicycle for her after seeing that the school gave a bicycle to a student who lived far away.

Thoa’s mother promised to buy it, but couldn’t afford to keep the promise. Thoa then quit studying.

But Khanh stepped in and gave Thoa her old bike.

Though Khanh cautions that mentors must be wary of overindulging the children, she says the promises of adults often sow hopes and dreams in the children’s minds and failing to keep those promises could lead children to lose hope.

Doan, meanwhile, says it is necessary to make school life enjoyable for the children.

“I often tell my students to invite their friends to play with us at school,” she says. “Once they enjoy it here, they’ll be more likely to register for school on their own.”

The school now has five classes ranging from the first grade to fifth grade with three teachers, including Doan.

With help from the Binh Thanh District Department of Training and Education, students who complete the fifth grade at Ward 25 Compulsory School of Love can go on to study at regular public schools.

Source: TN, TT