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Teaching Implications
Since 1970's, Vietnamese Americans have become one of The United States' largest refugee groups. Many of the refugees can to America with relatively educational backgrounds from their home country. Many were forced to
locate themselves in low income neighborhoods where children can be easily tempted to a "gang" lifestyle. Many Vietnamese refugees have relatively low levels of English language proficiency, education, and low-paying jobs. Many of the Vietnamese parents encourage their children to learn everything they can in school. Parents want their children to succeed. Students are taught that they must work hard and do well in school. Vietnamese children have been gaining a reputation for high academic success. Parents in the Vietnamese culture also encourage their children to retain the Vietnamese customs and culture. They are also committed to retaining the values of their culture and have established Vietnamese language classes within the community. Education is extremely important to the Vietnamese culture and children are expected to work hard to succeed in their academic achievement.
The chief goal of this monograph has been to provide educators, counselors, and other professionals who work with Vietnamese children with information on their background and a summary of current research findings about them and their families. This overview also has specific and practical implications for meeting the needs of Vietnamese children as well as immigrant children of other homelands.
(1) Working with Vietnamese children involves seeing them in familial and community contexts. The children of Vietnamese refugees do not live as isolated individuals. They live in families and in communities that have experienced the strains of exile and resettlement. Some children have to live with the loss of family members at war or in flight. Others have been separated from family members for a lengthy period of time, and they may have difficulty in reestablishing relations when their family members reunite. Even when family relations are sound, many children find their parents and other adult members of their extended families struggling to establish their places in the new country. All these problems notwithstanding, Vietnamese families tend to orient toward integration into mainstream American society. They do not function in isolation; they have reestablished communities and social ties in order to assist one another in meeting the challenges of the new country. While ethnic communities have proved to be effective ways of dealing with many problems, they also create social environments that may be quite different from those of most American children. Efforts to assist the children of this new ethnic group in school or in other institutions therefore necessarily involve becoming familiar with the lives of the children in the family and their immediate social environments.
(2) Those who work with Vietnamese children also need to work with their elders. It is often difficult for non-Vietnamese individuals to get to know Vietnamese families and communities. While outsiders are almost invariably treated with courtesy, close relations can be hard to establish. Still, since Vietnamese children do live in familial and community contexts, many of their problems involve relations with family and community. Parents and other elders may be reluctant to enter such alien surroundings as American schools, but every effort should be made to make them feel welcome in the institutions that serve their children.
(3) Vietnamese children often experience considerable pressure from their families and communities and may need culturally sensitive assistance in coping with it. Educators and the American public too often feel that the relatively strong academic performance of Vietnamese children indicates that they are doing just fine and have few needs. Doing well and being well are two different things, though. Even when the children are excelling, they are often responding to parental needs for finding a place of respect in the new homeland. This can result in considerable psychological strain and unhappiness. Peer support groups, organized in schools, can be valuable ways of enabling children to share their stresses with each other.
(4) Even apparently well-adjusted children often feel the pressures and anxieties of bicultural conflicts. Generation gaps are common in virtually all American ethnic groups. However, they can be especially problematic in this group. Not only are children under pressure from their immigrant parents, they also have life experiences that are quite different from their parents'. Mediating conflicts between parents and children, and helping parents and children to see things from each other's perspectives, can be a critical task in creating generational consonance and in helping children meet the challenges of life in their segment of contemporary American society.
(5) The most effective way of managing bicultural problems lies in the development of bicultural ties and skills. Young Vietnamese Americans must be able to meet the challenges of American society. Mastering fluent and idiomatic English, adjusting to the school environment, and preparing for the mainstream American workplace are and to develop necessary skills while retaining ethnic ties is to become involved in Vietnamese activities and settings that are both Vietnamese and American. When young people prepare cultural exhibitions for others in their school or
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