Keywords

Introduction

The Vietnam War (also called the American War or the Resistance War against America in Vietnamese contexts) is one of the fundamental historic events of Vietnamese history in particular and world history in the twentieth century in general (Dror, 2018; Herring, 1991; Lockard, 1994; Moyar, 2006). The war presupposed one of the most grievous divisions in the country’s history, leaving behind not only a terrible number of deaths and severe mental illness of the survivors but more significantly, the wounds and distinctions between two parts of the whole country: North and South.

In Nothing ever dies: Vietnam and the memory of war (2016), Nguyen illustrates several ways in which the war is still alive in different contexts with its unresolved memories. Regarding education, the war actually posed a significant challenge to the teaching practice in the Vietnamese education system. The main challenge involves how to approach the teaching of such a long and bloody conflict in order to heal the collective wound, build solidarity and empathy, while fostering patriotism and national identity. As such, education plays a key role in forming the opinion of the younger generations, and literature, in particular, as a reflection of the moods and feelings of those involved in the conflict, directly and indirectly. Thus, the main purpose of this study is to explore the reception of the war literature that is being taught in the official syllabus at high schools across Vietnam.

Moreover, since learners are key agents in their learning and play a determinant role in the teaching–learning process, it is essential to collect constructive feedback, learners’ backgrounds and viewpoints need to be heard and viewed in order to provide appropriate teaching strategies, materials and techniques to support learners. To be specific, related to the Vietnam War, it is imperative to understand students’ perception of their nation and its people as well as the enemy participating in the war – the American. Understanding how students perceive their nation, the people and the enemy, especially in such a historic event – the Vietnam War – can help to find out the solution not only to deal with the collective trauma but also to build solidarity and national identity for students.

Among many ways that the school in Vietnam teaches students about the nation, its people and the Vietnam War as a part of the nation’s history, literature is considered one powerful tool as it is seen as a major compulsory subject that all students need to pass in order to complete their formal education. Therefore, in our research, literature has been chosen as the context to survey students’ viewpoints. It is also noteworthy that literary works in the official curriculum directly written about the Vietnam War described the actual war events, rather than the war consequences, unresolved and traumatic memories of the survivors.

The subjects of the present study are high school students in grade 12, the last grade of formal/basic education in Vietnam, ages 17–18, which was precisely one of the reasons for choosing these students. These teenagers were going to complete their formal education and soon reach 18 – the age that their citizenship would be confirmed by the law; and after formal education, they needed to decide the (career) path that they wanted to follow. Therefore, this age group was actually at the time of important milestones in their life. Thus, understanding their perception of the nation and the people can help to know the life value of the young Vietnamese generation, and how they are prepared to become a citizen to participate in the country’s system.

With the aim of surveying high school students’ opinions and beliefs after reading the literature about the American War included in the Vietnamese national official curriculum, the research questions are the following:

RQ1: What is the Vietnamese students’ perception of the nation and the national heroes?

RQ2: What is the Vietnamese students’ perspective of the figure of the national enemy?

While the first question can help to find out how the literary works build national identity and patriotism for Vietnamese high school students, the second question can help create the figure of the other/enemy, which, in turn, will help in developing their own identities.

Literature Review

The Nation, National Identity and Patriotism

There are some concepts that need to be clarified before exploring how literary works about the Vietnam War in the Vietnamese national curriculum build national identity and patriotism for Vietnamese citizens, through high school students’ perspectives. They are the nation, national identity and patriotism; as well as how these concepts are nurtured through language and education. Several researchers have put forward many ways that a nation is understood, from different dimensional views, including history and culture, or politics. In a simple and basic sense, the term ‘nation’ often refers to the territory with its inhabitants who are connected by birth, language and the government that rules them (Joseph, 2004). Joseph (2004) also points out that this way of understanding nations shows many limitations, especially in the context of global mobility with migration.

Can those who leave their nation of birth be considered as ‘outsiders’? For others who do not share the same territory of birth, however, they do share the same nation, not only because of their residency, but also because of something more underlying and latent rather than overt such as their sense of belonging. Barrett (2007) explains that the term ‘nation’ as ‘a named human community occupying a homeland and having a shared history, common myths of ancestry, a common mass public culture, and shared values, symbols, traditions, customs and practices’ (Barrett, 2007, p.5). It can be seen that while the understanding of the nation mentioned by Joseph is seen from politics, the one of Barrett is viewed from history and culture. Barrett (2007) also differentiates between nations and ethnic communities. They are similar in sharing collective names, myths of ancestry, historical memories, customs and traditions; but they are different as the former occupy in their historic homeland while the latter do not. Instead, ethnic communities connect to their homeland in an affective and symbolic way (Barrett, 2007).

Researchers mostly agree that nations are recent phenomena in world history, which is the result of the French Revolution in the nineteenth century and the climax of a number of social and intellectual trends linked with the Enlightenment happening in Europe at that time (Barrett, 2007; Liu & Turner, 2018). According to Barrett (2007), it is a necessary artificial outcome of the transition to modernity in which the central idea is industrialization. Industrial societies asked for a mobile workforce with a high degree of specialization; therefore, required a means to connect different villagers who came from different local communities and moved to cities for work (Barrett, 2007). The concept of a nation as well as national citizenship emerged so as to homogenize and unify cultures to prepare the workforce for the industry. This is the notion of a nation, what about the concept of ‘national identity?’ According to Byram and colleagues (2002), each individual is complicated with numerous social identities and his/her own individuality, and national identity is one kind of social identity that contributes to the answer of the question ‘Who I am?’ and other related questions to describe and identify oneself such as ‘What makes me me?’

As discussed above, the nation is a recent phenomenon, therefore, national identity is argued to be a recent concept, appearing after the French Revolution in the nineteenth century as well (Liu & Turner, 2018). Liu and Turner (2018) explain ‘national identity’ as the following:

National identity refers to the identity of the citizens of a country with their own country’s historical and cultural traditions, moral values, ideals, beliefs, national sovereignty, and so on. (Liu & Turner, 2018, p. 1080)

From the literature review above, national identity can be understood as the social identity making up the identity of a person, it relates to their territory with its own culture, history, sovereignty and systems. Bechhofer et al. (1999) also propose a notable idea, regarding the concept of national identity, which is:

National identities are not essentially fixed or given but depend critically on the claims which people make in different contexts and at different times. The processes of identity rest not simply on the claims made but on how such claims are received, that is validated or rejected by significant others. (Bechhofer et al., 1999, p. 515)

From Bechhofer’s argument, national identity is not only identified by the agency that claims it, but also by social acceptance which confirms its validity. Byram et al. (2002) contend that ‘national identity’ is a kind of social identity instead of individuality, therefore, it requires the approval of the community. Logically, if a person is rejected by a nation, they may not build or have a sense of belonging to that nation, and the characteristics (such as culture, history and customs) of that nation may not become a part of their identity.

Therefore, national identity is related to the acceptance of the society, an individual’s sense of belonging to a nation, which is connected with the concept of patriotism. Patriotism in a simple way of understanding is ‘love of country’ and ‘attachment to the nation’ (Hanson & O’Dwyer, 2019). Love for the nation and attachment to the country are the foundations to form national identity. In other words, patriotism is the base to construct national identity, and national identity contributes to nurturing patriotism. Hanson and O’Dwyer (2019) also differentiate between patriotism and nationalism, which is called patriotism’s ‘evil twin’ and has been understood as an orientation to national superiority and dominance which is far beyond love for the nation. Therefore, both patriotism and nationalism refer to affection and attachment to the nation, however, the former is a positive concept while the latter is negative and even dangerous.

National Identity and Its Relationship with Language

According to Joseph (2004), national identity is closely associated with the national language for some reasons. Firstly, the author argues that national language is a means to build nationalism and to form national identity:

A number of prominent historians, sociologists and political scientists have argued that the existence of a national language is the primary foundation upon which nationalist ideology is constructed. Others, however, have paid more serious attention to the evidence compiled by linguistic historians showing that national languages are not actually a given, but are themselves constructed as part of the ideological work of nationalism-building. (Joseph, 2004, p. 94)

Secondly, Joseph argues that identity is the third, distinct primary function of language: ‘in communication, our interpretation of what is said and written to us is shaped by and organized around our reading of the identity of those with whom we are communicating’ (Joseph, 2004, p. 20). He adds:

What matters is to understand that, if people’s use of language is reduced analytically to how meaning is formed and represented in sound, or communicated from one person to another, or even the conjunction of the two, something vital has been abstracted away: the people themselves. They are always present in what they say and, in the understanding, they construct of what others say. Their identity inheres in their voice, spoken, written or signed (Joseph, 2004, p. 21).

Barrett (2007) also points out the link between language and national identity in which novels and other literary works contribute to the building of national identity. Both Barrett (2007) and Joseph (2004) agree with the function of constructing a national identity of language. Furthermore, from Joseph’s arguments, language not only forms but also reveals the identity of a person. As Byram et al. (2002) argue, one’s self is shaped by both individuality and social identities including national identity, and language, therefore, also divulges an individual’s national identity.

The Role of School Education in Children’s Process of Forming and Developing National Identity and Patriotism

The nation and national identity are phenomena of modernization in which the central notion is industrialization (Barrett, 2007; Liu & Turner, 2018). In order to homogenize and connect villagers who came to big cities for work from different local communities with distinct customs and traditions, mass public education was introduced by the states. The purpose of mass public education is to ‘promulgate among their populations a new sense of cultural unity based on the nation. Thus, education was the principal means through which the shared culture of the nation was transmitted to individuals, replacing the traditional pre-literate folk cultures in the process’ (Barrett, 2007, p. 10). School curriculum plays as one of the most essential impacts on children’s national enculturation. In addition, there are three principal ways that schools influence children’s national enculturation, including: (i) direct and explicit instruction about their own state and nation; (ii) the ethnocentric biases that often feature both educational curricula and school textbooks, (iii) the adoption of specific aspects of their nation’s civil culture within their own daily practices (Barrett, 2007, p. 102).

Regarding the first path, schools provide children with explicit teaching about the history, cultural heritage and symbolic imagery of their own state and nation (Barrett, 2007). The teaching is given through particular subjects, such as literature, history, geography and civic education. Barrett also notes that school education not only affects children through a much higher percentage of the amount of information about their own country than other nations but also through bringing them to specific types of information with particular perspectives about their own nation. For instance, in the English curriculum, children were exposed to a model of nation where heterogeneity and multi-cultures of the nation were emphasized, in which immigration was presented as a well-established historical phenomenon. For the French, the nation was depicted as a series of battles between two contrasting forces. They are progressive, enlightened, rational forces, which are opposite to the unenlightened ones. For the Dutch, Dutch history was described as being written by ordinary people who have different backgrounds, lifestyles and opinions, however they are able to live together peacefully by negotiation and democratic participation (Barrett, 2007). In addition, Barrett also mentions several ways in which a person can respond to historical narratives about his/her own nations. Individuals can fail to learn those narratives, or learn them but oppose them, or even believe in other alternative narratives instead.

Literature About the American War and its Role of Forming National Identity and Patriotism

In the Vietnamese contexts, the Vietnam War is often called the American War or Resistance War against America). From this part forwards the Vietnam War will be called the American War, which is the name of the Vietnam War in the national official curricula for all grades of the Vietnamese education system. As the research was conducted in the context of Vietnam, to make the research inclusive for all participating students, the name that every student knows and understands has been used.

About the American War

The American War is the war between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) or North Vietnam and the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) or South Vietnam (1955–1975). According to Dror (2018), the significant distinction of the American War is the following:

The war between the DRV and the RVN was an armed conflict between two polities identifying themselves as representing the same national ethnicity: Vietnamese. These two polities put this unifying identification aside and fought for the ideologies that set them apart. It was a struggle between different visions that Vietnamese had about the kind of society they wanted to live in and to bequeath to the next generation. (Dror, 2018, p.3).

However, the American War is not only the war between two parts of Vietnam or two polities ‘identifying themselves as representing the same national ethnicity: Vietnamese’ as Dror argues (Dror, 2018, p. 3). The war was beyond a civil war happening inside one nation – Vietnam but was put into a bigger background which was the conflict between two opposite forces: the communist world led by the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the anti-communist world led by the United States (Dror, 2018). With the accelerating involvement of the U.S. right after the French withdrew from the Vietnam battles (1954), ending the French colonialism in the country but marking the emergence of two Vietnams (DRV and RVN) (Dror, 2018), the Vietnamese could not unify their own country in another way, without the significant influence of outside forces. The civil war was positioned in increasing tension between the Communist and the anti-Communist. Herring (1991) argues that the American government had anticipated the ‘Domino theory’ by which losing Vietnam to communism could result in losing all of Southeast Asia to communism. In fact, the dominoes did not fall outside the border of Indochina, and the regional and international effects of the war were less than what had been predicted.

In Vietnam, nowadays, the American War is viewed as the tradition of protecting the country against the invasion and colonization of foreign countries, passing down through generations and nurtured through the history full of battles and fights against the Chinese, the Mongolian, the French and the American (Lockard, 1994; Schwenkel, 2009). Thereby, protecting the country against foreign invasion and dominance is a nationalistic identity of the Vietnamese.

Literature about the American War in the Vietnamese national official curriculum

In the Literature textbook (Philology – published by Vietnam Education Publishing House, 2019) for high school students, all literary works about the American War are written by soldiers who directly participated in the battle.

Broadly speaking, these narratives focus on the following topics:

  • humane affection, such as love for family and the nation;

  • power to protect the country from American occupation;

  • consciousness of the national heroic tradition;

  • willingness to be a part of that tradition to gain the unity of the whole nation;

  • untamed spirit of people from different classes all over the country to fight against the enemy – the American.

In the national literature curriculum for senior high school students [chương trình Ngữ văn lớp 12] (academic year 2019–2020), there are two stories centered on the fighting of Vietnamese people against the enemy in the American War in the period of 1955–1975. They are ‘Children of a Family’, [‘Những đứa con trong gia đình’, 1966] by Thi Nguyen [Nguyễn Thi] and ‘The Xanu Wood’ [‘Rừng xà nu’, 1965] by Trung Thanh Nguyen [Nguyễn Trung Thành]. These two are the ones chosen for this research as they directly told the story about the war in the battle context of Southern Vietnam.

‘Children in a Family’ [‘Những đứa con trong gia đình’, 1966] by Thi Nguyen is a short story set in Southern Vietnam that describes the tradition of fighting against the enemy for a united Vietnam. The story emphasizes family traditions and the transmission of values and norms from one generation to another in a Communist family. While parents suffered and passed away in the war, their children kept fighting to avenge the enemy despite their young ages. The story is famous for its poetic beauty and convertible timeline structure.

‘The Xanu Wood’ [‘Rừng xà nu’, 1965] by Trung Thanh Nguyen is also a short story set in the mountainous region in Southern Vietnam. The story narrates the bloody war between Stra village (an ethnic minority who supported the Communist Party) and soldiers of the RVN. The hero is Tnu, a young man brought up by the villagers who eventually becomes a Communist soldier. His tragic and legendary life reflects the Stra villagers’ fight progress against the invaders and foreign powers. The story is characterized by its epic features.

Some of the other main texts about the war included in the syllabus of previous grades are the following ones: ‘Distant stars’ [‘Những ngôi sao xa xôi’] written in 1971 by Lê Minh Khuê, ‘The ivory comb’ [‘Chiếc lược ngà’] written in 1966 by Nguyễn Quang Sáng, ‘The poem about the transport platoon’ [‘Bài thơ về tiểu đội xe không kính’] written in 1969 by Phạm Tiến Duật, ‘The fire stove’ [‘Bếp lửa’] written in 1963 by Bằng Việt and ‘The sound of the chicken at noon’ [‘Tiếng gà trưa’] written in 1965 by Xuân Quỳnh. All these texts were produced and written under the guidance and control of the DRV.

Reception Theory

Stuart Hall (1993) put forward the theory of reception. The foundation of the theory is the circulation of communication, being comprised of three components: sender–message–receiver. Hall proposed the concept that there are two attributes of the process of communication: relative autonomy and determinateness that occur in a discursive form. Determinateness means that there are always particular social and political backgrounds affecting the process of encoding/production and decoding/reception.

In addition, the process of encoding and decoding does not necessarily happen at the same time. Audiences’ various backgrounds and ideologies as well as distinct moments of decoding can result in receivers’ misinterpretation or misunderstanding of the message that the sender aimed to transfer. This leads to the second attribute of the process of communication – being relatively autonomous. Relative autonomy refers to the independence of both the production and the reception process that ‘no one moment can fully guarantee the next moment with which it is articulated’ (Hall, 1993, p. 508).

Viewing Vietnamese students’ perspectives of the literature about the American War in the Vietnamese national curriculum from Hall’s theory of reception, it can be seen that the literary works (or text) encompass the message that the author wanted to send. The author is the sender in the communication process who created the text enclosing the message. Students are the receiver decoding the message. The moments of encoding and decoding are significantly different. The sender created the message when still encountering grievous battles and fights between two parts of the country. They could not imagine clearly the future when the separation ended and two parts of the country would be unified and become one, how life would be after that. On the contrary, the receiver received and interpreted the message when there were no wars, battles, blood and tears. They live in peace in a unified country run by one Party (the Communist). The big gap in these two moments can influence what students as the receiver understood the message that the sender sent.

Method

Participants

There were seventy-seven students voluntarily participating in the study from Le Hong Phong High School, a high school for gifted students in Ho Chi Minh City. The students’ ages ranged from seventeen to eighteen years old, and they were in the last year of their high school at the time the study was carried out in April 2020. In the pre-survey, there were seventy students voluntarily answering the questionnaire (forty-seven males, thirty females). In the post-survey, there were 74 responses from 74 students (44 males, 30 females). The following table summarizes the above information (Table 9.1).

Table 9.1 The number of students participating in the research
Full size table

The students were informed about the aim of the study and required to fill in the consent form that they agreed to take part in the research. The data collected has remained confidential.

Instruments

Google Form questionnaires were used to collect students’ opinions: a pre-reading and a post-reading survey. The aim of the pre-reading survey was to have an overview of students’ general ideas about the American War and background knowledge about the literary texts that they had been taught about the American War. The post-reading survey was designed with the objective of getting students’ perceptions of the war and their opinions on the texts after the analysis in class. Below, we show some of the main questions that the surveys contain:

Pre-reading questions:

  • Can you name some literary works that you have learnt about the American War?

  • What can you remember about those literary works? (For example, topics, main ideas, characters, plots, details, etc.)

  • If you remember those literary works, how do you feel after reading them?

Post-reading questions:

  • After reading and learning the two literary works, do you want to recommend the works to other readers? Why?

  • Do you like reading other similar works like the two works that you have read and learnt written about the American War? Why?

  • Name at least three points that you like in each literary work.

  • Name at least three points that you do not like in each literary work.

  • Which character do you like most in each story? Why?

  • Which character that you like least in each story? Why?

  • If you could meet the character of the two stories, what would you want to ask/ say to them?

  • Both stories that you have read were written by Vietnamese authors who also participated in the war as soldiers. Do you want to read the works about the American War from American authors/ soldiers? Why? Do you think that the works written about the American War by American authors are different from the works written by Vietnamese authors? If yes, how are they different?

Procedure

The data was collected with Google Forms from 7th April to 3rd May 2020 via emails. First, the data was manually independently coded by two researchers. After working independently, the two researchers compared their results and discussed the differences to finalize the framework built from the data. The coding frame established needs to satisfy the requirements of qualitative content analysis (Schreier, 2014, p. 175), including: (i) unidimensionality – meaning that major categories cover one aspect of the material only, (ii) mutual exclusiveness (subcategories in one major category are mutually exclusive, this is understood that one unit cannot appear in more than one subcategory), (iii) exhaustiveness (all relevant aspects of the material must be covered by a category). The requirement of mutual exclusiveness does not mean that each unit is coded only once. Instead, each unit can be coded only once under one main category.

Based on the framework established, the data was analyzed again individually by the two researchers. Then the two researchers conducted cross-checking, and the results showed high consistency, confirming the reliability of the analysis. To build the framework, the researchers based on the two primary relationships between things: similarity and contiguity (Maxwell & Chmiel, 2014, p. 23), as well as connecting strategies. All the data was analyzed by using a combination of inductive and deductive coding with both concept-driven and data-driven categories in order to build a coding frame.

Findings

Building National Identity and Patriotism through the Text – High School Students’ View abouttheir Nation and their Own People

Empathy with the People, Pain for the Nation

The data of both the pre-test and the post-test showed that students demonstrated empathy for the people who sacrificed and experienced too much pain in the war, they also felt pain for their nation.

Regarding the affection domain, in the pre-survey, 39 of the total 77 students participating in the study could list the literary works that they had read or learnt about the American War (50.6%). The students who still remembered the literary works written about the American War in the pre-survey also expressed their feelings about those works. The most common emotions shared by students encompass recognition (n = 21), empathy (n = 17) and obsession (n = 12). It is also noteworthy that the negative emotion of ‘revenge’ is not popular in students’ affection as only one student mentioned this emotion. And only four students remembered the optimistic atmosphere of the literary works.

In the group ‘empathy’, students shared that they felt strongly touched by using the following words to express their emotions: thương – a Vietnamese word to name the feeling consisting of empathy, compassion, and humanitarian love, xót xa – a Vietnamese word to call the feeling which is a mixture of empathy, humanitarian love, compassion and pain, and đau thương – the feeling made of different emotions and abilities including empathy, mourning or grieving, pain, and love. Regarding the group ‘obsession’, the words used include: being obsessed, nặng nề – a Vietnamese word to express a strong feeling of pressure or heaviness and sadness. For the group ‘recognition’, it is sorted into three subcategories: being proud and admiring, respect and appreciate the effort and heroes’ noble actions, and feeling thankful.

In the cognition domain, in the post-survey, a majority of students (86%) want to recommend the literary works written about the American War in the national curriculum to other people. The reasons for their recommendation are the following:

  1. (i)

    the literary works reflect the life of people in the American War (n = 9), as well as

  2. (ii)

    the history of the nation (n = 9);

  3. (iii)

    show the horror of the war and the sacrifice, death, blood and tears of Vietnamese people for a united country and peace (n = 15);

  4. (iv)

    describe respected characteristics of Vietnamese people living and fighting in the war (n = 12);

  5. (v)

    build love and pride of the nation as well as responsibility to the country for the young generation (n = 9);

  6. (vi)

    help Vietnamese people respect peace gained by the ancestor, a united country and what they are having at present (n = 9);

  7. (vii)

    the literary works are worth reading, meaningful and interesting (n = 9);

  8. (viii)

    they are the representative works for the literature of the American War period (n = 4).

By recommending the literary works, students show their respect for the value of the literary works in the national curriculum. In addition, in the post-test, the students were asked to list three points that they liked in each story that they had learnt. The most popular points that many students like include:

  1. (i)

    patriotism of the Vietnamese (n = 49);

  2. (ii)

    voice and different techniques to build characters and figures in the works (n = 46);

  3. (iii)

    indomitable spirit and strength of the people (n = 40);

  4. (iv)

    love for the family (n = 35);

  5. (v)

    personality traits of the characters (exclude braveness or determined spirit to protect the country, such as being innocent, agile, resourceful, etc.) (n = 35);

  6. (vi)

    determined spirit to protect the country (n = 26).

On the contrary, only a few students mentioned that they liked how the terrible war was reflected and the way the enemy was depicted to be extremely cruel with severe crimes (n = 5). Some students also mentioned that they were touched by the story and felt the pain that the characters experienced when they were tortured physically and witnessed their family members being horribly punished (n = 11). From what the students mentioned, it can be seen that they show their love and empathy for the nation and the people suffering the war. This is not only natural humanity but also becomes evidence of the sense of belonging to the nation of the students. Feeling pain for the people and the country is because the students are a part of it, they are not the outsiders to view the war, but they see it as a part or a member of the nation experiencing the war – the Vietnamese.

Hatred towards the War and Crimes, Violence and Cruelty

From the data collected, students also showed their hatred towards war, violence and cruelty. In the post-test, when students were asked a specific question about the three points that they did not like in each story, students listed the following things:

  1. (i)

    very painful details (n = 39) – ranking the first in the list of points that students do not like;

  2. (ii)

    writing techniques (n = 14) including the lack of describing the inner world of the characters (n = 8) and the lack of details describing everyday life (n = 4);

  3. (iii)

    violent details (n = 12) and the barbarity of the enemy (n = 5);

  4. (iv)

    the desire and enmity motivation to fight against the enemy at a very young age (n = 8) and the idea of revenging the enemy (n = 6);

  5. (v)

    familiar characters, the point of view on the war, and topics (n = 6);

  6. (vi)

    showing gender prejudice (n = 3); and

  7. (vii)

    the perspective to see the war is one-dimensional (n = 2).

Among the aforementioned list, regarding the idea of revenging the enemy, some students also argued that the enemy should not have been revenged or hated, instead it was the war to be hated.

Students also demonstrated their hatred towards war and violence by making reference to the characters they do not like in the stories. Thirty-five students replied that they did not like the enemy depicted in the stories for the reasons that they were described as incredibly barbarous, one-dimensional and representative of the war. For example, some students responded:

I don’t like Duc because this character is villainous but fuzzy, one-dimensional, converging all the most hateful things of a person. [Em ít thích nhân vật Dục, vì nhân vật này phản diện nhưng mờ nhạt, một chiều, hội tụ đủ những điều đáng hận, đáng ghét nhất của một con người]. (Participant #30)

In the Xanu wood, I don't like the character “Duc” the most because he represents the war, he captured Dit and then shot her, captured both Mai and her child to beat them. This is the cruelty and harshness of war, losing humanity, not caring about others but just for their own purposes. [Truyện Rừng xà nu: em không thích nhất là nhân vật "thằng Dục" vì đó là đại diện cho chiến tranh, nó bắt con Dít rồi bắn, bắt cả chị Mai và đứa con để đánh đập. Đó là sự tàn khốc, khắc nghiệt của chiến tranh đánh mất đi tình người, không quan tâm đến người khác chỉ vì mục đích của mình]. (Participant # 31)

What I liked the least is the enemy, every time they appeared they brought loss and pain. It is only because of the war that the stories and the main characters' personalities are revealed, I believe that if the work is divided into many parts, each part is a different character, each character will be different and equally loved, only the American aggressors still carried the most sins. [Nếu ít thích nhất thì em xin dành cho bọn giặc, mỗi khi chúng xuất hiện đều mang lại mất mát và nỗi đau. Chỉ vì lí do chiến tranh mà những câu chuyện, những tính cách của nhân vật chính mới được bộc lộ, em tin rằng nếu được chia tác phẩm ra làm nhiều phần, mỗi phần là mỗi nhân vật khác nhau, nhân vật nào cũng sẽ được yêu thích bằng nhau, chỉ riêng bọn giặc Mỹ vẫn mang tội lỗi nhiều nhất]. (Participant # 38)

I don't like Duc in the work "The Xanu Wood", because the character is so cruel, either the big, fat soldier character appearing in the story as well. They are all henchmen, do not know how educated they are, and how resilient their hearts are, they are cowardly henchmen, only good at hurting others, being brutal towards innocent people. [Em không thích nhân vật thằng Dục trong tác phẩm "Rừng Xà Nu", vì nhân vật thật độc ác, cả nhân vật thằng lính to béo nữa. Toàn là tay sai, không biết học thức đến đâu, lòng có kiên cường đến mấy, cũng là bọn tay sai hèn nhát, chỉ giỏi làm đau khổ người khác, tàn bạo với những người vô tội]. (Participant # 41)

From what the students said, it can be seen that a part of them viewed crimes and the war as being created by the enemy. Having hatred towards the crimes, the cruelty and violence is a part of humane characteristics, but this also shows students’ love for their nation because they do not ignore but feel negative emotions as they are a part of it to share the anger and hatred against crimes and violence causing pain to their people and nation.

My Own Nation and the Enemy’s Nation – High School Students’ Challenging Views of Nationalism

Not only showing their empathy with the people and pain for the nation, some students also demonstrated their critical thinking about the war and nationalism, which actually led them to follow patriotism with the main concept of love for and sense of belonging to the nation instead of the idea of national superiority or the right belongs to my nation. Their critical thinking was shown in the following ideas: (i) people are not the enemy, even if they were on the other side in the battle, (ii) cannot let revenge and the war destroy humanity, and (iii) requirements of a multi-dimensional perspective to view the war.

People are not the enemy

Some students (n = 6) had very clear differentiation between the people and the regime. For those students, they believed that the ones in charge of the war were not the people, and the people were not the criminals, instead they were also victims of the war. They did not deserve to receive feud and hatred. Therefore, six students answered that they did not like the fact that the characters in the story ‘Children in a family’ nurtured their feud with the enemy, instead they should have hated the war. Some students even chose the main characters as the ones that they liked the least because of their revenge for the enemy. For instance, one student said:

I like Chien the least in the story “Children in a family” because Chien was very fierce in going to the war, but it seems that Chien was too engrossed in destroying, killing the enemy and then became a bit brutal because after all, the enemy is also human, soldiers are controlled by their regime. Western soldiers are not the cause of unhappiness for her family but the greedy and selfish rulers. [Em ít thích chị Chiến nhất trong truyện “những đứa con trong gia đình” bởi vì chị Chiến rất quyết liệt trong việc mình ra trận, nhưng có vẻ như chị Chiến đã quá sa vào việc tiêu diệu, giết giặc, để mình trở nên hơi chút tàn bạo bởi suy cho cùng, giặc cũng là con người, những người lính bị điều khiển bởi chế độ của họ. Những người lính Tây không phải nguyên nhân gây ra sự bất hạnh cho gia đình chị mà chính những kẻ cầm quyền tham lam, ích kỷ]. (Participant # 8)

Cannot Let Revenge and the War Destroy Humanity

Some students (n=8) also argued that humanity needs to be preserved even in extremely harsh conditions like the war with loss and pain. Therefore, these students did not agree with the action of participating in the war, especially at a young age because the war could lead to the deterioration of humanity, as one student said:

In the story “Children in a family” the character that I like the least is Uncle Nam. Uncle instilled in the children's hearts with family feuds, making Chien and Viet extremely hate the enemy even though they were young, despite everything to fight against the enemy. [Trong truyện “Những đứa con trong gia đình”, em ít thích nhất là chú Năm. Chú đã gieo rắc lên tâm hồn những đứa trẻ về những mối thù của gia đình, làm cho dù còn nhỏ nhưng chị em Chiến và Việt vô cùng căm thù giặc, bất chấp để đánh đuổi giặc]. (Participant # 57)

Requirements of a multi-dimensional perspective to view the war and nations

In the post-survey, a majority of students wanted to read literary works written about the American War from the point of view of American soldiers (70 students, 94.6%). The reasons they gave include:

  1. (i)

    to see the war in other and multidimensional perspectives (n = 63);

  2. (ii)

    to understand how American soldiers felt and thought when participating in the war (n = 5);

  3. (iii)

    to know why the Americans created a meaningless and cruel war (n = 2);

  4. (iv)

    and one student believes that the literature written by the American can reflect reality in a simple and honest way.

Several students also questioned how the history and the war were written and taught in the official curriculum as they believed that they were reflected in a biased way, only supporting their own nation. For example, two students shared their thoughts:

I do not like topics of wars; authors and literary works tend to support one side. History is always written by the winner, not only in Vietnam but also in other countries. [Bản thân em không thích những chủ đề chiến tranh, các tác giả, tác phẩm nghiêng về một phe quá nhiều. Lịch sử được viết bởi kẻ chiến thắng, không phải chỉ riêng Việt Nam, mà các lịch sử nước khác cũng vậy]. (Participant # 66)

I always want to know what foreigners think of the resistance war created by them or by us, to have an overview about both sides, so I can understand clearly about the war, how it happened. [Em luôn muốn biết những người ở nước ngoài nghĩ gì về cuộc kháng chiến do họ gây ra, hay do chúng ta gây ra, muốn nhìn một cách tổng quan hơn về hai phía, thì em mới hiểu rõ được về cuộc chiến đó thật sự diễn ra như thế nào ạ]. (Participant # 41)

Discussion

According to Barrett (2007), national identity is nurtured through mass public education to build a ‘sense of cultural unity based on the nation’ (Barrett, 2007, p. 10). From the survey, it can be seen that a majority of students valued the literary works in the official curriculum; a large number of students showed their sense of belonging to the nation by demonstrating their love and empathy for the country and the people suffering the war depicted in the literary works. The students also expressed their hatred for the enemy and the war, which caused extreme pain for the people. Therefore, the literature about the American War in the official curriculum could help build national identity and the sense of belonging for students.

In addition, there are two contrasting ideas of students to view the enemy. The first notion, which was followed by a large number of students (35 students, 47%), is that the enemy was the criminal, and the Americans were the enemies. The second idea is that soldiers and people though came from the other side of the battle and did not support our Party, were not the enemy, instead they were also the victims (n=6). The real enemies were the war and the rulers. Although just a few students shared the second idea, this signals their critical thinking about how the enemy and the war were reflected in the literary works selected to teach the American War in the official curriculum. Barrett (2007) argues that there are different ways in which a person can respond to historical narratives about his/her own nations. They can learn the narratives, or they can fail to learn them, or they can oppose them and believe in other alternative narratives. The fact that students criticized the portraits of main characters appearing as heroes in the story because of their revenge on the enemy reflects another distinct, critical way of responding to historical narratives written about their country.

Furthermore, most students wanted to read the literary works written about the American War from American authors as they desired to have a multi-dimensional view to see the war. This is evidence showing students’ critical thinking about their own nation, which helps to differentiate between patriotism and nationalism. While the former is love for the nation with a sense of belonging to the country, the latter is exacerbated by the feeling of national superiority. From the survey, it can be seen that, despite knowing the result of the American War in which the Americans could not achieve what they initially aimed for, students did not show the feeling of being over-proud; instead, they wanted to view the war from different perspectives.

The study has some limitations. Students from Le Hong Phong High School (Hồ Chí Minh City) are gifted students; therefore, the sample cannot be represented for all students in Hồ Chí Minh City. However, as they are carefully chosen, they can become the representative for the intellectual youth from Hồ Chí Minh City, giving their perspectives on the literary works taught and written about the American War in the national curriculum.

The study has implications for both research and practice. In terms of research, it is one of the first studies to investigate how the literary works written about the American War in the national high school curriculum contribute to the construction of students’ national identity and patriotism. In terms of practice, understanding how students perceive the literary works written about the war contributes to re-evaluating the ways of teaching this historic event as well as the related literature in the national curriculum. Despite the fact that the literary works written about the American War were valued by the students, the questions and critical thinking that students showed, also their desire to view the war from different points of view suggest that the curriculum should include more diverse texts and authors to help students clear their doubts and questions about the war and their nation, which can build students’ trust based on deep insight of the war, its sorrow for people and the value of peace.

Conclusions

This research study found that a majority of students reckoned that the literary works in the national curriculum are valuable and useful to learn about the history of the nation, reflecting, in turn, the horrors of war and the sacrifice of Vietnamese people for a united country and peace. Such texts still contribute to building national identity and patriotism for Vietnamese learners by eliciting their empathy and compassion for the grieving nation and those citizens who were direct victims of war. Although the moments of encoding (students as agents) and decoding (writers as agents) are significantly different in social conditions and distant in terms of historical times, the receiver (students) still succeeds in interpreting and valuing the message that the sender (writers) created. This could be a result of the consistent viewpoint that education under the Communist Party aims to transfer and form in each citizen, including the notion that the American war was to unify the country and happened as the consequence of the Vietnamese’s patriotism, i.e. resilience for the Vietnamese identity and freedom from foreign occupation.

This last point is in line with Barrett’s (2007) appreciation that mainstream education aims to bring students to specific types of information with particular perspectives about their own nation. However, this does not impede the adoption of alternative perspectives. Some students provided critical responses to the texts, and a majority of students (90%) demanded a multi-dimensional viewpoint about the war. Many students (11%) acknowledged that those coming from the other nations, with different languages and appearances, were not the real enemy, instead they were also victims of the war atrocities. The real enemies were violence and hatred, and the incompetence and despotism of some rulers. This perspective shows the relative autonomy of readers (receivers) in the communication with the writer (senders) of the story. Students live in a different context from the writers, in peaceful times and with mobility and international interaction as a part of the globalized world. Mobility and international exchange foster intercultural competence by exposing students to a wider range of perspectives from other cultures, leading to their requirement for a broader perception of national history.

By showing their critical thinking when reading the texts as well as their desire to analyze the war from different points of view, students propel a modification in the teaching of the Vietnam War in Vietnamese educational systems, which should be more inclusive in terms of a variety of texts and authors. Embracing a wider perspective will bring, in turn, a more insightful understanding of the conflict, resulting in respect for peace and human lives. After all, the teaching of war and dealing with collective traumas in the classroom should not only aim at building patriotism and national identity but should, above all, emphasize the need to work for peace and thus prevent humanitarian catastrophes.