SIA, a new education model applied to young people and teenagers, are
sourced from the US and South Korea. SIA was once applied by the Southern Youth
Center in a trial basis in 2008 with the program adapted to fit Vietnamese
conditions.



Chi, the mother of “K,” 17, a student attended the SIA organized by the
HCM City Youth Culture House, said that she decided to send the daughter to the
training course because she hoped the girl would become more self-confident and
less condescending, though the tuition is really high at 5.2 million dong.
However, K did not become better as Chi expected. After Chi tried to look for
information about the training course, she has realized that the trainer has
asked a special “sentiment relation” with K during the training period.



SIA is designed in a way, so that the “military camps” apply strict
discipline as if they are really in army, with no telephone, no Internet and
with strict rules. However, students complained that the violations were so
strictly punished that they could not imagine.



The students, who smoked behind trainers’ back, or played cards, for
example, were punished in a strange way. “T”, a student, was told by the trainer
to stand in front of other students, and then he had to stuff 20 cigarettes into
ears, nose and mouth. T was also asked to smoke before the crowd. After that,
the trainer hungrily threw the lighter into the ground which was broken into
pieces.



Meanwhile, two other students were asked by the trainers to slap into each
others’ faces because of a small mistake.



In October 2009, a national conference on SIA was organized with the
participation of the representatives from different agencies and organization.
After that, the Youth Union’s Central Committee has officially asked to apply
the model in cities and provinces.



Since then, more than 60 organizations have organized SIAs with relatively
high fees. However, the problem is that no state agency has come forward and
supervised the education quality.



Tran Thi Kim Lien, Deputy Director of the Southern Youth Center, said that
besides the model applied by the center which has been approved by the Youth
Union’s Central Committee, no institution has come forward and taken
responsibility for the curriculums.



In fact, the curriculums followed by different SIA organizers are nearly
the same, because they are copied from foreign sources.



“The success of the program much depends on coordinators. However, it will
not succeed without good organization methods,” Lien said.



SIA not wand



A mother named Thuy said that she feels a bit discouraged with the SIA of
her son. The boy said that during the SIA, he only had one time to visit a
warship. The boy could only make physical practice with morning gymnastic
exercises and he had a quick learning about martial arts. Meanwhile, “joining
production” means standing and watching how servicemen grew vegetables.



In fact, the students really enjoyed collective entertainment activities.
However, the activities are really not the main goal of SIA.



Meanwhile, another mother said she once hoped the boy would have good
habits in daily life after he returned from the SIA. However, she has been
discouraged because there has been no change with the boy



Vietnamese parents have been warned that SIA is not the wand which can
turns naughty boys into good students.



Regarding the quality of the SIAs, Phan Van Mai, Secretary of the Youth
Union’s Central Committee, has admitted that the quality of the SIA is different
in different localities. In the last two years, SIA model has been applying at
2/3 of provinces and cities nationwide.



Source: SGTT