The ‘Hidden Curriculum’ of Vietnam’s English School Textbooks: A Longitudinal Analysis (SpringerBriefs in Education) 9819711959, 9789819711956

Table of contents :
Contents
1 Introduction
1.1 Education and Society
1.2 Vietnam
1.3 English as Foreign Language (EFL) in Vietnam
1.4 EFL Textbook Analyses
1.5 Overview of the Book
References
2 National Identity and National Territory
2.1 Concepts
2.1.1 Territoriality and National Identities
2.1.2 Territorial Identities in School Textbooks
2.2 Findings
2.2.1 Territory as Fact and Symbol
2.2.2 Spaces of Experience
2.2.3 Sacred Places
2.3 Conclusion
References
3 National Identity and Foreign Cultures
3.1 Concepts
3.1.1 Cultures of the ‘Others’
3.1.2 Cultural Representations in EFL Textbooks
3.2 Findings
3.2.1 A First Overview: People, Products, Practices
3.2.2 Different Cultural Areas
3.2.3 Former Rivals
3.2.4 Raising Intercultural Awareness
3.3 Conclusion
References
4 National Identity and Gender Identities
4.1 Concepts
4.1.1 Gender and Related Concepts
4.1.2 Gender-Related Contents in EFL Textbooks
4.2 Findings
4.2.1 A Note on Methodology
4.2.2 The Visibility of Women and Men
4.2.3 Legal Equality, Sociocultural Inequality
4.2.4 Gender and Agency
4.2.5 Gender Differences in Family Settings
4.2.6 Gender and Advocated Family Models
4.3 Conclusion
References
5 Student Engagement with National Identity
5.1 Concepts
5.1.1 Education and Learning in the Twenty-First Century
5.1.2 Varieties of Student Engagement Activities
5.2 Findings
5.2.1 A Brief Overview
5.2.2 Passive Level of Student Engagement
5.2.3 Active Level of Student Engagement
5.2.4 Constructive Level of Student Engagement
5.2.5 Interactive Level of Student Engagement
5.3 Conclusion
References
6 Conclusion
6.1 Main Findings
6.2 Implications
References

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SpringerBriefs in Education Thi Duyen Phuong · Raf Vanderstraeten

The ‘Hidden Curriculum’ of Vietnam’s English School Textbooks

SpringerBriefs in Education

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Thi Duyen Phuong · Raf Vanderstraeten

The ‘Hidden Curriculum’ of Vietnam’s English School Textbooks

Thi Duyen Phuong School of Languages and Tourism Hanoi University of Industry Hanoi, Vietnam

Raf Vanderstraeten Department of Sociology Ghent University Ghent, Belgium

ISSN 2211-1921 ISSN 2211-193X (electronic) SpringerBriefs in Education ISBN 978-981-97-1195-6 ISBN 978-981-97-1196-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-1196-3 © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore Paper in this product is recyclable.

Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Education and Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Vietnam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 English as Foreign Language (EFL) in Vietnam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 EFL Textbook Analyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 Overview of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 2 4 8 10 16 18

2 National Identity and National Territory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.1 Territoriality and National Identities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.2 Territorial Identities in School Textbooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.1 Territory as Fact and Symbol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.2 Spaces of Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.3 Sacred Places . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

21 23 23 25 25 26 32 37 41 43

3 National Identity and Foreign Cultures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.1 Cultures of the ‘Others’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.2 Cultural Representations in EFL Textbooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.1 A First Overview: People, Products, Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.2 Different Cultural Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.3 Former Rivals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.4 Raising Intercultural Awareness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

47 48 49 51 53 54 59 63 65 69 70

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4 National Identity and Gender Identities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 4.1 Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 4.1.1 Gender and Related Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 4.1.2 Gender-Related Contents in EFL Textbooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 4.2 Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 4.2.1 A Note on Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 4.2.2 The Visibility of Women and Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 4.2.3 Legal Equality, Sociocultural Inequality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 4.2.4 Gender and Agency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 4.2.5 Gender Differences in Family Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 4.2.6 Gender and Advocated Family Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 4.3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 5 Student Engagement with National Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1.1 Education and Learning in the Twenty-First Century . . . . . . 5.1.2 Varieties of Student Engagement Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.1 A Brief Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.2 Passive Level of Student Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.3 Active Level of Student Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.4 Constructive Level of Student Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.5 Interactive Level of Student Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

105 106 107 109 111 111 112 115 117 118 121 122

6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Main Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

125 126 130 133

Chapter 1

Introduction

Abstract This book presents a case-study of the ways in which education is embedded in society. It looks, more particularly, at the link between school curricula and social expectations by means of a case-study of the English textbooks used at the higher secondary school level in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam over a period of about four decades, from the 1980s to the present. In light of Vietnam’s recent history, we analyse the cultural messages and values incorporated in these EFL textbooks. The introductory chapter provides theoretical and historical context, as well as a clarification of the methodological principles applied to conduct our school textbook analyses. We end this introduction with a brief overview of the following chapters of this book. Keywords Hidden curriculum · Sociology of education · Vietnam · EFL textbooks

The expectations about education have increased in recent decades. Not only is participation in education expected to have a positive impact on individuals and society, but many initiatives are now also undertaken to promote participation in school education. The participation levels have nearly all over the world quickly spiralled upwards. In many countries, it has now become routine for the young to spend twelve to seventeen-plus years in classrooms. For policy makers at the national and international level, the many benefits associated with education and schooling have provided a justification for government subsidies for, and interventions in, school education. From a sociological point of view, it is important to note that education is not just about individual development, about the development of individual potentials or talents. Participation in education has key social consequences. In fact, individuals who go to school become able to experience the effects of education in two ways: they are not only themselves educated in schools, but they also become ‘consumers’ of school education. At present, we can assume in our contacts with everyone else, that they too were educated in schools (Vanderstraeten, 2021). This complicated formulation builds upon a long sociological tradition of reflecting on processes of © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 T. D. Phuong and R. Vanderstraeten, The ‘Hidden Curriculum’ of Vietnam’s English School Textbooks, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-1196-3_1

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1 Introduction

role-taking, of “taking the role of the other.” But it also makes clear that education is instrumental in creating and maintaining shared frames or shared “definitions of the situation.” Sociologically speaking, education can be expected to contribute to the structural stability of our society (Vanderstraeten, 2006). Because participation in education has expanded rapidly in recent decades— from early childhood to the upper reaches of the university and into lifelong learning programs—it can be assumed that the importance and impact of education within our social world has increased. Education is of course influenced by its social environment, but many social institutions, including economic and political institutions, also increasingly seems to have become dependent upon education. For some, the growing social importance and impact of education is one of the main defining characteristics of modern society (e.g., Baker, 2014; Baker et al., 2024). Seen in this light, a critical sociological interest in education and its basic structures is more than justified. This book seeks to contribute to this domain of research. It presents a case-study, which looks in a historical and critical way at the ways in which education is linked with society. This book looks, more particularly, at the link between school curricula and social expectations by means of a case-study of the English textbooks used at the higher secondary school level in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam over a period of about four decades, from the 1980s to the present. Considering Vietnam’s recent history, we analyse the cultural messages and values incorporated in these textbooks. In this introductory chapter, we first provide some theoretical and historical context, both about the sociology of education and Vietnam. We then legitimate our choice for analysing the English school textbooks, developed and used within Vietnam, and elaborate on the methodological principles, which we have applied to conduct the school textbook analyses presented here. We end this introduction with a brief overview of the following chapters of this book.

1.1 Education and Society It is often expected that educational institutions belong to and serve society at large. Already at the start of the twentieth century, Emile Durkheim (1903), for example, depicted the school as a “microcosm” of modern society, which serves to prepare the members of new age cohorts for their adult roles in the social world. But it is especially in the second half of the twentieth century that the relation between education and its social environment began to attract more sociological attention and that the field of sociology of education started to expand (e.g., Ballantine & Hammack, 2016). As part of this field, some interesting research on the relation between schooling and society focuses on the ‘tacit’ teaching that goes on in schools. Most of this research has been organized around the concept of the “hidden curriculum,” which was introduced about half a century ago, especially in response to disillusionment about the perceived ineffectiveness of mass schooling in eradicating class, racial and

1.1 Education and Society

3

gender inequalities in the USA and other parts of the western world (e.g., Dreeben, 1968; Jackson, 1968; Lortie, 1975; Snyder, 1971). During the past decades, many critical scholars have devoted much energy to unmasking the covert messages embedded in both the content of the official curricula and the social relations that structure classroom settings. Often the hidden curriculum is seen to act as a conservative force which socializes students to conform to the social status quo. School classrooms are seen to play a crucially vital role in reproducing the social “macrocosm,” because the hidden curriculum socializes students in ways that have effects throughout modern society as a whole (e.g., Bourdieu & Passeron, 1970). Initially, much research on the hidden curriculum has directed attention to the “unintended” lessons and values that students learn from the social structures that dominate in classrooms and schools, such as the hierarchical relations between teacher and students, the emphasis on tests and exams, and thus on praise or reproof, and the socialization processes in relatively large groups of similar aged students. As Jackson pointed out, “it is likely during this time [the hours spent in schools] that adaptive strategies having relevance for other contexts and other life periods are developed” (1968, 16). Students, according to this view, learn from the social structures that dominate in schools how to conform and adapt to the expectations that dominate within contemporary society. Gradually, more attention has also been paid to the assumptions and biases that tacitly define the selection of official curriculum content. For Bourdieu (1979), for example, education in schools constitutes a form of “symbolic violence,” which serves to reinforce cultural hierarchies and class distinctions, because schools and school curricula incorporate the “legitimate culture” of the elite. Others have assigned the official school curricula a causal role in perpetuating or reproducing inequalities in the distribution of different forms of capital (e.g., Giroux, 2001, Apple, 2004; for overviews of the extensive literature in this field, see Collins, 2009; Lareau, 2015; Davies & Rizk, 2018). However, more nuanced analyses of the latent premises or perspectives underlying the selection of curriculum content have in recent decades also been conducted for a variety of national school systems. Not everyone now subscribes to the idea that the hidden curriculum brings the negative consequences of education to the fore, because it is an underhand way to force students into learning to be compliant and passive employees in the future (e.g., Schaub et al., 2019). Within these national systems, initiatives have also been undertaken to reflect on or question the assumptions and biases, which might have steered the selection of the official curriculum content. In many countries around the world, it has in the past decades become part of the official school policy to actively contribute to greater awareness of the unintended lessons taught in schools. For example, lessons, assignments, readings, and other materials used in school classrooms are now more likely to include multicultural perspectives, topics, and illustrations. International organizations, such as UNESCO and its branches, assume a key role in stimulating this reflective and critical turn, especially in countries of the so-called Global South (Pingel, 2010). They clearly intend to minimize the negative effects of the hidden curriculum in teaching practices.

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Based on research on the official and the hidden curriculum, a broad variety of views on the relation between education and society is currently put forward in the scholarly literature. Some scholars continue to argue that schools tacitly prepare for life in bureaucratic organizations, but others now criticize the lack of correspondence between the worlds of education and of work. “Instead of being socialized for lives of boring work in hierarchical organizations,” Bryan Caplan ironically observes in a study based on USA data, students are now “being socialized for lives of play and self-expression… A week in modern college is a great way to teach students that life is a picnic” (2019, 65–66). More concern about the selection of the official curriculum content has become institutionalized, but critical voices about the relation between education and society remain loud and strong. Education in school settings still does not take place the way it is planned or envisaged. Classrooms remain black boxes, which elicit other socialization effects than those explicitly intended. But research findings also challenge dominant theoretical perspectives in the sociology of education. Schools and other educational institutions are expected to serve society at large, although it is not clear how education prepares for participation in other social institutions. Much research on the hidden curriculum in schools has been critical about education. It has pointed to the unintended lessons taught in schools, and to the links between the hidden curriculum and dominant forms of inequality in society. Motivated by a disappointment about the way education functions, this research perspective has emphasised the conservative forces at work in both education and society. The question is, however, whether this perspective does not itself overestimate the correspondence between education and key structures of modern society. Does it not make more sense to direct attention to the broad range of effects to which participation in school education might lead? Does it not make sense to carefully analyse school textbooks rather than to postulate continuity between their (hidden) content and society? Does it also not make sense to study how these textbooks are structured rather than to accept what curriculum and textbook developers tell us about their content? Against this background, this book aims to offer detailed historical and empirical analyses of the premises underlying the curricula and textbooks used in secondary schools in Vietnam.

1.2 Vietnam The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is a S-shaped country, situated in Southeast Asia. It is bordered on the north by China, on the west by Laos and Cambodia, on the east by the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean, and on the southwest by the Gulf of Thailand (also known as the Gulf of Siam). It covers a total area of approximately 330,000 km2 , which is about the size of countries such as Norway and Finland, and currently counts nearly 100 million inhabitants. Its capital city is Hanoi, while its most populous city is Ho Chi Minh City, also known by its former name of Saigon. Map 1.1 provides an overview of the population density in Vietnam; the Red River

1.2 Vietnam

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Delta in the north and the Mekong Delta in the south are among the most populous regions in the world. The name Việt Nam is a variation of Nam Việt (literally “Southern Việt”); it refers to an ethnic group, named the Việt, who inhabited the Red River Delta of what was

Map 1.1 Population density in Vietnam

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1 Introduction

then southern (Nam) China. The name Vietnam was not widespread until the 1930s and 1940s, when it was revived by nationalist movements. At present, the Viet or Kinh ethnic group makes up for over 85% of the country’s population, but Vietnam is also home to 54 officially recognized ethnic minority groups. Most ethnic minority groups are scattered in the mountainous areas in the north, in the central highlands, and in the western areas of the Mekong Delta. Many radical changes took place in a period of about one century, between the late nineteenth and the late twentieth century. In the late nineteenth century, large parts of Southeast Asia came under French colonial rule; “French Indochina” consisted of three Vietnamese regions (Tonkin in the north, Annam in the centre, and CochinChina in the south), Cambodia, Laos and some Chinese territories. After the German invasion of France in World War II, the colony was administered by the Vichy government, although Japanese forces occupied bases across Indochina. Towards the end of World War II, in March 1945, the colonial regime was fully overthrown by the Japanese. During World War II, nationalist movements had also gained force in Vietnam. In the north, the Việt Minh (English: “League for the Independence of Vietnam”), led by Hồ Chí Minh, fought its guerrilla war against the Japanese and French occupation. After the Japanese surrender, Ho Chi Minh was able to proclaim the country’s independence.1 On September 2, 1945, he announced the birth of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam: “A people who have courageously opposed French domination for more than eighty years, a people who have fought side by side with the Allies against the fascists during these last years, such a people must be free and independent!”2 However, France soon tried to take back control of what was still called French Indochina. It led to an all-out decolonisation and independence war, known as the (First) Indochina War in France and the Anti-French Resistance War in Vietnam, which took place between late 1946 and 1954 (see also Day, 2002; Hasting, 2018). Negotiations between France and the Viet Minh started in Geneva in 1954. In the Cold War era, the Geneva Conference dismantled French Indochina and divided Vietnam into two zones, communist North Vietnam and pro-Western South Vietnam, using the Seventeenth Parallel North as a temporary and provisional demarcation line. The northern zone was to be governed from Hanoi by Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh, while the southern zone was to be governed from Saigon by the State of Vietnam (later renamed: Republic of Vietnam). At the Geneva Conference, it was also decided that general elections had be held in 1956 in order to create an unified Vietnamese state. 1

To facilitate understanding, we will often use the simplified Romanized transcription of Vietnamese words and names. 2 This declaration of independence of Vietnam was explicitly modeled on the US American declaration of independence from 1776. For the full text of the declaration and other nationalist symbols and documents, see https://web.archive.org/web/20130922173616/http://www.chinhphu. vn/portal/page/portal/English/TheSocialistRepublicOfVietnam/AboutVietnam/AboutVietnamDet ail?categoryId=10000103&articleId=10002648.

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Neither the elections nor the unification took place in 1956. This failure led to the creation of the Việt Cộng, also known as the National Liberation Front, by Ho Chi Minh’s government and the outbreak of a new guerrilla war in the south. US involvement led to the Second Indochina War, or what in Vietnam is known as the Resistance War Against America or simply the American War, which lasted for about two decades, from the end of 1955 to 1975. The Cold War was thus hot in this region, with North Vietnam supported by the Communist bloc states, especially the Soviet Union and China, and South Vietnam by the United States and several other anti-communist allies. On 2 July 1976, North and South Vietnam were merged to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Under a unitary communist government, however, the country became economically and politically isolated, although the Communist Party initiated in 1986 its own version of glasnost and perestroika. It initiated a series of freemarket oriented reforms known as Đổi Mới (or Renovation), with the aim to manage the transition from a planned economy to a ‘socialist-oriented market economy.’ It thereby encouraged private ownership, economic deregulation and foreign investment, while maintaining control over ‘strategic’ industries. These reforms have facilitated Vietnam’s integration into global politics and the global economy. At present, Vietnam is a member of a range of international organizations, including the United Nations (UN), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the intergovernmental forum of the Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). But it is also fair to say that the Socialist Republic of Vietnam still occupies a special, isolated position in the world of nations (Woodside, 2006; Biggs, 2010; Elliott, 2012; Fforde & De Vylder, 2019). Many of the changes, which have taken place in Vietnam during its (recent) history, have been controversial. They have also led to a range of problems, dilemmas, and challenges. Several core issues with which Vietnam has been confronted in its recent history are linked with nation-building processes, and deal with the construction and reproduction of a specific national identity.3 In this book, we look at the link between school education and national identity in Vietnam. We look, more particularly, at the content of the school textbooks for a quite controversial subject, viz. English as Foreign Language, and the ways in which these Vietnamese English school textbooks present and represent specific national ideals. We look, moreover, at historical changes in these textbooks over a period of about four decades, from the mid-1980s to the present.

3

These challenges also include the position of the large population of Vietnamese who live outside of Vietnam (about 4.5 million nowadays), and who are called Người Việt hải ngoại (Overseas Vietnamese) or Việt Kiều (Vietnamese sojourner). Of the first generation of this large population, the vast majority fled Vietnam as refugees, because of the American or Vietnam War. The largest community lives in the United States.

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1 Introduction

1.3 English as Foreign Language (EFL) in Vietnam France had a strong influence on the education system in French Indochina. To some degree, the colonial government supported investments in schooling to steer the political and economic development of the region. Its colonial assimilation policy aimed, among other things, at training a class of elites to serve in local administrative bureaus and at ‘conquering’ and replacing the local (especially Confucian) worldviews and traditions. Regarding this colonial policy, it has long been popular to speak of la conquête des esprits (e.g., Lewis, 1962; Marr, 1981; Salemink, 2003; Brocheux & Hemery, 2009). Building on the premise of its mission civilisatrice, the introduction of drastic education reforms could be presented as one of the premier responsibilities of the French colonial government (see Kelly, 1982). Until the mid-twentieth century, French was the official language of administration and of education in Vietnam. This situation changed drastically after the end of World War II, and especially after the Geneva Agreements of 1954. In South-Vietnam, in the area under the control of the government of the Republic of Vietnam, AngloAmerican influences soon replaced French assimilation policies. The school system was remodelled; it was now patterned on the American model (Nguyen & Nguyen, 2008). As part of this shift, the use of English was stimulated at all educational levels, and American English textbooks were freely provided by the US.4 In 1958, English became an obligatory part of all the official curricula after the level of primary education. Le Ba Kong (partly in collaboration with Phan Khai) then also partly translated and adapted an English textbook, developed in the USA, for use in the secondary schools in South-Vietnam. This series was widely used until 1975. Between 1954 and 1975, the situation was quite different in North-Vietnam. Because of the close relationships between Ho Chi Minh’s Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Soviet Union, Russian was the main foreign language at all educational levels in North-Vietnam. English and other Western languages (including French) only played a minor role in the school system. English was an optional subject in some urban schools in Hanoi and Hai Phong; it was studied by a relatively small fraction (around 20%) of the student population in these places (Hoang, 2011). In the ten years after the national reunification (1975–1986), the so-called unified era, English almost disappeared as foreign language in Vietnam (Wright, 2002). After the introduction of the policy of economic renovation (Đổi Mới) in Vietnam in 1986, however, English began to be perceived as an important instrument to communicate with the world. In the mid-1980s, English first appeared in the national curriculum for all higher secondary schools in Vietnam (which cater to students from age 15/16 to age 18 or from grade 10 to grade 12). It also became an optional subject in various

4 On the second cover page of the books of English for Today, published by McGraw Hill, the following text was printed in Vietnamese: “A gift from the American people with the cooperation of the Ministry of Culture and Education of the Republic of Vietnam for the local schools in Vietnam. A gift, not for sale” (Nhân dân Hoa Kỳ với sự hợp tác của Bộ văn hóa, giáo dục Việt nam Cộng hòa thân tặng các trường sở tại ở Việt nam.—Hàng tặng không bán).

1.3 English as Foreign Language (EFL) in Vietnam

9

lower secondary schools, especially in the urban regions.5 The first locally produced series of English textbooks for the higher secondary education level appeared in the mid-1980s, the second series in the mid-1990s. In recent decades, the Vietnamese Government has targeted at a workforce with at least level 4 or B2 of proficiency in English, as measured by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Although no official documents explicitly prioritize English, this foreign language has come to dominate a range of recent education and curriculum reforms. English has acquired an increasingly prominent place in the Vietnamese school programs (Nguyen, 2012). Building upon English programs developed for grade 6–9 in lower secondary schools, two new series of textbooks appeared almost simultaneously in the first decade of the twenty-first century, viz. Regular English (for all secondary school students) and Advanced English (for students specializing in English) (Hoang, 2011). In the 2010s, local textbook authors also started to collaborate with an international publisher (Pearson Education Publishing Group) to develop a new series of English school textbooks. The first edition of this fifth textbook series appeared in 2016. The structure and content of the English textbooks, like all other school textbooks in Vietnam, is controlled by the government. Teachers and learners are required to strictly follow the textbooks’ content (including all exercises and tasks). Because access to foreign television channels and the internet has been (and in part continues to be) highly regulated in Vietnam, and because Vietnamese students traditionally ‘go by the book’ (Be & Crabbe, 1999), it can be expected that the English textbooks play an important role in the socialization and education of the vast majority of students in (higher) secondary schools. The school textbooks not only constitute a key source of information about the world, but also situate Vietnam within the world and help students, both explicitly and implicitly, to orient themselves as Vietnamese citizens to the world. But English is, of course, for Vietnam also a language burdened with a complex history; it is the language used in the country with which part of Vietnam has been at war for almost 20 years (1955–1975). In this sense, the available school textbook series constitute a precious source of information about the construction and reconstruction of specific socio-cultural identities within Vietnam. The EFL textbooks—sometimes also called ESL textbooks (English as Second Language)—allow us to analyse historical changes in a period in which schooling expanded rapidly and in which English gained increasing prominence in the education system. Research on English textbooks used in Vietnam is scarce, however. In the last twenty years, a few studies on cultural representations included in these textbooks have appeared. For example, Nguyen (2002a, 2002b) and An (2002) have briefly explored the socio-cultural contexts that may have an impact on the learning outcomes of students who participate in English classes, while Nguyen and Walkinshaw (2018) have studied the impact of teacher training in English-speaking countries on the professional autonomy of Vietnamese teachers. In more recent years, at a 5

Only five years of education are compulsory under the Vietnamese system, from the age of six to the age of eleven. Secondary education is divided into lower and upper programs but is not compulsory.

10

1 Introduction

moment that English has become a widely used global language, some attention has also been devoted to the representation of different cultural traditions in these textbooks. Nguyen (2002a, 2002b) studies the level of ‘intercultural awareness’ aimed at in recent textbooks; Thuy Ngoc Dinh (2016) looks at the presentation of Vietnamese rituals and routines and the relation between these presentations and students’ selfexperiences; Dinh and Sharifian (2017) focus on elaborations of the local, Vietnamese tradition (especially celebrations of the Vietnamese New Year or Tết); Le Van Canh (2017) presents a critical analysis of the moral values tacitly included in the school curriculum for English. The conclusions of these studies (as well as some others which we shall discuss in the following chapters) are nuanced; they mostly plead for opening up the textbooks to broader cultural influences. It should, however, be remarked that all these studies only focus on recent EFL textbooks and that none of them does present systematic analyses of changes in the values openly and/or tacitly presented in the different textbook series. In this sense, the present project largely breaks new ground.

1.4 EFL Textbook Analyses In Vietnamese schools, English was introduced at the end of the French colonial period, at a moment that the US was acquiring increasing prominence at the global level (Hoang, 2011). However, we did not find English school textbooks, developed in Vietnam, which were used during this period of time. The first series of EFL textbooks to which Vietnamese authors contributed were composed by Le Ba Kong and Phan Khai in Saigon in the 1960s. This textbook series was used in secondary schools in the southern part of Vietnam until 1975, but it primarily is a translation of an English textbook series, developed in the US and published by the National Council of Teachers of English, viz. English for Today. It did thus not include much content about or adapted to Vietnam itself. For the period of ten years after the national reunification (1975–1985), we also did not find EFL school textbooks, which were specifically developed for the Vietnamese student population and the Vietnamese school system. The Vietnamese interest in English textbooks started to increase substantially in the second half of the 1980s (following the introduction of Đổi Mới reforms and various globalization processes). The dataset upon which this study builds consists of a collection of 18 textbooks, with a total of 3181 pages, which belong to five sets of locally developed English textbooks for higher secondary school students (from grade 10 to grade 12) in Vietnam. These series were used in all public schools within Vietnam from the mid-1980s to the present.6 We arranged the analyses by decade, because each of the textbook series was used for about such a period of time. The 6

Only in international and experimental secondary schools in Vietnam, other English textbooks are used. Most of these schools make use of internationally marketed EFL textbooks, which do not have a specific link with Vietnam. These textbooks are not included in this study.

1.4 EFL Textbook Analyses

11

many updates not only testify to the importance of English in the curriculum, but the different series also indicate that curriculum and textbook developers in Vietnam have regularly tried to release new textbooks which match the new expectations with regard to the use of English in Vietnam and the world. Table 1.1 provides an overview of all the English school textbook series developed within Vietnam for students enrolled in higher secondary schools (including those made available in the 1960s). To ensure comparability of the analyses, we focused on the EFL textbooks used in higher secondary education throughout Vietnam. It should be added, however, that differences exist regarding the learners’ language levels. The EFL textbook series produced in the 1980s and 1990s were directed at learners at the beginner’s level. The two series produced in the early 2000s (Regular English and Advanced English) built on English programs included in grade 6 to 9 of lower secondary education. However, we did not find any official document that specified either the level of English that students were expected to have reached after finishing lower secondary education, or the differences in expected output between the students in the regular courses and those in the advanced ones. The textbook series developed in the mid-2010s for higher secondary school students were part of an expanded system of English teaching in Vietnam. They target students, who have already reached the level of A2 (following the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages’ scale). We may thus speak of some upgrading of the expectations regarding English proficiency. As, however, our concern is not with the level of English proficiency in Vietnam’s secondary schools, but rather with the (hidden) curricular content of the textbooks used in secondary schools, these differences between the EFL textbook series do not constitute an obstacle for our research project.7 Paper copies of most textbooks (as well as of the supplementary material) could be accessed via the National Library of Vietnam, the State Records Management and Archive Department of Vietnam and other large libraries in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Paper copies of the EFL textbooks developed in the 1980s, however, were obtained from a private collection of school textbooks. Electronic versions of these textbooks are currently not available, although steps in this direction have been undertaken since the early 2020s. We focus on these textbooks for their curricular content, for their representations of particular value systems, against the background of Vietnam’s recent history. The content of these textbooks consists of both text and images, and thus requires both textual and visual analyses (Bock et al., 2011; LaSpina, 2014; Pauwels, 2015). The content also consists of what is included and what is left out, of what is represented (deliberately or not) and what is not, and thus requires critical analyses of underlying value systems (Ellsworth & Whatley, 1993; Gee, 2007; Ramirez et al., 2006; Suárez, 2007; Bromley et al., 2011a, 2011b; Szakács, 2017; Podeh & Alayan, 2018). 7

It should also be added that our focus is on the textbooks used in the school classes. Supplementary curricular material, such as teachers’ books and material for reference purposes, which were available for some textbooks, were not systematically included within the scope of the study. We look at the messages and values that are transmitted from the EFL textbooks to all the learners in the Vietnamese public schools.

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1 Introduction

Table 1.1 EFL textbooks used in higher secondary education in Vietnam since the 1960s Name of textbook

Units

Pages

Author

Year of publ./ edition

Publisher

Included in the study

Anh ngữ thực dụng (English in Use) Book 1

Le Ba Kong

1963

No

Anh ngữ thực dụng (English in Use) Book 2

Le Ba Kong

1964

Ziên hồng, Saigon, Vietnam

Anh ngữ thực dụng (English in Use) Book 3

Le Ba Kong

1964

Anh ngữ thực dụng (English in Use) Book 4

Le Ba Kong

1965

Anh ngữ thực dụng (English in Use) Book 5

Le Ba Kong

1965

Anh ngữ thực dụng (English in Use) Book 6

Le Ba Kong—Phan Khai

1966

Education Publishing House, Vietnam

Yes

Education Publishing House, Vietnam

Yes

Tiếng Anh 10 (English 10) Sách dùng cho học sinh (Student’s book)

36

220

Dang Tran 1988 Cuong (Principle editor) Nguyen Mi Dung, Pham Khai Hoan, Le Duc Nhuan, Hoang Van Sit

Tiếng Anh 11 (English 11) Sách dùng cho học sinh (Student’s book)

18

179

Dang Tran Cuong(Principle editor) Le Duc Nhuan, Pham Phuong Luyen, Hoang Van Sit

Tiếng Anh 12 (English 12) Sách dùng cho học sinh (Student’s book)

14

137

Pham Khai Hoan 1989 (Principle editor), Le Duc Nhuan, Hoang Van Sit

Tài liệu giáo khoa thực nghiệm—Experimental textbook Tiếng Anh 10—Ban xa hoi (English 10)—Social sciences

30

288

Le Duc Nhuan 1993 (Principle editor) (First Pham Khai Edition) Hoan, Pham Phuong Luyen

1989

(continued)

1.4 EFL Textbook Analyses

13

Table 1.1 (continued) Name of textbook

Units

Pages

Author

Year of publ./ edition

Tài liệu giáo khoa thực nghiệm—Experimental textbook Tiếng Anh 11—Ban xa hoi (English 11)—Social sciences

30

332

Le Duc Nhuan (Principle Editor) Nguyen Quoc Tuan

1995 (Second Edition)

Tài liệu giáo khoa thực nghiệm—Experimental textbook Tiếng Anh 12—Ban xa hoi (English 11)—Social sciences

30

268

Le Duc Nhuan (Principle Editor) Nguyen Quoc Tuan

1995

Tiếng Anh 10 (English 10)

16

184

Hoang Van Van 2006 (General and principle editor), Hoang Thi Xuan Hoa, Do Tuan Minh, Nguyen Thu Phuong, Nguyen Quoc Tuan

Tiếng Anh 11 (English 11)

16

196

Tiếng Anh 12 (English 12)

16

200

Hoang Van Van 2007 (General and principle editor), 2008 Hoang Thi Xuan Hoa, Do Tuan Minh, Dao Ngoc Loc, Vu Thi Loi, Nguyen Quoc Tuan

Tiếng Anh nâng cao 10 Advanced English 10

16

241

Tiếng Anh nâng cao 11 Advanced English 11

16

252

Tiếng Anh nâng cao 12 Advanced English 12

16

240

Tu Anh (General 2008 editor), Mai Vi Phuong 2009 (Principle editor) Phan Ha, Huynh 2010 Dong Hai, Huynh Thi Kim Hoa, Vu Thi Lan, Tran Dinh Nguyen Lu, Luong Thi Ly, Nguyen Minh, Song Phuc

Publisher

Included in the study

Education Publishing House, Vietnam

Yes

Education Publishing House, Vietnam

Yes

(continued)

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1 Introduction

Table 1.1 (continued) Name of textbook

Units

Pages

Author

Year of publ./ edition

Publisher

Included in the study

Tiếng Anh 10 (English 10) Book 1

5

63

2016 (First Edition)

5

63

Education Publishing House, Vietnam in corporation with Pearson Education Publishing Group

Yes

Tiếng Anh 10 (English 10) Book 2

Hoang Van Van (General editor), Hoang Thi Xuan Hoa (Principle editor), Dang Hiep Giang, Phan Ha, Hoang Thi Hong Hai, Kieu Thi Thu Huong, Vu Thi Lan, Dao Ngoc Loc with the corporation of David Kaye

Tiếng Anh 11 (English 11) Book 1

5

79

Tiếng Anh 11 (English 11) Book 2

5

80

Tiếng Anh 12 (English 12) Book 1

5

79

Tiếng Anh 12 (English 12) Book 2

5

80

2016 (First Edition)

Hoang Van Van 2016 (General editor), (First Phan Edition) Ha(Principle editor), Hoang Thi Hong Hai, Hoang Thi Xuan Hoa, Kieu Thi Thu Huong, Vu Thi Lan, Dao Ngoc Loc, Chu The Quang with the corporation of David Kaye Hoang Van Van 2016 (General editor), (First Hoang Thi Xuan Edition) Hoa (Principle editor), Phan Ha, Hoang Thi Hong Hai, Kieu Thi Thu Huong, Vu Thi Lan, Dao Ngoc Loc, Chu The Quang with the corporation of David Kaye

1.4 EFL Textbook Analyses

15

Moreover, the normative content of these textbooks is likely to transform and change over time (Bentrovato, 2015; Canale, 2019; D’Apice & Bromley, 2023; Skinner & Bromley, 2023). As we will see, the messages and values incorporated in the EFL textbooks can be both subtle and not so subtle. As employed here, however, content analyses serve to increase our understanding of the changes and evolutions in the specific value systems that can influence students in higher secondary education in Vietnam. The available scientific literature clearly suggests that school textbooks represent a major avenue to increase our understanding of the array of messages that can influence learners (e.g., Pingel, 2010). Given the fact that our emphasis is on historical changes in textbook content, we have in the first place opted for content analyses explicated through quantitative summaries. All the pages of the 18 EFL school textbooks produced and published in Vietnam since the 1980s were systematically coded for a broad variety of variables, and the many tables in the following chapters provide overviews of historical shifts in the normative messages with which EFL students are confronted in their secondary schools. Although these quantitative analyses are less in-depth than some qualitative approaches, we believe that they have the advantage of identifying long-term, broad historical developments that often remain invisible in ‘thick,’ qualitative analyses of school textbooks. To give some idea about shifts in qualitative meanings, however, we complement these quantitative summaries with ‘thick’ descriptions of selected illustrations. This combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods is propagated in several recent reviews of textbook research (Fuchs, 2011; Nicholls, 2003; Repoussi & Tutiaux-Guillon, 2010; Van der Vlies, 2017). We assess the entire content of all of Vietnam’s EFL textbooks along a number of perspectives. To do so, we have used a straightforward strategy to count and code the relevant elements included in these textbooks. We have mainly looked at the exact number of times that particular objects or ideas were (or were not) included in textbooks of different periods. We have measured the frequency of particular content by coding each textbook unit for whether or not it contained these objects or ideas (1 = includes them, 0 = does not include them). The findings were aggregated by EFL textbook and by EFL textbook series (or time period). We are aware of the fact that this strategy has led to a fairly general measure, compared with more specific and time-consuming alternative measures, such as area within the page or proportion of pages that contain these objects or ideas, but this strategy has the advantage of being an efficient measure to make sense of a high amount of textbook pages from a variety of perspectives for the purposes of comparing their contents across a relatively long period of time (Schaub et al., 2019).8 In combination with the ‘thick’ analyses of the illustrations, which we provide, we believe that our descriptive, quantitative strategy allows for a good overview of historical changes in the (hidden) content found in the Vietnamese EFL textbooks.

8

In order to facilitate understanding of the historical trends, we use a combination of absolute and relative measures to present the data of our textbook analyses.

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1 Introduction

In the case of gender, for example, to which Chap. 4 of this book is devoted, we started with the coding categories of female and male. Mostly the differences between female and male were apparent through stereotypical signals, such as names, clothing items, haircuts and other manners of outward appearance. In cases where gender attribution between female and male was at first sight not obvious, we checked whether other parts of the textbook could provide contextual elements for categorization. In the few cases where clear gender identification was impossible (e.g., images of very young children), the cases were not counted. It may be added that the gender diversity in the Vietnamese EFL textbooks is not so large as to include explicit signals that could be attributed to transgender identities. We combined this categorization with a variety of other variables, such as setting (indoors/outdoors), occupation, family role (daughter/son, mother/father) or social status, to give meaning to the ‘embedded’ gender differences. To code and count the variables, which are central to the other chapters of this book, we have proceeded in an analogous way. All the textbook content was coded manually, but we exercised much caution to reduce the risk of errors. All coding was double-checked, and we followed standard procedures of content analysis methodology to ensure that objects and ideas were coded consistently across textbook series. Some additional methodological notes are included in later chapters to explicate the choices which we had to make regarding the coding of particular variables. Altogether we believe that our textbook analyses reveal important trends and evolutions within Vietnam and the world.

1.5 Overview of the Book This book thus presents a long-term analysis of the hidden curricular content of textbooks used in the secondary schools in Vietnam. Drawing upon the idea of the nation as an “imagined community” (Anderson, 1983), as well as ideas about how education can serve the nation-state, we look at the assumptions and biases that have steered the selection of the content presented in all the EFL textbooks produced and used in Vietnam during the last four decades. We analyse these school textbooks from different perspectives. For each of these perspectives, we have used several variables. Each of the chapters can be read on its own, but together the chapters provide a more comprehensive picture of the socio-cultural value systems with which Vietnamese students are confronted during the years they spend in secondary schools. In the next chapter, we start with an analysis of the ways in which national identity is linked with representations of Vietnam’s territory and natural environment in the different textbook series. Vietnam gained political and territorial sovereignty in the twentieth century, and the memory of the many conflicts in this eventful century still plays an important role in Vietnam (as well as in many other countries). A broad range of the Vietnamese representations of national identity seem reflective of the strengthening of what is at times called a ‘socio-territorial consciousness.’ The EFL textbook series allow us to analyse the process of ‘territorialisation’ of national identity, in which the natural and physical territory is transformed into a social and

1.5 Overview of the Book

17

cultural space, which is then represented as ‘our’ home. Because the EFL textbooks are uniformly used throughout the entire territory of Vietnam, they provide us with rich material to unravel the construction of particular socio-cultural identities, of particular narratives of belonging to ‘our’ place, ‘our’ nation. For all these EFL textbooks, the sacredness of Vietnam’s national territory is obvious. Departing from the idea that constructions of national identity distinguish between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ and gain meaning through the contrast with ‘others,’ the third chapter addresses changes in the representation of the others in the same textbook series. We analyse how both explicit and implicit comparisons with other cultures are used to imagine one’s own national identities, and to position oneself within the world of nations. For the period of nearly four decades, upon which we focus, our analyses show how the Vietnamese textbooks shift from presenting English as a foreign language, which is spoken in a few countries (England, US, Australia, etc.), and which is linked with the study of these countries and their cultures, to showcasing English as the main global language in a globalizing world, which Vietnamese students need to acquire in order to be able to learn about other parts of the world and to express their own national identity to different, global audiences. We also note, however, that the recent textbooks entail several images of the peaceful coexistence of nations and cultures but pay little attention to the inequalities and tensions within our world. Under communist influences, the focus on social equality, including gender equality, has been strong. Already in 1930, the first credo of Ho Chi Minh’s Communist Party stipulated that “men and women are equal in rights.” In 1945, when Ho Chi Minh proclaimed Vietnam’s independence, gender equality became constitutionally guaranteed. Against this background, the fourth chapter looks in more detail at the ways in which gender and nation mutually inform and construct each other. We analyse the relation between the national context, within which the EFL textbook series function, and the gender identities which they propagate, both explicitly and tacitly. We also examine how female and male roles are specified in a variety of social settings, especially in family or household settings. Considering existing practices within Vietnam, the textbooks seem to depict rather progressive gendered images. The curriculum developers might have had the intention to empower girls and women in the nation-state, although they often attribute more agency or individuality to men and boys. As our analyses show, legal equality goes along with various forms of sociocultural inequality. As schooling expanded to include larger proportions of the population over the last decades, and as English gained a more prominent place in the school curricula in Vietnam, pedagogical or didactic considerations were likely to gain influence in decisions about the content of the EFL textbooks. The fifth chapter looks at the strategies and levels of student engagement that appear in the different textbooks, especially in relation to national identity. We explore the normative messages about the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, its distinctive normative traditions and its position in the globalizing world, that are communicated in the EFL textbooks. In the existing literature about the history of didactics, it is often said that students have moved to the centre of the learning process and that the focus of curriculum and textbook developers has shifted from teaching to learning. Our analyses affirm such

18

1 Introduction

conclusions, but we are also able to show lines of historical continuity in the student engagement with national identity. The elaboration of a new didactics of national identity goes hand in hand with an affirmation of normative constructions about the nature of the nation-state. We present hereafter a range of detailed, fine-grained analyses of school textbooks. The following chapters show how Vietnam tries to prepare the members of new age cohorts for their adult roles, particularly via foreign language courses which have to depict Vietnam in relation to the broader world. They also highlight the historical changes in these socialization and education practices, from the period in which Vietnam turned itself more explicitly to the world until the present. From a sociological point of view, this combination of textbook and historical analyses allows us to gain new insights into the intended and unintended lessons, which the Vietnamese students have learned at school during the last four decades. In the concluding chapter of this book, we briefly reflect on the findings and the limitations of the whole project.

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Dinh, T., & Sharifian, F. (2017). Vietnamese cultural conceptualisations in the locally developed English textbook: A case study of ‘Lunar New Year’/’Tet’. Asian Englishes, 19(2), 148–159. Dreeben, R. (1968). On what is learned in school. Addison Wesley. Durkheim, É. (1903). Pédagogie et sociologie. Revue De Métaphysique Et De Morale, 11(1), 37–54. Elliott, D. W. (2012). Changing worlds: Vietnam’s transition from Cold War to globalization. Oxford University Press. Fforde, A., & De Vylder, S. (2019). From plan to market: The economic transition in Vietnam. Routledge. Fuchs, E. (2011). Current trends in history and social studies textbook research. Journal of International Cooperation in Education, 14(2), 17–34. Gee, J. P. (2007). Social linguistics and literacy. Routledge. Giroux, H. A. (2001). Theory and resistance in education. Bergin & Garvey. Hastings, M. (2018). Vietnam: An epic history of a divisive war 1945–1975. HarperCollins. Jackson, P. W. (1968). Life in classrooms. Teachers College Press. Kelly, G. (1982). Schooling and national integration: The case of interwar Vietnam. Comparative Education, 18(2), 175–195. Lareau, A. (2015). Cultural knowledge and social inequality. American Sociological Review, 80(1), 1–27. LaSpina, J. A. (2014). The visual turn and the transformation of the textbook. Routledge. Le, V. C., et al. (2017). A critical analysis of moral values in Vietnam-produced EFL textbooks for upper secondary schools. In H. P. Widodo (Ed.), Situating moral and cultural values in ELT materials (pp. 111–129). Springer. Lewis, M. D. (1962). One hundred million Frenchmen: The ‘assimilation’ theory in French colonial policy. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 4(2), 129–153. Lortie, D. C. (1975). Schoolteacher. University of Chicago Press. Nguyen, N. (2012). How English has displaced Russian and other foreign languages in Vietnam since Doi Moi. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 2(23), 259–266. Nguyen, M., & Walkinshaw, I. (2018). Autonomy in teaching practice: Insights from Vietnamese English language teachers trained in inner-circle countries. Teaching and Teacher Education, 69(1), 21–32. Nguyen, Q. K., & Nguyen, Q. C. (2008). Education in Vietnam: Development history, challenges and solutions. In B. Fredriksen & T. J. Peng (Eds.), An African exploration of the East Asian education experience (pp. 109–154). World Bank. Nguyen, T. H. (2002a). Vietnam: Cultural background for ESL/EFL teachers. The Review of Vietnamese Studies, 2(1), 1–6. Nguyen, T. H. A. (2002b). Cultural effects on learning and teaching English in Vietnam. The Language Teacher, 26(1), 2–6. Nicholls, J. (2003). Methods in school textbook research. History Education Research Journal, 3(2), 11–26. Pauwels, L. (2015). Reframing visual social science. Cambridge University Press. Pingel, F. (2010). UNESCO guidebook on textbook research and textbook revision. UNESCO. Podeh, E., & Alayan, S. (2018). Multiple alterities. Palgrave. Ramirez, F. O., Suárez, D., & Meyer, J. W. (2006). The worldwide rise of human rights education, 1950–2005. In A. Benavot & C. Braslavsky (Eds.), The changing contents of primary and secondary Education (pp. 35–52). Springer. Repoussi, M., & Tutiaux-Guillon, N. (2010). New trends in history textbook research: Issues and methodologies toward a school historiography. Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society, 2(1), 154–170. Salemink, O. (2003). The ethnography of Vietnam’s Central Highlanders. University of Hawaii Press. Schaub, M., et al. (2019). The changing faces of the math student: Images in US early elementary mathematics textbooks, 1904–1999. Journal of Advances in Education Research, 4(3), 91–109.

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1 Introduction

Skinner, N. A., & Bromley, P. (2023). Rights, conflict, and removal: Depictions of Indigenous groups in Californian and Texan history textbooks, 1836–2019. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 55(2), 203–222. Snyder, B. (1971). The hidden curriculum. Knopf. Suárez, D. (2007). Human rights and curricular policy in Latin America and the Caribbean. Comparative Education Review, 51(3), 329–352. Szakács, S. (2017). Europe in the classroom. Palgrave. Van der Vlies, T. (2017). Echoing national narratives in English history textbooks. In M. Carretero, S. Berger, & M. Grever (Eds.), Palgrave handbook of research in historical culture and education (pp. 243–258). Palgrave Macmillan. Vanderstraeten, R. (2006). The historical triangulation of education, politics and economy. Sociology, 40(1), 125–142. Vanderstraeten, R. (2021). How does education function? European Educational Research Journal, 20(6), 729–739. Woodside, A. (2006). Lost modernities: China, Vietnam, Korea, and the hazards of world history. Harvard University Press. Wright, S. (2002). Language education and foreign relations in Vietnam. In J. W. Tollefson (Ed.), Language policies in education (pp. 225–244). Lawrence Erlbaum.

Chapter 2

National Identity and National Territory

Abstract Drawing on the idea of the nation as an “imagined community” (B. Anderson), we expect a strengthening of a socio-territorial consciousness in Vietnam in recent decades. We also expect that national sovereignty and national territory play an important role in school education in Vietnam. In this light, this chapter looks at representations of national identity and national territory in the EFL textbooks produced and used in Vietnam from the 1980s until the present. Three perspectives are distinguished. We first pay attention to the symbolic meanings conveyed by ‘factual’ representations of the national territory, such as maps or images. We then look at the ways in which different spaces—at the level of the family household, the local community and the nation-state—are presented as components of national imaginaries. Finally, we devote attention to religious and secular sites that are presented as sacred in the symbolized history of the Vietnamese nation. Our analyses show that all the EFL textbook series give almost routinely much attention to the idea of ‘we’ are a nation (dân tộc) and ’we’ live here on ‘our’ inherited and sacred national territory. Keywords Imagined community · National territory · Socio-territorial consciousness · Vietnam · EFL textbooks

We start our empirical analyses with an exploration of the representations of national territory in the EFL textbooks used in Vietnam. As mentioned in Chap. 1, territorial conflicts have been very prominent in the recent history of Vietnam, and independence wars have been conducive for the thriving of Vietnamese nationalism. Because the whole of Indochina (including present-day Vietnam) was colonized by France at the end of the nineteenth century, modern nationalism in Indochina developed in response to the French occupation and the territorial divisions introduced by the French. After the defeat of the Japanese in 1945 at the end of the Second World War, which was followed by the defeat of the French in the First Indochina War (1945– 1954), Vietnam was divided at the Seventeenth Parallel North into two states: the communist North and the US-supported South. This lasted until 1975, when the end of the Second Indochina War united the country again. The history of the country in © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 T. D. Phuong and R. Vanderstraeten, The ‘Hidden Curriculum’ of Vietnam’s English School Textbooks, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-1196-3_2

21

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the second half of the twentieth century was furthermore marked by border conflicts with neighbouring countries Cambodia and China (Hastings, 2018). Concerns about its own national territory thus did not disappear in the recent history of Vietnam. After the reunion in 1975, Vietnam remained for some time a closed community to the rest of the world. From the end of the twentieth century onwards, however, Vietnam started to open up to the outside world (Elliott, 2012, Fforde & De Vylder, 2019). A Vietnamese version of glasnost and perestroika was introduced, which led to increased openness and transparency in government institutions and activities. As an independent nation-state, Vietnam became able to participate in several regional and international organizations, including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). The country thus gradually acquired its own place and position in the world of nations. In the school curricula, English gained increasing importance against the background of these historical developments (Wright, 2002). It also officially became more and more the language used to communicate with the world. In this light, it can be expected that national sovereignty and national territory play a key role in school education in Vietnam. We expect that territorial claims are intertwined with depictions of national identity and that many expressions of national identity are reflective of the strengthening of a ‘socio-territorial’ consciousness. In addition, we expect that the nation’s natural resources play a key role in representations of national identity (Biggs, 2012). Not only is the cultivation of land and water traditionally of crucial importance to the economy, often in the form of small-scale farming in the rice-growing areas, but the natural beauty of Vietnam is nowadays also receiving increasing attention. International tourism has become an important component of the Vietnamese economy. Against this broader political and socioeconomic background, this chapter looks at the relation between representations of national identity and national territory in the EFL textbooks produced and used in Vietnam from the 1980s until the present. Drawing on the idea of the nation as an “imagined community” (Anderson, 1983), we first discuss in more general terms the relation between national identity and national territory. Against this background, we then look at the ways in which national imaginaries are embedded in the school textbooks used in Vietnam. In the findings section, we first pay attention to the symbolic meanings conveyed by ‘factual’ representations of the national territory, such as maps or images of economic activities. We next look at the ways in which different spaces of experience—at the level of the family household, the local community or the nation-state—are presented as components of national imaginaries. Finally, we devote attention to religious and secular sites that are presented as sacred, that occupy a special place within the ‘invented’ and symbolized history of the Vietnamese nation. As we will see, all the EFL textbook series give routinely much attention to the idea of ‘we’ are a nation (dân tộc) and live here on ‘our’ inherited and sacred national territory.

2.1 Concepts

23

2.1 Concepts The literature on nationalism is vast and far from unified. Building upon this literature, however, it can be argued that national identity is a social and cultural construction or accomplishment, which relies on territorialization processes. If such an identity is expected to unite individuals or groups into a national community, we may ask which territorial identities underpin this identity. In this section, we first provide a brief overview of the relevant literature on the link between territoriality and national identity. Afterwards, we briefly look at available analyses of the forms of spatial or territorial socialization aimed for in national education systems, such as that of Vietnam.

2.1.1 Territoriality and National Identities Although broadly accepted definitions of concepts, such as nation, national identity, or nationalism, are difficult to find in the literature, the concept of nation often includes a reference to a specific national territory. For many authors, territorial claims constitute the basis of the nation or nation-state: without territory, there is no nation-state. At the same time, a nation-state also needs to become present within the borders of its territory. It has to exercise power within its boundaries without any interference from outside sources; it has to transform its geographical territory into its national territory (e.g., Conversi, 2000; Gellner, 1983; Häkli, 1994). For the geographer Jean Gottmann, for example, “territory is a proportion of geographical space that coincides with the spatial extent of government’s jurisdiction” (1975, 29). His colleagues Mark Tewdwr-Jones and Philip Allmendinger similarly speak of a territory as “a given area of land under the jurisdiction of the state, or an organized division of a country that has a particular set of powers and jurisdiction” (2006, 11). But the concept of nation does not merely refer to a geographical territory controlled by a particular state. It includes more than the mere fact of a national community with a politically independent government (Green, 1997; Rejai & Enloe, 1969). Benedict Anderson (1983), for example, has famously emphasized the historical, constructed nature of modern nations and spoken of the nation as an “imagined community” in the sense that the material conditions exist for imagining extended and shared connections among all its inhabitants. As imagined community, the nation is expected to provide a socio-cultural identity to the members of its population. Following Anderson’s influential work, several authors have discussed the specifics of the social and cultural conditions and connections that give meaning to the territory of a nation. For Neil Brenner, for example, the territory is the “territorial platform upon which social action occurs” (1999, 44). Ludger Pries speaks of experienced spaces, i.e., the spaces “people occupy and in which they move physically and mentally in an unselfconscious way” (2005, 171). On the one hand, he distinguishes between different configurations and their importance for structuring human

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life (from small-scale configurations, such as the family household and the local community, to large-scale ones, such as ethnic groups, nation-states and different forms of international belongingness). On the other hand, he points to the complex entanglements between these different configurations. Despite processes of globalization and internationalization, the nation still strongly defines the “imagined” geographic territory where people live and belong (Poole, 1999, 12; Paasi, 2009). Along these lines, attention has also been drawn to the legacy of territorial memories and the sacred value of the heritage located on or related to this territory. In National Identity, Anthony Smith has focused on the “demarcated and bounded territory, with which the members identify and to which they feel they belong” (Smith, 1991, 9) and summed up the social and cultural factors that allow for attaining and maintaining national unity and identity on behalf of a particular population. In this regard, he defined the modern nation as a “named human population sharing an historic territory, common myths, and historical memories, a mass, public culture, a common economy and common legal rights and duties for all members” (1991, 14). In a critical overview of the literature on nationalism, he later also emphasized the ‘ideal-type’ nature of this definition and spoke of the nation as “a named community possessing an historic territory, shared myths and memories, a common public culture and common laws and customs” (2002, 15). Our interest is not in the differences between these (and other) definitions. For our purposes, it suffices to underline that territoriality is widely held to be key to national imaginations. Both local and national narratives often rely on accounts of territorial characteristics and territorial borders. One may speak of a process of ‘territorialization’ of national identity, in which the physical territory is transformed into a social and cultural space, which is typically represented as ‘our’ home. Even in the era of globalization and internationalization, Storey (2002) argues, the places where people live continue to be of huge significance to and remain an integral component of the national imagination. Both generic ‘national’ landscapes and specific local places still carry with them huge symbolic meanings and form essential elements in ‘nationalizing’ strategies. Territory may thus form national identity (Kaplan & Herb, 2011; Malkki, 1992). We may therefore ask how territory and territoriality are transformed into national identities and how such socialization processes occur. Paasi (1996, 1999) has spoken of processes of “spatial socialization” and defined them as processes through which individual actors and collectivities are socialized as members of specific, territorially bounded spatial entities, and through which they more or less actively internalize territorial identities and shared traditions. Along these lines, we devote particular attention to the practices and discourses through which collective forms of identity and territoriality are officially (re-)produced in Vietnam via the EFL textbooks.

2.2 Findings

25

2.1.2 Territorial Identities in School Textbooks Education and schooling are widely regarded to be among the most influential instruments for producing and reproducing particular forms of national identity (Lerch et al., 2017; Williams, 2014a, 2014b). It is no coincidence that all nation-states have heavily invested in expanding and improving educational provisions, in realizing ‘schooling for all.’ National education systems are a key feature of all modern nationstates (Baker, 2014; Sobe, 2014; Vanderstraeten, 2021); they are state-centred enterprises, tools that nation-states use to strengthen their own identity. But as promoting national values is often one of the key tasks of national school systems, these socialization instruments can also be analysed in order to clarify the construction of specific social identities. School textbooks in particular can be used to reconstruct these narratives and identities. Because of their perceived importance in national socialization processes, these textbooks are mostly carefully developed and/or controlled by the nation-state. They often incorporate and transmit an ‘official’ version of national identity. As Philip Altbach argued, “textbooks are one of the most important educational inputs: texts reflect basic ideas about national culture, and … are often a flashpoint of cultural struggle and controversy” (1991, 257; see also Bromley et al., 2011b; Brehm, 2014; Sobe, 2014; Williams, 2014a, 2014b; D’Apice & Bromley, 2023; Skinner & Bromley, 2023). Especially when textbooks are uniformly used within a national territory, they may inform us about the construction and diffusion of particular identities, of particular narratives of belonging to ‘our’ place, to ‘our’ nation. The (re-)production of national identities may be described as an unstable, dynamic process (e.g., Edensor, 2002; McCrone & Bechhofer, 2015), but textbook series offer a window into this construction process. As already mentioned, national territory is often linked with national identity, both geographically and socio-culturally. Establishing the existence of ‘authentic’ connections between the national community and the territory not only helps legitimize the political sovereignty of the nation-state. How the national identity is anchored in the territory also has an impact on how individuals are integrated into collectives and the nation itself (Keane, 2010; Paasi, 1997; Smith, 1991; Storey, 2002). Official versions of the nation’s identity often also include accounts of ties to the nation’s land (Hutchins, 2016). In this light we focus in the following on the territorial narratives included in the locally produced EFL textbooks in Vietnam, which are used by most students enrolled within the system of public secondary education in Vietnam.

2.2 Findings To provide context to the following analyses, some territorial facts may first be briefly presented. Vietnam occupies a long strip of land in the eastern part of Southeast Asia. Its land is mostly hilly and densely forested, with level land covering no more than

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2 National Identity and National Territory

20% of the total surface. Mountains account for about 40%, and tropical forests cover around 42% of the country’s surface. Much of the economic activity has been concentrated in and around two river deltas: the Red River Delta in the north and the Mekong River Delta in the south. The Red River Delta is smaller, but more densely populated than the Mekong River Delta. Vietnam also has two major cities, which are situated at opposite ends of the country: Hanoi, which is the official capital of Vietnam, is located in the north, while Ho Chi Minh City, previously known as Saigon, is located in the south. To the east and the south, Vietnam is bordered by the Gulf of Tonkin and the South China Sea. To the west and the north, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam shares its borders with Cambodia, Laos and China. Hereafter we look at the socio-territorial representations in the Vietnamese school textbooks over a relatively long period, from the mid-1980s to the present. We first explore the ways in which the territory and its borders are nationalized, and vice versa, the ways in which national symbols are territorialized. Next, we discuss different territorial and social configurations, viz. representations of the family household, the local community and the nation-state. While the national level increasingly gains visibility, we also note that national divisions, such as those between North and South Vietnam, are not represented in the EFL textbooks. Afterwards, we give attention to the depiction of particular historical sites and of the Vietnamese territory as a whole as sacred places. Perhaps these different perspectives are at times be difficult to distinguish, but together they help us clarifying the links between national territory and national identity, as present in the Vietnamese EFL textbooks.

2.2.1 Territory as Fact and Symbol Vietnam’s territory is depicted in many Vietnamese school textbooks via maps and various other territorialized representations of its national identity. The land, its ‘natural’ beauty and its ‘homegrown’ products, also appear repeatedly in the English school textbooks. These ‘factual’ representations carry symbolic meanings, however, and our focus is upon the ways in which these representations symbolize national identity for Vietnam’s youngest generations. To unravel some of these meanings, the upper part of Table 2.1 shows with which frequency Vietnam’s national territory is depicted in the different textbook series. For example, maps of Vietnam are used seven times in the textbooks published in the 1980s, six times in those of the 1990s and once in the AE textbooks of the 2000s.1 These maps provide national location (with national borders) or topographical patterns. But they are also used to engage students with features of the nation 1

To simplify the reference system, we refer to the textbooks by the letter E followed by the decade the textbooks were primarily used in, the school class they were intended for and the volume number (if any). For example, E2010/10–2, 53 refers to page 53 of the second volume of the textbook used for class 10 (age 15/16) during the 2010s. RE and AE stand for Regular English and Advanced English textbooks. When appropriate, we also include the ‘units’ or ‘lessons’ for which particular images or symbols are used.

2.2 Findings

27

itself. For example, in Task 2 of E1980/11, students are asked to look at the map, then ask and answer questions (in pairs) about features illustrated on it, such as a river and a mountain (see Excerpt 2.1). If the nation is imagined (Anderson, 1983), so is national territory. In this case, maps visualize the nation, make national territory tangible and are “the first step to outline claims to national self-determination” (Kaplan & Herb, 2011, 356). They also portray socio-territorial aspects, such as the claims to territorial integrity and the heroic figures associated with distinct stages of the nation’s history. Thus, these maps signify not only land, but ‘the land of our fathers,’ and the ‘sacred’ land, as Smith (1991, 9) emphasized. Maps thus enhance individuals’ perception of “who they are and where they come from” (Palmer, 1999, 315)—a crucial element in the formation and imagination of the nation (Biggs, 2012). However, the inclusion of maps decreases sharply in the period under study and disappears completely by the RE series of the 2000s. At present, these territorial representations were no longer needed to convey ‘hidden’ messages. Besides maps, narratives of the imprint of territory on national tradition are important nation-building elements in the textbooks. Images of typical topographies illustrating the mountainous and the flat regions, as well as the rivers and the sea, are prevalent throughout all textbooks. Most emphasis is clearly on the lowlands and the deltas, with their many marshes, creeks and canals. Three of the five EFL textbook series also require that students describe the region or place in which they are living. In these lessons, the territory is included as curriculum topic, although the territorial features are not specified by the curriculum developers. The focus on the lowlands in the textbooks suggests that these landscapes are most characteristic of the country. But although about three quarters of Vietnam’s total population now lives in the densely populated areas, it should be added that the lowlands comprise only Table 2.1 Territory and territory-based economic activities (Absolute numbers) Territorial features

1980s

1990s

2000s Regular

7

Map of nation Kind of terrain

Flatlands

1

0

12

3

7

15

5

4

3

6

3

10

Highlands

1

2

2

2

3

Mountains

5

3

3

7

5

Unspecified*

7

4

0

5

0

29

15

18

32

23

Agriculture

5

2

4

4

1

Industry

1

1

0

0

0

Tourism

4

3

20

37

41

Seaport Total * Students

Advanced

0

Sea

Total Economic sectors

6

2010s

1

0

0

0

0

11

6

24

41

42

are required to describe the place/region they are living in.

28

2 National Identity and National Territory

Excerpt 2.1 A map of Vietnam’s mainland territory (E1980/11, 26)

a quarter of Vietnam’s total territory. Furthermore, the focus on the lowlands may be related to the importance of wet rice, as rice production is not only important for the food supply in the country and the national economy (as major export product), and the fact that they have become one of the most influential factors shaping the perception of Vietnam. National territory is also portrayed as providing necessary resources for the inhabitants, both at the individual and the collective level. Penrose succinctly summarized the economic role of a nation’s territory in the following way: “our resources, our survival” (2002, 280). The lower part of Table 2.1 shows that the series of EFL textbooks refer in different ways to economic activities, including agriculture and tourism. But tourism is clearly dominant in all series. Landscape photos highlighting the beauty of Vietnam are included with increasing frequency, especially in the textbooks of the 2000s and 2010s (20 times in RE2000, 37 times in AE2000, and 41 times in E2010). The tourist attraction sites featured in these textbooks range from natural landscapes (Halong, Dalat, Sapa, Nha Trang) to sites of socio- or culturalhistorical significance (Ho Dynasty Citadel, Quan Ho Village, the festival in Gong Highland, Ponagar Cham Towers, and Huong Pagoda). In this regard, Excerpt 2.2 illustrates how local textbook developers place importance on ‘our heritage,’ thereby reinforcing students’ sense of belonging to the homeland. Many of these sites are “sacred centres” (Smith, 1991, 16), which symbolize the uniqueness of the nation’s moral geography, but which are also “selected symbols of identity” (Palmer, 1999, 314). Thus, they are used to express a special type of national identity and evoke a special sense of pride and belonging within each student.

2.2 Findings

29

Excerpt 2.2 The tourist site of Ponagar Cham Towers (RE2000/11, 184)

Following tourism, agriculture is also prominently visible in the EFL textbooks. Images of rice fields, for example, appear in all textbook sets (five times in the 1980s, once in the 1990s, three times in both textbook series of the 2000s, and once in the 2010s). They invoke the tradition of wet rice agriculture in Vietnam and illustrate the impact of the demands of the wet rice agriculture on the social structures in local communities. While rice farming is labour-intensive, a large proportion of the nation’s population works collectively on the sloping terraces. Within extended families, different generations often work and live together. In this sense, the images of the rice fields (or other agricultural activities) also invoke particular social traditions and corresponding social values. It should be added that clear distinctions between tourism and agriculture are at times difficult to draw, as several sites may fulfil both functions at once. The terraced rice fields mentioned in E2010/10–2, 53 (Excerpt 2.3), for instance, are both local cultivating places and popular touristic sites. They are also explicitly introduced as “destinations for ecotourists” (ibid., see also AE2000/10, 196). Some territorial images also refer to more than what is at first sight visible in the images themselves. They are used as symbols of the nation (or parts of it). The terraced rice fields, for example, are typical images of Lao Cai province, which features the natural condition of the Eastern part of the Himalayas (see Excerpt 2.3). This natural topology of the land is considered for inclusion in UNESCO’s

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Excerpt 2.3 A terraced rice field (E2010/10–2, 53)

list of World Heritage Sites, and thus has become a symbol of the nation (Vu & Sato, 2010). Another example is Halong Bay, a large, natural bay, which is already officially recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and which has also become the symbol of the region (Quang Ninh province) and the nation. Of all ‘characteristic’ places of Vietnam, Halong Bay is the most often depicted one in the textbooks. As shown in Table 2.2, Halong Bay appears in all textbook series, but more frequently in the most recent series. Drawing attention to the symbolic value of these sites is clearly important to the Vietnamese curriculum developers. Obviously the EFL textbooks also contribute to the process of making these territorial sites and their symbolic, national meanings popularly known (Excerpt 2.4). Table 2.2 Images of Halong Bay included in the EFL textbooks 1980s (Lesson/ Page) Halong Bay

English 10

English 11

English 12

L7, p. 59, L7, p. 60, L7, p. 61

1990s (Lesson/ Page)

2000s (Unit/Page) Regular

Advanced

L26, p. 220, L26, p. 221, L28, p. 246

U6, p. 62, U16, p. 171, U16, p. 172

U15, p.195

L12, p. 137

2010s (Book/Unit/ Page)

B1, U5, p. 64*2, B1, U5, p.69, B1, U5, p. 70*2, B2, U8, p.45, B2, U8, p.34, B2, U8, p.35, B2, U8, p.38 U16, p. 179

2.2 Findings

31

Excerpt 2.4 Halong Bay (RE2000/10, 62)

Similarly, the symbolic meanings of ‘homegrown’ products are prominently evoked in all textbook sets. The tradition of making and eating Chung cake, or Bánh Chưng, included in RE2000/11, 113; E2010/10–2, 19–25 and E2010/12–1, 71, constitutes a typical example. This cake, the main ingredients of which are glutinous rice, mung beans and pork, is eaten throughout the year, but especially at the start of the traditional New Year. It is prepared to honour ancestors and gods, and to beg for affluence for one’s family. Peach and kumquat trees are another example; representing the wish for happiness and good luck, (branches of) these trees are brought into households and offices as decoration on the traditional New Year’s Eve (see also Excerpt 2.6). All these home-grown products thus invoke traditional Vietnamese customs. During the last four decades, many factual representations of the territory have been used in the EFL textbooks. In the process, national symbols and national identities have in different ways been territorialized. The land, its natural characteristics and its home-grown products, are prominently referred to in the textbooks that serve to learn a foreign language, viz. English. As already suggested, specific socio-territorial features can be used to differentiate the nation from other nations. ‘We’ are distinct from the ‘others,’ as far as “the other typically lives somewhere else, there” (Paasi, 1995, 14). The Vietnamese EFL textbooks put emphasis on specifying the territorial basis of the distinction. They link the national identity with territorial specificities. The increasing number of references to popular Vietnamese tourist sites, to which the results presented in Table 2.1 point, at the same time suggests that interactions with the others have become of greater importance to the curriculum developers. These

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‘imagined’ interactions with foreign tourists depart from the symbolic meanings, and especially the marketed beauty, of Vietnam’s own national territory.

2.2.2 Spaces of Experience We next discuss the different spaces in which national imaginaries are primarily anchored in school textbooks. In line with the existing literature (esp. Pries, 2005), we distinguish between three levels of experienced spaces, viz. the levels of the family household, the local community, and the nation-state. The distinction between these levels of experienced spaces allows us to specify and elaborate some of the ideas presented in the preceding section. Table 2.3 shows the relative visibility of each level or space of experience in the different EFL textbook series. As can be seen in Table 2.3, local communities—with local markets, local festivals, and ‘typical’ village structures—constituted the dominant space of experience until the 2010s. In the 1980s, about 82% of the spatial references included in the textbook material depicted local settings, while 11% depicted national settings and less than 7% family settings. In the 1990s, almost all of the spatial content was primarily situated in local community settings. In the more recent textbooks, however, several changes took place, with a remarkable increase in the references to national space. In the 2010s, the national setting has clearly become the dominant unit of reference, at 64% of the total of represented spaces of experience. The dominance of local spaces in the EFL textbooks of the late-twentieth century may reflect the long-standing importance placed on village or clan structures in Vietnam, which itself reflects the requirements of the traditional rice-growing agriculture in parts of the country (Le, 2015; SarDesai, 1992). Frequently, however, the local spaces are also explicitly linked with national value systems. The image of Teachers’ Day Celebration, as included in RE2000/11, 96 (see Excerpt 2.5), provides a paradigmatic example. The picture features a formal celebration on an official stage decorated with flowers, balloons, and banners. Someone is giving a speech, while uniformed school children are listening. The slogan on the banners is blurry, but ‘20/ 11’ or ‘November 20th’ is clearly visible: the national day to honour teachers and teaching. The ceremony reflects an important Vietnamese ritual, Tôn sư trọng đạo, Table 2.3 The presentation of experienced spaces in the EFL textbooks (Percentages) Societal spaces

1980s

1990s

2000s Regular

Advanced

Family

6.7

1.7

3.3

2.0

13.2

Local community

82.2

98.3

59.1

67.0

18.4

2010s

National society

11.1

0.0

29.8

29.4

64.0

Unspecified space*

0.0

0.0

7.7

1.5

4.4

* Students

are asked to specify the space their activities are located in.

2.2 Findings

33

which expresses high esteem for knowledge and study as well as strong respect for teachers and the task of instructing children. It depicts teaching as a sacred profession, insofar as teachers not only teach learners academic knowledge, but also teach them how to be morally just human beings, for which teachers themselves need to be good examples. A related Vietnamese proverb is Không thày đố mày làm nên, which literally means “without teacher(s) you would not be anything, nor become anything.”2 Family is another space of experience reflected in all series of the EFL textbooks, but it is less visible than the other spaces of experience. The image, which accompanies the reading passage about the traditional New Year Festival (Tết in Vietnamese) in RE2000/11, 90, for example, displays a (Northern) family gathering in the living room (Excerpt 2.6). The living room is decorated in a traditional style: a worshipping altar with a tray of (minimally) five kinds of fruits, a peach tree (on the left side of the picture) and a kumquat tree (on the right side). The image also shows three generations: two grandparents (or two people, who are old enough to belong to the generation of grandparents), two parents and two children. Both children are holding a red envelope, which traditionally contains ‘lucky money,’ which symbolizes health and prosperity. Moreover, the boy uses both of his hands to accept the red envelope. The act of receiving things from or giving things to an older person with two hands traditionally expresses respect and gratitude. Although this image thus expresses several traditional values, the mother’s wavy hairstyle is modern or ‘foreign’ rather than traditional. This combination probably reflects the process of negotiation between tradition and modernity not only within one Vietnamese family, but also throughout the entire nation. Thirdly, we also found many instances of an orientation to the national level. As shown in Table 2.3, there is a marked rise in engagements with the national level, especially in the latest series of EFL textbooks. Examples include national festivals and national monuments. Here the focus is not on the local instantiation of national traditions, but rather on the nation-wide meaning of specific sites. In a paradigmatic way, this orientation to the national level is personalized by the figure of President Hồ Chí Minh (HCM), who is mostly portrayed as the prototypical symbol of national identity in Vietnam. Even specific sites, which were originally closely linked with the President himself, such as his place of birth and of death, primarily serve the purpose of honouring the sovereignty of the Vietnamese nation-state. As can be seen in Table 2.4, the city named after him (Ho Chi Minh City) appears in all textbook sets. Two national worshipping places to honour him are included: the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum in Hanoi and the Hoang Tru Temple (the house where 2

It might be added, however, that textbooks published in the 2010s provide other scenarios, in which learners access many different sources of information, a process that also implies a shift in the role played by teachers. E2010/12–1, 54, for example, introduces a class called ‘Learning English with video.’ Learners here take a more active role, while teachers become the learners’ guides, helping them in the process of self-learning (Nguyen, 2018). Such changes, too, seem to suggest that the local community is becoming of less importance in the daily life of Vietnamese school children and Vietnamese citizens. We will return to didactic changes and their consequences in Chap. 5 of this book.

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Excerpt 2.5 Celebration of National Teachers’ Day (RE2000/11, 96)

he was born, now part of the Kim Lien Museum). President Ho Chi Minh is also known as ‘Uncle Ho’ (Bác Hồ, father’s older brother), a highly ranked person in the family hierarchy, and thus of special importance to all Vietnamese citizens. It should be added that Ho Chi Minh’s name and some of his sayings can be found in all kinds of public sites in Vietnam, such as state-run organizations, office buildings or public schools. Ho Chi Minh ideology (Tư tưởng Hồ Chí Minh) has been officially promoted since 1980 and the ideology of ‘Learning about and following the moral example of Ho Chi Minh’ has been promoted by the Politburo throughout the whole country since 2007. Following this ideology, his life and actions embody the history of resistance against foreign invaders, of struggle for the preservation of

2.2 Findings

35

Excerpt 2.6 A family living room in the North during the traditional New Year Festival (RE2000/ 11, 90)

Table 2.4 Sites linked to HCM or sites with victories attributed to HCM 1980s City named after HCM

12

HCM mausoleum

2

Hoàng Trù temple

1

Uncle Ho’s house

1

National victories led by HCM (with images)

4

Narratives about HCM

2

1990s 8

2000s

2010s

Regular

Advanced

9

5

1

2 2

1 1

inherited Vietnamese institutions and the gradual incorporation of modern thought in Vietnam’s national identity. The EFL textbooks reproduce this broader ideology. Ho Chi Minh has become the symbol of both the ruling party and the whole nation; he stands for the ideology of independence, unification and territorial integrity (Baulch et al., 2002; Ngo, 2012). Hence, we do not consider references to Ho Chi Minh as references to particular sites at the level of the family or the local community, but rather to the level of nation-building and national unification strategies (Excerpts 2.7 and 2.8). The nation is an “imagined community.” As the inhabitants of a particular territory can impossibly know most of their fellow citizens (Anderson, 1983), distinctions between those who belong and those who don’t, between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders,’

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2 National Identity and National Territory

Excerpt 2.7 Hồ Chí Minh and Hoàng Trù Temple (E1980/12, 75)

Excerpt 2.8 Hồ Chí Minh Mausoleum (RE2000/10, 169)

between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ are typically made on the basis of similarity in appearance, behaviour, communication style or thought (Palmer, 1999). This similarity is also the result of socialization processes, including learning processes that take place in schools. As the preceding analyses show, the Vietnamese EFL textbooks display a growing focus on the national level, which goes in certain ways at the cost of references to the local community level. Our analyses suggest that recent EFL

2.2 Findings

37

school textbooks, following broader ideological shifts, focus less on spatial characteristics at the local level but predominantly incorporate larger territorial spaces to highlight the importance of national unity and national unification within Vietnam. Whereas the use of maps visualizing Vietnam’s national territory has diminished in the past decades (see Table 2.1), more symbolic expressions of a territorialized national identity have clearly increased.

2.2.3 Sacred Places Building upon the foregoing analyses, which first directed attention to factual representations of the national territory and then to the presence of different spaces of experience, we now look at the depiction of sacred places in the Vietnamese EFL textbooks. Both religious and secular (national) values are able to give special, indeed sacred meaning to particular places, thereby underlying the social and cultural importance of the Vietnamese territory. As other communist states, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam is officially an atheist state. Religious freedom is formally allowed by the constitution, but the government imposes restrictions on organized activities of many religious groups. Religion does, however, still play a visible role in Vietnam (Gustafsson, 2010; Taylor, 2004). What is called Vietnamese folk religion has historically been structured by the doctrines of Confucianism and Taoism, as well as a strong tradition of Buddhism (called the three teachings or tam giáo). Most prominent among the recognized organized religions in Vietnam are Buddhism, Caodaism, Catholicism (which is especially strong in South Vietnam), and Islam. Table 2.5 presents an overview of the visibility of unambiguous symbols, viz. characteristic religious buildings, of the different religions in the EFL textbook series. As the figures in Table 2.5 show, Buddhist pagodas and practices are included in several textbooks. Of course, Buddhism has been present in the region for a long period of time (Gustafsson, 2010; Taylor, 2004). It has long received support from and given support to political leaders in the region, and Buddhist pagodas have been erected in almost every single village. Pagodas are indeed often seen as a symbol of Vietnamese villages (Nguyen, 2008). As already mentioned, Buddhism is also closely Table 2.5 The visibility of religious/belief sites in EFL textbooks (Absolute numbers) Religious sites

1980s

1990s

Regular

Advanced

Buddhist pagodas

1

0

7

2

1

Christian churches

0

0

1

0

0

Traditional belief sites

2

0

3

3

6

Other religious sites*

3

0

1

1

3

* Ho

Chi Minh temples are included.

2000s

2010s

38

2 National Identity and National Territory

related to Vietnamese folk religion and large numbers of non-believers partake in ritual practices in pagodas, particularly at special occasions or celebrations, such as death anniversaries (Tran, 2015). By contrast, Christian churches, which are often associated with the colonizing and oppressing powers, hardly appear in the textbooks. Only in the RE2000 textbook series, the presence of Christianity in Vietnam is made visible (RE2000/10, 171). Perhaps more important than the organized religions are references to less visible religious ideas, or to what Robert Bellah has called “civil religion” (e.g., Bellah, 1992; see also Vanderstraeten, 2013). Secular places can be imbued with a religious meaning (broadly defined). As already shown, the national territory plays a key role in the ways in which the history and identity of Vietnam are represented in the EFL textbooks. Places named after heroic figures, particular historical events or myths of national(-ist) importance are present in all textbook sets. This practice of name-giving connects the present to the past and current citizens to national ‘giants’ (Storey, 2002). It serves to remind the new generations of how their ancestors fought and at times sacrificed their lives for the nation. The ensuing veneration practices give a religious meaning to parts of the secular sphere. Many examples used in the school textbooks—such as the Hung Kings, the Trung Sisters or the Hoan Kiem Lake—evoke the golden ages of Vietnamese patriotism and tell the new generations that they are descendants of heroes. In other words, the school children’s homeland has been Vietnamese for generations. The nation’s territory is not just a place to live or to work, but it is an inherited, sacred place where ‘our’ soul and ‘our’ pride are continuously nourished (Malkki, 1992). Table 2.6 presents an overview of the evolution of the number of times sacred places appear in the successive textbook series. Even though Vietnam now presents itself as a non-religious and atheist nationstate, our analyses highlight the strong link between traditional, religious values and territory. Worshipping places in the scope of families, communities or at the national level appear in most textbook series (see Table 2.6). Only in the textbooks developed in the 1990s, such contents are absent. Altars and temples are places where prayers are offered to one’s ancestors; it is here that practices of ancestor veneration take place, that descendants honour their ancestors for their sacrifice (đức hy sinh) and express their filial piety to them (sự hiếu thảo) (Pettus, 2004). Altars and temples are places Table 2.6 Territorialized memories (Absolute numbers) Sacred places

1980s

1990s

2000s Regular

Traditional worshipping sites*

2010s Advanced

7

0

5

4

10 14

Places named after heroes/heroines

18

11

15

31

Mythical/historical sites

13

1

5

7

2

Politics-related sites (HCM worshipping sites, presidental palace, Hanoi …)

15

7

3

5

4

* Family

ancestor worshipping altars are included.

2.2 Findings

39

Excerpt 2.9 A couple bowing in front of a family altar as part of a wedding ritual (E2010/10–2, 16)

where people can connect to the ‘relevant’ others—both gods and human beings— in the other world. They are important symbols for families and communities—the symbols of safety, protection and moral values (Baulch et al., 2002; Ngo, 2012). These symbolic meanings are rooted in the belief that when persons pass away, their souls remain at home to protect the descendants and support them spiritually (Dinh & Sharifian, 2017; Shohet, 2013) (Excerpts 2.9 and 2.10). However, the sacredness of particular places not only results from links established between religious values and territory. It can also be the result of links with national myths and national values. To illustrate this, it suffices to refer to one of the most popular sites of Vietnam—Hoan Kiem Lake, a small lake and the oft-depicted symbol of the nation’s spirit of independence. It clearly illustrates that national memories can be attached to a specific site, thereby transforming this site into a sacred place. Hoan Kiem Lake is the most frequently depicted site in all five textbook series, with a total of 18 appearances (see Table 2.7). Hoan Kiem Lake, also known as Sword Lake, is in the centre of Hanoi, which is Vietnam’s capital city. Its significance comes from the legend of Le Loi, the Vietnamese Emperor and Founder of the Latter Le Dynasty (1422–1789). According to this legend, Le Loi had received a magic sword, named Heaven’s Will, from the Golden Turtle God (Thần Kim Qui), and, after the victory against the Ming invaders (China) in 1428, returned the sword to his God in the lake. Following the legend, the magic sword and thus godly intervention had allowed for the victory. Because the Golden Turtle God and the magic sword have since been hiding in the lake, they can also be called upon again to defend the nation against invaders (Ngo et al., 1993). In this light, the legend symbolizes the idea that the Vietnamese people are very powerful, and that a power as unrivalled as the power of the sword in Hoan Kiem Lake can be mobilized when the nation’s integrity is being threatened. More than any other place in Vietnam, the lake symbolizes the belief in national independence, as expressed in the Independence Declarations of Vietnam (Vuving, 2001; Salomon & Ket, 2007, 359). In Ho Chi Minh’s words: “The entire Vietnamese

40

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Excerpt 2.10 Hoan Kiem Lake and Turtle Tower (AE2000/10, 197)

Table 2.7 Images of Hoan Kiem Lake in the EFL textbooks 1980s (Lesson/Page)

Hoan Kiem Lake

1990s (Lesson/ Page)

2000s (Unit/Page) Regular

English 10

L1, p. 8, L2, p. 10, L4, p. 19, L7, p. 32, L11, p. 69, L11, p. 71

L10, p. 72, U2, p. 26, U4, L11, p. 80 p. 49, U15, p. 197

English 11

L6, p. 56, L6, p. 60, L7, p. 60

L8, p. 90

Advanced

U7, p. 91, U15, p. 204

2010s (Book/ Unit/ Page)

B1,U5, p. 64

people are determined to mobilize all their physical and mental strength, to sacrifice their lives and property in order to safeguard their independence and liberty” (Ho Chi Minh, 1945, 3). Also, the unity of the nation-state (quốc gia) for all the people of Vietnam (dân tộc) under the leadership of the Communist Party is frequently represented as a sacred good. Examples include heroic figures or historical events that were significant for Vietnam before the nineteenth century, such as Tran Hung Dao (E1980/10, 114;

2.3 Conclusion

41

E1990/10, 194) and the Trung Sisters (E2010/10–2, 46). Places or figures related to the twentieth-century history of the Vietnamese nation-state and its Communist Party include Phu Rieng (E1980/11, 133) and, as already mentioned, Ho Chi Minh City. Phu Rieng, a rubber plantation, is seen to be the place where communism originated in Vietnam in 1930. References to this site are used to suggest that Communism is the expression of the will of the entire population. Similarly, the renaming of the capital of South-Vietnam, from Saigon to Ho Chi Minh City, links the unification of the nation to the leading role of the Communist Party. In addition to the territorialized memories included in Table 2.6, the textbook series contain several other symbols of national unification, such as maps of the nation, the national anthem or flag, and references to Hanoi as the capital city of Vietnam (altogether 46, 33, 26, 32, and 23 instances in the successive textbook series). These symbols especially refer to the situation after the reunification in 1975. Under French rule, however, Vietnam was divided into three parts: Cochin-China in the north (Bắc Kỳ), Annam in the centre (Trung Kỳ), and Tonkin in the south (Nam Kỳ). Then, after the Geneva Agreement, Vietnam was divided anew; the territory north of the Seventeenth Parallel was governed by the Vietnamese Communist Party, while the government in the southern part had close ties with the West (1954–1975). But references to these divisions are not included in the textbooks. None of the terms used to indicate the different parts during the different periods of separation—such as Cochin-China, Tonkin, or South-Vietnam—are mentioned. All the names, which refer to territorial places locate these places in one, united nation. The underlying message is that there is only one nation-state of Vietnam, rather than, for example, South- or North-Vietnam, and that all inhabitants are citizens of a unified nation-state, regardless of the part of the territory they live in. Images of a united nation-state also invoke images of the sacredness of the land for which ‘our’ ancestors sacrificed themselves. To give meaning to these references, it should be considered that almost every Vietnamese family has lost at least one family member for the independence of the country since its conquest by the French Empire in 1858. There are 127,000 Vietnamese ‘Heroic Mothers’ throughout the country who have lost either their husbands and at least one child for the protection of the country. It should hence not come as a surprise that the land and specific characteristics of it are frequently presented as sacred, built upon the blood and life of previous generations of Vietnamese people. The territory, as it is represented in the EFL textbooks, is a territory imbued with moral meaning (Smith, 1991; Waitt, 1997).

2.3 Conclusion In the existing literature, it is often argued that representations of national identities serve to highlight the distinction between insiders and outsiders, between the individuals who belong to the nation-state and those who do not. The distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is based on the fact that ‘we’ live ‘here’ on ‘our’ national territory,

42

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while the others normally have to live somewhere else (e.g., Anderson, 1983; Paasi, 1995; Smith, 1991). Representations of national territory are thus intimately linked with ideas about national identity. In the empirical analyses presented in this chapter, we have looked at different socio-territorial identities, which are implicitly or explicitly represented in the Vietnamese EFL textbooks. We have first looked at how territorial elements have in different ways been linked with the survival and well-being of the population and the nation-state. While Vietnam’s territory is nationalized, many national characteristics are also territorialized or anchored within the national territory. Next, we have analysed changes in the presentation and representation of different spaces of experience, viz. the spaces of the family, the local community and the nation-state, and thereby pointed to the increasing prominence of the national level in the most recent textbook series. Third, we have given attention to the inclusion of sacred places in the EFL textbooks. Of special importance is the way in which the ancestors are honoured in the textbook series: they have lived on the same territory; their remains have been buried in it and thus have become part of it. For the curriculum developers, loyalty to the land includes loyalty to the previous generations, as well as the obligation to keep oneself safe and to care for the next generations. Vietnam is not like any other place in the world; its territory is the source of ‘our’ belongingness, of ‘our’ personal and national identity. The EFL textbooks seem to express a strong concern with the question of “understanding who we are” and “where we come from and where we are” (Penrose, 2002, 282; see also Smith, 1999). No doubt, this concern is related to both the distant and the recent history of Vietnam. The natural environment, and the ways in which it has in the past been cultivated and inhabited by the Vietnamese, plays a key role in this process of identity formation. The founding myths, which serve to legitimize the national community, often build upon accounts of ties to the land. We have also seen that representations of the national territory and its characteristics have moved away from mere conventional forms, such as maps, and towards more value-laden, moral forms. The national level has gained increased visibility in the textbooks; national belongingness is often accentuated. Moreover, internal divisions within the current nation-state, such as those between North and South Vietnam, are not represented in the textbooks. The focus is on ‘we’ are a nation (dân tộc) and live here on ‘our’ inherited and unified national territory. The social and ideological closure, of which the predominant territorial orientations in the EFL textbooks are an expression, may make sense in the light of Vietnam’s history. But, of course, the question is whether these internal-national orientations are also befitting to Vietnamese students, who want to learn English. Studying a foreign language is often an expression of a wish to widen one’s horizon to perform proficiently not only in the national setting, but also in wider, international environments (Pavlenko & Norton, 2007). As the predominant internal-national orientations of the EFL school curricula may be at odds with the motivation of students, one may wonder whether the Vietnamese curriculum developers should not aim at including more international perspectives in the Vietnamese school textbooks. A stronger international orientation may not be in line with dominant cultural concerns within Vietnam,

References

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but it may give support to and strengthen the motivation of the students, who take part in the EFL courses. In the next chapter, we look in more detail at representations of the ‘other(s)’ in these textbooks.

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Malkki, L. (1992). National geographic: The rooting of peoples and the territorialization of national identity among scholars and refugees. Cultural Anthropology, 7(1), 24–44. McCrone, D., & Bechhofer, F. (2015). Understanding national identity. Cambridge University Press. Ngo, S. L. et al. (1993). Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư—Complete annals of Dai Viet. Social Sciences Publishing House Hanoi. Ngo, D. T. (2012). Tín ngưỡng và văn hóa tín ngưỡng ở Việt Nam [Traditional beliefs and belief culture in Vietnam]. Youth Publishing House Hanoi. Nguyen, A. C. (2008). Ngôi chùa trong văn hóa ngưởi Việt ở Băc bô [Pagoda in Vietnamese culture in Northern Vietnam]. Vietnam National University (MA dissertation). Nguyen, T. L. (2018) Vai trò của nhà giáo trong thời kỳ cách mạng công nghiệp 4.0 [The role of teachers in the era of industrial revolution 4.0]. Retrieved from http://www.nhandan.com.vn/ giaoduc/item/35970302-vai-tro-cua-nha-giao-trong-thoi-ky-cach-mang-cong-nghiep-4-0.html. Paasi, A. (1995). Constructing territories, boundaries and regional identities. In T. Forsberg (Ed.), Contested territory (pp. 42–61). Edward Elgar. Paasi, A. (1996). Inclusion, exclusion and territorial identities. The meanings of boundaries in the globalizing geopolitical landscape. Nordisk Samhällsgeografisk Tidskrift [nordic Journal for Social Geography], 23, 3–17. Paasi, A. (1997). Geographical perspectives on Finnish national identity. GeoJournal, 43(1), 41–50. Paasi, A. (1999). Nationalizing everyday life: Individual and collective identities as practice and discourse. Geography Research Forum, 19(4), 4–21. Paasi, A. (2009). Bounded spaces in a ‘borderless world’: Border studies, power and the anatomy of territory. Journal of Power, 2(2), 213–234. Palmer, C. (1999). Tourism and the symbols of identity. Tourism Management, 20(3), 313–321. Pavlenko, A., & Norton, B. (2007). Imagined communities, identity, and English language learning. In J. Cummins & C. Davison (Eds.), International handbook of English language teaching (pp. 669–680). Springer. Penrose, J. (2002). Nations, states and homelands: Territory and territoriality in nationalist thought. Nations and Nationalism, 8(3), 277–297. Pettus, A. (2004). Between sacrifice and desire: National identity and the governing of femininity in Vietnam. Routledge. Poole, R. (1999). Nation and Identity. Routledge. Pries, L. (2005). Configurations of geographic and societal spaces: A sociological proposal between ‘methodological nationalism’ and the ‘spaces of flows.’ Global Networks, 5(2), 167–190. Rejai, M., & Enloe, C. H. (1969). Nation-states and state-nations. International Studies Quarterly, 13(2), 140–158. Salomon, M., & Ket, V. D. (2007). Đổi Mới, education and identity formation in contemporary Vietnam. In M. Lall & E. Vickers (Eds.), Education as a political tool in Asia (pp. 153–170). Routledge. SarDesai, D. R. (1992). Vietnam: The struggle for national identity. Westview Press. Shohet, M. (2013). Every day sacrifice and language socialization in Vietnam: The power of a respect particle. American Anthropologist, 115(2), 203–217. Skinner, N. A., & Bromley, P. (2023). Rights, conflict, and removal: Depictions of Indigenous groups in Californian and Texan history textbooks, 1836–2019. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 55(2), 203–222. Smith, A. D. (1991). National Identity. University of Nevada Press. Smith, A. D. (1999). Sacred territories and national conflict. Israel Affairs, 5(4), 13–31. Smith, A. D. (2002). When is a nation? Geopolitics, 7(2), 5–32. Sobe, N. W. (2014). Textbooks, schools, memory and the technologies of national imaginaries. In J. H. Williams (Ed.), (Re)Constructing memory: School textbooks and the imagination of the nation (pp. 313–318). Springer. Storey, D. (2002). Territory and national identity: Examples from the former Yugoslavia. Geography, 87(2), 108–115.

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Chapter 3

National Identity and Foreign Cultures

Abstract This chapter discusses how comparisons with other cultures are used to imagine national identity, as national identity is not only defined from within, but also from without, that is, through distinguishing and differentiating the nation and its traditions from other nations and their traditions. We look at the ways in which ‘others’ are represented in EFL textbooks and how the representations of the others serve to define and demarcate the Vietnamese national identity. Several perspectives are put to use. We distinguish between different types of ‘others,’ look at the representations of former enemies and other nations, and analyse the ways in which an (inter-)cultural awareness is stimulated. Altogether, our analyses show how the Vietnamese EFL textbooks no longer present English as a foreign language, which is spoken in a few nations (England, USA, etc.), and which is linked with the study of these nations and their cultures, but instead present English as the main international language in a globalizing world, which Vietnamese students need to acquire both to learn about the world and to express their own national identity in a global context. Keywords Representations of other cultures · Intercultural awareness · Vietnam · EFL textbooks

While the previous chapter has focused on the representation of Vietnam’s national territory and its national identity, this chapter addresses changes in the representation of foreigners or outsiders in the same EFL textbook series. We here direct our attention to how the ‘others’ are represented and how representations of the others serve to define and demarcate the Vietnamese national identity. National identity gains meaning through the contrast with others. In this sense, Anna Triandafyllidou (1998) has spoken of the “doubled-edged character of national identity,” “namely its capacity of defining who is a member of the community but also who is a foreigner” (1998, 593). National identity is not only defined from within, namely through putting emphasis on the social and cultural characteristics that people living within the same

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 T. D. Phuong and R. Vanderstraeten, The ‘Hidden Curriculum’ of Vietnam’s English School Textbooks, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-1196-3_3

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national territory share in common, but also from without, that is, through distinguishing and differentiating the nation and its traditions from other nations and their proper traditions. Against this background, we look in this chapter at the representations of the others in the EFL textbook series used in Vietnam. As mentioned in Chap. 1, Vietnam experienced important political changes in the last four decades. In the 1980s, when the oldest of the textbooks under study were produced, contact with foreigners or foreign cultures was highly limited. The situation changed in the 1990s, when US President Bill Clinton lifted the trade embargo and established full diplomatic relationships with Vietnam. In the past decades, Vietnam became able to participate in several regional and international organizations, including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). In part triggered by these political developments (Elliott, 2012; Fforde & De Vylder, 2019), the position of Vietnam in the international order and the position of English as international language in Vietnam have undergone rapid changes. The expectations which ensued from the changes in the broader context are having an impact on the Vietnamese school system. It may be argued that its school curricula in general, and its EFL textbooks in particular, display how Vietnam envisages itself vis-à-vis this broader context. In the next section, we first clarify the conceptual distinctions upon which the main part of our analyses relies. We discuss how comparisons with other cultures are used to imagine national identities. We also distinguish between types of ‘others,’ and, additionally, between the representations of former enemies and other nations. Afterwards, we present the findings of our textbook analyses. We look at the depiction of different foreign cultures in the EFL textbooks, but also analyse the ways in which an (inter-)cultural awareness is stimulated within these textbooks. Altogether, our empirical analyses show how the Vietnamese textbooks no longer present English as a foreign language, which is spoken in a few countries (England, USA, Australia, etc.), and which is linked with the study of these countries and their cultures, but instead present English as the main international or global language in a globalizing world, which Vietnamese students need to acquire both to be able to learn about other parts of the world and to express their own national identity to different, global audiences.

3.1 Concepts National identities are constructed identities; they are not natural or objective facts, but socio-historical accomplishments. They include statements about the ‘ownership’ of a particular territory, national myths and traditions, and so on. But they also distinguish between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ Citizens who belong to a particular nation are also (made) aware of other nations and their citizens or nationals. In this section, we explore and discuss in general terms the doubled-edged character of national identity and national culture in more detail. Given the fact that one of the major

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goals for teaching English as a foreign language is to make it easier for students to communicate their ideas and cultural understandings ‘internationally,’ there may be quite different reasons why particular cultural material can or cannot be used at particular points in time.

3.1.1 Cultures of the ‘Others’ The concept of culture is often used to highlight differences in time and space. In its Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, for example, UNESCO states “that culture should be regarded as the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, and that it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs” (2001, 4). UNESCO, moreover, adds that “this diversity is embodied in the uniqueness and plurality of the identities of the groups and societies making up humankind. As a source of exchange, innovation and creativity, cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature” (2001, 4). For sure, an important aim for UNESCO is to create and improve the conditions for sustained dialogue among cultures. But this definition and this approach also show that culture typically is depicted as the set of distinctive features of a particular nation-state, as national culture. In our common understanding, nations are expected to be characterized by certain cultural traditions. They are both expected to distinguish themselves from other nations based on some specific, distinctive cultural features, and to engage in a dialogue with these other cultural traditions (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2019; Williams, 2013). To critically elaborate on this idea, it is useful to distinguish between two complementary perspectives. On the one hand, national identity often is translated in terms of shared traditions or shared memories. This shared culture is supposed to establish the link between individual and nation. It is supposed to be the characteristic that binds the people on a historic territory together and that at the same time constitutes the essence of national identity. For Benedict Anderson, who defined the nation as an “imagined community,” it is self-evident that a common or shared culture “made the first national imaginings possible” (Anderson, 1983, 197). Even for Anthony Smith, whose work concentrates on the ethnic origins of the modern nations, identity is clearly conceptualized as cultural sameness. The members of the community are expected to have a number of cultural features in common, such as language and religion, which constitute the markers of their identity. The nation is a “cultural community” (Smith, 1991, 1996); acculturation is expected to homogenize the members of the community. In short, culture often comes with a national index, with a focus on (the awareness of) habits or traditions that are shared by all those who belong to a particular nation-state. Even if the existence of ethnic or cultural minorities on the historic territory of the nation-state is recognized, national identity is typically perceived in terms of cultural similarity. The nation and its population is said to hold together because of its shared culture.

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On the other hand, however, it also makes sense to point to the role of others and their culture(s) in the definition of national identity. The common idea of a world of nations leads to what may be called a dichotomous conception of the world. The national bond divides humanity into ‘we’ or ‘us’ and the ‘others.’ Belonging to a nation does not only imply knowing who ‘we’ are, but also recognizing who are the ‘others’ (Connor, 1993, 386). Individuals may define themselves as members of a national group based on shared cultural features, but the nation’s identity is also reinforced because these cultural features differentiate the insiders from the outsiders, those who belong from those who do not (but who belong to other nation-states). In this sense, national identity may be conceived as a double-edged relationship (Triandafyllidou, 1998, 593). On the one hand, it is inward-looking, it involves a certain degree of commonality within the group. It is based on a set of common features that bind the members of the nation together. On the other hand, national identity implies difference. Its existence presupposes the existence of ‘others,’ other nations or other individuals, who do not belong to the in-group and from whom the ingroup must be distinguished. In Triandafyllidou’s words, “national consciousness … renders both commonality and difference meaningful. It involves both self-awareness of the group and awareness of others from which the nation seeks to differentiate itself” (1998, 599). Of course, the differences can become relevant or meaningful in many different ways. The world is not flat. Not all other nations and all other cultures will have the same significance. Different kinds of relationships with the relevant or significant others may materialize. To approach these differences in a nuanced way, Triandafyllidou suggests distinguishing between types of significant others. She suggests, for example, to direct attention to the role of “rival nations,” i.e., nation-states which “challenge the territorial and/or cultural integrity of the nation from without” (1998, 602). As we have sketched before, the history of Vietnam and the Vietnamese nation-state is complex, not in the least because of its shifting relations and borders with other nation-states. For the purposes of our research, we will therefore have to pay attention to the complexities of this double-edged relationship, including the representation of the cultural features of (former) rival nations. In our view, school textbooks provide an interesting and privileged way to study the dynamics that are developed between the nation-state and the significant others, and the ways in which these dynamics have an impact on the articulation of national identity. Most probably, the authors of school textbooks will find themselves time and again confronted with specific challenges. Especially in the case of textbooks for learning foreign languages, whose goal often not only is to enhance communication with the others, but also to improve intercultural awareness and to create the conditions for a sustained dialogue among different cultures, various politically and culturally charged choices with regard to the representation of insiders and outsiders, of those who are expected to belong to ‘us’ and those who are expected to belong to other nation-states (and thus belong to ‘them’), need to be made—in overt or in hidden ways. If, for the purpose of nation-building, it is considered to be important for “‘our’ nation to look different from others” (Rauf, 2009, 106), it is also important to look

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in more detail at the ways in which the national differences are marked. While the representations of ‘others’ in school textbooks depict cultural diversity, they also sharpen national identity. While the locally produced textbooks highlight cultural sensitivities, they also position the nation in a particular way in the ‘world of nations.’ Given the growing prominence of English in the world, English textbooks are wellsuited to analyse this double-edged relationship. They entail many complexities of the relations with the ‘others.’ Before proceeding to our analysis of the representation of the others in the Vietnamese EFL textbooks, we will therefore briefly review the core findings of currently available research about shifts in the cultural representations included in textbooks for English as a foreign language.

3.1.2 Cultural Representations in EFL Textbooks What cultures are explored in textbooks for teaching English as a foreign language, and how are they explored? Foreign cultures can be presented in different ways, such as by focusing on their national heroes (Indira Gandhi, Eddy Merckx, etc.), national landscapes or monuments (terraced rice fields, the Eiffel tower, etc.), or national customs (the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca or Hajj, Black Friday, etc.). By focusing on particular people, for example, textbooks may intentionally or unintentionally convey particular images of other cultures. Within the field of textbook research, some approaches explicitly build on the previously discussed distinction between cultural identities. Cortezzi and Jin (1999), for example, have distinguished between three areas, namely the source culture (the culture of the students, as well as of the teachers and curriculum developers), the target culture (the culture of those nations, where English is the sole official language, such as the United States, Australia or the United Kingdom) and, finally, the international target culture (which includes a wide range of materials from a variety of cultures in English- and non-English-speaking countries around the world). Similarly, Braj Kachru and Yamuna Kachru have spoken of the spread of “three concentric circles of world Englishes” (Kachru, 1985, 12; 2006, 242). They have distinguished between the inner circle, the outer (or extended) circle and the expanding circle. In terms of the users, the inner circle refers to the traditional bases of English, i.e., the nations where it traditionally is the primary language (such as the United Kingdom and the United States). The outer circle involves earlier—often colonial—phases of the spread of English and its institutionalization in different nonnative contexts. This circle includes the regions where “(a) English is only one of two or more codes in the linguistic repertoire of such bilinguals or multilinguals, and (b) English has acquired an important status in the language policies of most of such multilingual nations” (2006, 242). Included in this large outer circle are nations such as Nigeria, Zambia, Singapore, and India. Since the end of the Second World War, the third circle, named the expanding circle, has further strengthened the position of English in the world. It builds, according to Kachru, on “a recognition of the fact that English is an international language, and that it has already won the race in this

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respect with linguistic rivals such as French, Russian and Esperanto” (2006, 243). In his view, the third circle is difficult to demarcate, but it encompasses a wide variety of nations, including Vietnam. In the educational systems of these nations, English has often become taught as second language. Seen in this light, it may then also be expected that the English textbooks in use in the public schools of these countries reflect the official position vis-à-vis the rapid international spread of English and the nations where English is the primary language (see also Kachru, 2005; Shin et al., 2011; Yamanaka, 2006). Several researchers have used these classifications to assess the English textbooks that are used in education systems in different parts of the world. In analyses of several series of commercially produced and internationally distributed English textbooks, for example, a strong focus has hitherto been put on the balances in the presentation or representation of source culture, target culture, and international target culture (Hardy, 2004). Findings of these analyses point to the dominance of cultural products and cultural perspectives that originated in the United Kingdom and the United States in these international textbook series (Gómez Rodríguez, 2015; Shin et al., 2011). Tajeddin and Teimournezhad (2015), for their part, have focused on the “hidden agenda” in the representation of culture in dialogues and reading passages in internationally and locally produced school textbooks for English as a foreign language used within Iran. They point to the difference between both types of textbooks: while most of the cultural elements embodied in the locally produced textbooks are culturally ‘neutral’ (in the sense that they do not clearly refer to any particular culture), the focus in the internationally produced textbooks is on international or intercultural elements, on the one hand, and the target culture, on the other. Only very few representations in the international EFL textbooks currently used in Iran are culturally neutral (Tajeddin & Teimournezhad, 2015). In recent years, several other scholars have also probed into the relative visibility of local culture, target culture and international culture in locally produced English textbooks. Kirkgöz and Agcam (2011), for example, have focused on English textbooks for primary education in Turkey, while García (2005) has looked at the international and intercultural aspects incorporated into the Bachillerato textbooks used in Spain. Similar research has been conducted about EFL teaching materials used in Asia, such as Ka-Ming Yuen (2011) on Hong Kong, Silvia (2015) on Indonesia, Asgari (2011) on Iran, Mahmood et al. (2012) on Pakistan, Kang-Young (2009) on South Korea, and Yamanaka (2006) on Japan. Still others have looked at the mismatch between the ‘cultural capital’ of students and the discourse that dominates in schools, especially in EFL classes. Phaisit Boriboon (2004), for example, argues that discourses in textbooks and other curricular materials that are disconnected from the students’ socio-cultural background can have adverse effects on the classroom experiences of these students, because such mismatches greatly reduce the meaningfulness of the tasks and topics with which the students are asked to engage. He underlines the importance of the interactions between the textbooks and students’ self-experiences (Liu, 2005; Zu & Kong, 2009). As mentioned before, some but not much research on the cultural representations in Vietnamese EFL textbooks yet exists. Nguyen (2002) and An (2002) have briefly

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explored the socio-cultural contexts that may have an impact on the learning outcomes of students in EFL classes. In more recent years, Thuy Ngoc Dinh (2016) and Dinh and Sharifian (2017) have looked into the development of “Vietnamese English.” Van Canh Le (2017) has studied the way in which themes, such as family relationships and environmental issues, are used to stimulate a “moral awareness” in three recent EFL textbooks, while Thuy Minh Nguyen has devoted attention to the “speech acts” with which Vietnamese EFL students learn “to communicate in a globalized world” (Nguyen, 2011). But, despite this research interest, analyses that critically discuss the representation of the different cultural areas in the Vietnamese EFL textbooks and take the shifting socio-historical and socio-cultural context into account are still under-presented to date. Of course, EFL textbooks are not the only source of information about foreign cultures. They play, however, an important role in providing high school students with knowledge about foreigners and foreign cultures. It should be stressed, moreover, that these textbooks have long held important, strategic positions in exposing students to foreign cultures as most EFL teachers in Vietnam’s public schools did not have first-hand knowledge of the (international) target culture. A survey conducted in 2006 among 337 EFL teachers from 41 high schools revealed that only 2.2% of the participants had taken part in one or more overseas training courses (Vân et al., 2006). For information about foreigners and foreign culture (and thus, indirectly, about some of the specificities of their own national culture), high school students frequently had to rely on textbook representations of the ‘others.’ It should, moreover, not be forgotten that the Vietnamese government has also imposed restrictions on access to foreign television channels and the internet. These facts make it particularly relevant to look at the nation-building strategies incorporated within these textbooks.

3.2 Findings As specified in Chap. 1, data for this study was collected from 19 school textbooks, which belong to five series of locally produced English textbooks for higher secondary school students in Vietnam. The textbook series have been developed and published in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. Our data thus allows us to address patterns of continuity and change over a relatively long period of time, viz. four decades. In Chap. 1, we also indicated that broader social and cultural contexts have an impact on the expectations which exist about school education in general and the EFL textbooks in particular. The way in which Vietnam was integrated within the ‘world of nations’ changed considerably during the period under study. After the end of the Vietnam War (as it is known in the USA and the West) or the American War (as it is known in Vietnam), North and South Vietnam were merged to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Vietnam became a member of the United Nations in 1977, although it remained internationally quite isolated until the 1990s. US President Bill Clinton’s visit to Vietnam in 2000 is often seen to mark the start of a new era

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for Vietnam (Elliott, 2012; Fforde & De Vylder, 2019). The development towards stronger integration and international openness, which is characteristic of the last decades, and which was reaffirmed by the visit of US President Barack Obama in 2016, serves as broader background for the textbook analyses presented in the sections below. As we will see, the world has also become a different place for substantial parts of the population in Vietnam due to the rapid diffusion of new communication technology. It should, moreover, be considered that global expectations with regard to intercultural education have changed. Since the early 2000s, it has become increasingly common to focus attention on the relevance of teaching resp. acquiring intercultural competences in and for a world characterized by cultural diversity (Byram, 2008; Kumaravadivelu, 2008). As underlined by UNESCO, for example, EFL teaching materials may nowadays be expected to promote intercultural understanding and intercultural tolerance among the young generations in all parts of the world (Pingel, 2010). This also implies that textbooks and other curricular materials should ‘empower’ students to inform others about their own culture and their own traditions by means of the English language (Hardy, 2004). Given the broader context in which they work, it seems reasonable to expect that expectations of this kind have also had an impact on the work of the curriculum and textbook developers in Vietnam. Hereafter we first sketch in broad, introductory terms how foreign cultures are depicted in the school textbooks. Following existing concerns in the literature on teaching foreign languages, we thereby look at the way people, cultural products and cultural practices are presented. Afterwards, we look in more detail at the representations of different cultural areas (target culture, international target culture and global culture) in relation to the representations of Vietnam’s national identity. Finally, we discuss how the representations of foreign cultures in the EFL textbooks aim to raise the intercultural awareness of Vietnam’s higher secondary school students.

3.2.1 A First Overview: People, Products, Practices To provide a first overview of the presentation of other cultures in relation to Vietnam’s presentation of self, we look at the way in which these cultures are brought to life. In line with the existing literature on foreign language learning (Bennett et al., 2003; Moran & Lu, 2001; Tomalin & Stempleski, 1993; Yuen, 2011), we distinguish between the inclusion or presence of people, products and practices. For sure, the distinction between these categories often is not clear-cut. For example, both people and products can be involved in practices (such as celebrating New Year). The distinction between these three categories is, however, useful for a first approximation of the ways in which foreign cultures have been and are represented in the EFL textbooks. While remaining close to existing analyses of EFL textbooks in a range of other countries, this overview also allows us to pave the way for more detailed analyses of the representation of others in the Vietnamese EFL textbooks.

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Many of the foreigners included in the Vietnamese EFL textbooks are ‘normal’ persons, who are engaged in activities at home, at school, at work, and so on. Fictional characters, who represent foreigners, such as characters in comic strips, are not often included. On the other hand, the textbooks also include internationally well-known people. Famous writers and scientists, as well as politicians and revolutionaries, appear in all the EFL textbook series, while celebrities in the fields of sports or art and entertainment have become increasingly popular. The exercise in E1980/12, 79 provides a typical example for the oldest textbooks (Excerpt 3.1); Excerpt 3.2 (RE2000/10, 147) and Excerpt 3.3 (E2010/12-1, 143), by contrast, are exemplary of the inclusion of ‘famous others’ in the most recent textbooks. The persons sketched in Excerpt 3.1 are William Shakespeare, Guglielmo Marconi, Michael Faraday, Ho Chi Minh, Vladimir Lenin, and Karl Marx. The persons on the top row were already introduced on preceding pages of the textbook. Lenin and Marx clearly did not need a special introduction; they were supposed to be known. Together with Ho Chi Minh, their faces used to embellish the walls of public buildings in Vietnam. They also frequently appeared in (other parts of) the oldest EFL textbooks. Political leaders of the Western, capitalist world were also included in these Vietnamese EFL textbooks. Implicitly, the world was divided between the ‘East’ and the ‘West.’

Excerpt 3.1 Sketches of celebrities (E1980/12, 79)

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Excerpt 3.2 Football stars in different World Cups (RE2000/10, 14)

Excerpts 3.2 and 3.3 show sport heroes. Excerpt 3.2 includes pictures of well-known football players, while Excerpt 3.3 focuses attention on the story of disabled people, who achieve success in sport. Both excerpts obviously differ from Excerpt 3.1. They not only shift attention from historical figures to contemporary heroes, but also focus on worldwide events in which Vietnam itself was able to participate. In this sense, they directly link Vietnam with some competitive structures characteristic of the contemporary world order. But these structures are not political or conflictual (East vs. West); they do not refer to geopolitical tensions in the world. The more recent EFL textbooks rather depict a rapidly changing world, characterized by cultural diversity (instead of sociopolitical divergences, dominated by a few political leaders). The quite detailed description in Excerpt 3.3 also prompts students to reflect on their own life story, and to engage in a conversation with classmates about the goals they have in life. Of course, it should be considered that the people, depicted in the textbooks, enable Vietnamese students to acquire some understanding about others, and the cultural world to which they belong (Hogg et al., 1995). While a ‘characteristic’ figure for a particular country might be a military general, “in another it might be a great religious leader or a saint” (Tomalin & Stempleski, 1993, 31). As such, the inclusion of particular images of particular foreigners unquestionably frames the cultural imaginary of these others in particular ways. The ways in which communist leaders are ‘downgraded’ in the more recent textbooks is also telling.

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Excerpt 3.3 An Australian champion in the Paralympic Games 2012 (E2010/12-1, 1)

Similar evolutions can be observed regarding the inclusion of cultural products. Task 2, outlined in E1980/10, 11, for example, is very similar to the exercise reproduced in Excerpt 3.1. It includes the image of the Big Ben in London, the Twin Towers in New York, the Kremlin Clock and St. Basil Cathedral in Moscow, and the Turtle Tower in Hanoi. The sketches of these towers are accompanied by fill-in exercises, which entail the names of several foreign cities and countries (London, New York, Iran and Russia) as well as of Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi in Vietnam. Altogether the task seems to highlight the cultural heritage represented by particular ‘national’ towers, but not much social or historical context is provided. In more recent

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EFL textbook series, however, it has become more common to use visual images to draw attention to specific forms of cultural heritage, and to ask students to search for more context and more information. Task 2 in Unit 15, which appears in RE2000/ 10, 159, constitutes a typical example. The task provides learners with a map and some basic information about New York City and London, such as data about year of foundation, population numbers, and total surface, but its main aim is to stimulate students to engage in a conversation about the specific characteristics of these two ‘global’ and officially English-speaking cities. Some of the information provided, such as the characterization of the people of New York City as friendly and open, and those of London as formal and reserved, is clearly intended to stimulate intercultural comparisons. Altogether, the foreign cultural products incorporated into the most recent textbooks are more diverse than those incorporated into the earlier ones. While the oldest textbooks focus on basic information and highly symbolic products (such as national monuments), the more recent ones also include references to specificities of national education systems, forms of entertainment (movies, music), or projects aimed at environmental preservation. In this sense, the more recent textbooks enable students to obtain a ‘modernized’ understanding of the others. Cultural practices, finally, also play a part in making up foreign cultures. Explicit presentations of such practices are often intended to help students perceive both similarities and differences between their culture and those of others. The practice sketched in E1980/11, 94 is exemplary (Excerpt 3.4). It depicts a room with a woman, a boy and a table, which is prepared for a birthday party. There is also a birthday cake with 16 candles and John’s name. The setting, with a dining table with plates, goblets, cutlery and some flowers, allows Vietnamese students to discern some information about cultural practices, such as western eating habits, which are different from local practices. In Vietnam, all the people gathered around the table traditionally take their food from the same plates, whereby they all use their own small bowl and chop sticks. Similarly, although individual birthdays were at that time celebrated in Vietnam, birthday cakes and candles were not familiar to most Vietnamese people in the 1980s and 1990s. This combination of differences and similarities is characteristic of most stories about foreigners and foreign practices in all EFL textbook series. While intercultural comparisons are not often explicitly strived for in the oldest textbooks, they become more prominent in the latest textbooks. For example, the lesson in AE2000/11, 93–94 first provides information about New Year’s celebrations in different parts of the world (including the USA, the Middle East and Vietnam itself) and then prompts students to reflect on the differences and similarities. Quite similarly, the tasks included in E2010/10-2, 23–24 ask students to actively compare different cultural traditions or ideals (see Excerpt 3.5). The focus is less on the details of specific practices (as in Excerpt 3.4), but more on the habits or styles characteristic of particular cultural traditions. In some cases, such open-ended tasks might even lead students to question the lasting relevance of their own, Vietnamese traditions (Shaules, 2007). Altogether, more attention is now given to the context within which practices or activities take place. In AE2000/11, 130, for example, the situation is introduced

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Excerpt 3.4 A birthday party next Sunday (E1980/11, 94)

as follows: “Mr. Chris Green, an environmentalist, is invited to talk to students of Le Loi High School about the effects of ecotourism. Listen to the first part of his talk and check.” Not only is information about the context often important, as the context or situation may determine whether an English term or expression is used properly (Lewis, 1980), but the examples also illustrate that the emphasis shifts towards learning about other cultures (instead of just learning English). For sure, the ways in which the Vietnamese EFL textbooks now depict various cultural features is not unique. Similar shifts can be found in EFL textbooks produced in Turkey and Indonesia (Kirkgöz & Agcam, 2011; Silvia, 2015). Concerns about the visibility of different cultural categories (people, products and practices), and about the balance between these categories, are now indeed turned into directives or guidelines, put forward to inform the development of new EFL textbooks. Textbooks are now often expected to convey the idea that students are part of a dynamic, global cultural field (e.g., Byram, 2008; Pingel, 2010). But these expectations, and the shifts which we already analysed, also raise the question of how the deeper layers of different cultures can be approached in the EFL textbooks (Moran & Lu, 2001). The preceding, brief discussion of representations of the cultures of the others calls for more refined analyses of the emphases and biases in the Vietnamese EFL textbooks.

3.2.2 Different Cultural Areas To further analyse shifts in the cultural representations in the EFL textbooks, we make use of the typologies introduced by Kachru (1985), Triandafyllidou (1998) and Cortezzi and Jin (1999). While we primarily distinguish between source culture, target culture, and international target culture, we also pay attention to the articulation of global issues in the Vietnamese EFL textbooks. We have thus added a global culture

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Excerpt 3.5 Intercultural comparisons, a Comparison of the traditions of gift-giving in the UK and Vietnam (E2010/10-2, 23) b Comparison of ideas of success in the US and Vietnam (E2010/ 10-2, 24)

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80 68.1

70 60

54.2

53.4

50.6

50 36.9

40 30 20

35.2 27.6

27.6 17.4

13.6

19.121.5

19.3

18.2

8.8

8.6

10

0.8

10.5

8.4

0.2

0 E1980 Source culture

E1990 Target culture

RE2000

AE2000

International target culture

E2010 Global culture

Chart 3.1 Different cultural areas presented in the EFL textbooks

category, which encompasses topics explicitly situated at the global level, such as specific ecological problems (like global warming) and specific organizations (like WWF, the Worldwide Fund for Nature). We look, more particularly, at the changes in the proportions with which the different cultural areas—source culture, target culture, international target culture, and global culture—are represented in the Vietnamese EFL textbook series. Applying the methodological principles outlined in Chap. 1, we enumerated and classified all explicit references to the different cultural areas in the different textbook series. In terms of their relative visibility, Chart 3.1 provides an overview of the representation of these cultural areas in the EFL school textbooks. Several historical changes can be highlighted. First, it is useful to point to the fact that the EFL textbooks of the 1980s and 1990s do not much refer to the learners’ source culture. The space devoted to foreign cultures was altogether relatively large compared to that devoted to the source culture (72.4% and 86.4% versus 27.6% and 13.6% respectively).1 The target culture (in the strict sense of the word) is clearly present in the oldest textbook series, published in the 1980s and 1990s (54.2% and 68.1% respectively), but these proportions are much lower in the three textbook series, produced in the twenty-first century. By contrast, the source culture has become more visible in the textbooks produced in the 2000s and 2010s. It makes up for 36.9% in the RE2000 series, 50.6% in the AE2000 series, and 53.4% in the E2010 series. Such choices were made more or less deliberately. The limited visibility of the source culture in the EFL textbooks of the 1980s and 1990s reflects the overall goal of the EFL school textbooks used in Vietnam during this period of time, viz. to target at “providing learners with some vocabularies, proverbs, grammar structures, everyday expressions as well as some knowledge of England and English people”

1

For reasons of readability, the term foreign culture(s) refers at times to both the target culture and the international target culture as distinct from the learner’s own culture.

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(E1980/10, 3).2 One gains the impression that the Vietnamese learners were expected and trained to speak English in a native-speaker-like way. To serve this goal, it is understandable that only limited space was given to elements of the Vietnamese source culture (England, 1982; Schumann, 1986). In the most recent textbooks, however, it is specified that the focus is on the “cultural characteristics of Vietnam and other countries in the world, especially English-speaking countries and countries in the region” (E2010/10-1, Foreword). The increasing visibility of the source culture in the more recent EFL textbooks may also reflect the importance that is now being attributed to the learner’s own culture for learning foreign languages. In recent decades, several studies have underlined the positive effect on learning outcomes when a foreign language is linked with the culture and the experience of the learners themselves (e.g., Alptekin, 1993; Baker, 2012; Boriboon, 2004). Others have also argued that the presence and use of the source culture does not have a negative effect on the learner’s level of English proficiency in international communications (e.g., Canagarajah, 2007). On this basis, it is in the scholarly literature suggested that local source cultures should be given a more prominent place in EFL school textbooks, wherever they are used. References to the global culture began to be included in the twenty-first century. In several regards, for example by giving attention to the rise of global tourism and of global initiatives to save threatened species (WWF), the latest EFL textbooks have added a global dimension to the culture represented on their pages. In these textbooks, this global culture makes up for between 8 and 9% of the total number of cultural references. Moreover, it is of interest that not only the proportion of references to the source culture and the global culture increased in the last four decades. As Chart 3.1 shows, the ratio between the target culture and the international target culture also changed considerably in the past four decades. In different ways, usage is made of the target culture (the cultural traditions in nations, where English is the primary language), on the one hand, and the much broader international target culture (the references to cultural traditions in non-native English-speaking nations), on the other. The space devoted to the target cultures has dropped sharply in the EFL textbook series: from 54.2% resp. 68.1% in the 1980s and 1990s to 10.5% in the 2010s. But the space devoted to the international target cultures has increased. Of all references to cultural areas, 17.4% resp. 18.2% were to the international target cultures (thus non-native English-speaking countries) in the 1980s and 1990s. Some divergences are visible between both E2000 series. The proportion increased to 35.2% in the RE2000 series, whereas it was 21.5% in the AE2000 series. In the textbooks of the 2010s, 27.6% of the cultural references are to the international target culture. For sure, the increase in the visibility of the international target culture is less outspoken than the decrease of the visibility of the traditional target culture. But it is nevertheless relevant to

2

Original Vietnamese: Sách nhằm giúp các em rèn luyện 4 kỹ năng… và cung cấp cho các em một số vốn từ, thành ngữ, mẫu câu, cách nói và một số hiểu biết về đất nước, con người v.v… của người Anh để các em có thể nói chuyện, trao đổi trong 1 số tình huống cụ thể…

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note that the international target culture has become more visible than the traditional target culture in the twenty-first century. To understand this evolution, it is not only important to take into account that English has become an international language, but it also needs to be underlined that English has become denationalized. English is no longer associated with one nation or a few nations (such as England, the USA, and Australia), and this process of ‘denationalization’ is challenging assumptions about the ‘ownership’ of English (McKay, 2003). It is this process of internationalization-cum-denationalization, which raises questions about the kind of context that might constitute an appropriate model for students who learn English. In a way, the fact that English is increasingly used across the globe has released the language itself from the constraints of the traditional English target culture. As a result, as the preceding analysis shows, the norms and values of its native speakers seem no longer to be of focal concern for the EFL textbook developers. English is now part of the school curriculum in Vietnam, but the language is increasingly presented to facilitate communication with others who speak English either as first or as foreign language. In this sense, the competences linked with teaching English in Vietnamese schools have become connected with ‘meta-cultural’ competences.

3.2.3 Former Rivals Against this background, we can now look more closely at the depiction of different foreign nations or cultures, and in particular at the depiction of former enemies or rival nations, i.e., nations with which Vietnam has been at war or in conflict in its recent history. These rival nations include China, Japan, France, the USA, and Cambodia. We first present a brief statistical overview. As Table 3.1 shows, the (former) rivals are not absent in the Vietnamese EFL textbooks. Especially in the early-2000s, in a period in which the international political climate was changing drastically for Vietnam, they are quite visible. In the AE2000 series, the number of explicit references to (former) rivals amounts to 120, which is almost as high as the number of references to all other foreign nations (128). But the ‘naked’ numbers in this statistical overview do not shed much light on the ways in which (former) rivals are portrayed in the EFL textbooks.3 To provide a ‘thicker description’ (C. Geertz) of the meaning evoked by these cultural representations, it is at the same time necessary to present a more detailed, qualitative examination of the related contents in the Vietnamese EFL textbooks. The following excerpts are some examples, which illustrate the representations used in the EFL textbooks. The reading paragraph in E1980/11, 47, reproduced in 3

Altogether, the former rivals are less visible than the other foreign nations, but this should not come as a surprise given the fact that the world is now divided into almost 200 national territories. It can thus be maintained that (former) rivals play a prominent role within these school textbooks.

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Table 3.1 The presentation of source culture and foreign cultures (Absolute numbers) Cultural areas

1980s

1990s

2000s Regular

2010s Advanced

Source culture

205

164

254

310

(Former) rivals

85

181

83

120

51

270

430

127

128

129

Other foreign nations

350

Excerpt 3.6, includes some—rather stereotypica—views about national dishes or national drinks at different places in the world, both in former rival nations (France and China) and other foreign nations (West-Germany, Britain, Sweden or Italy). While the English start their day with a full breakfast and the Germans are the world’s greatest beer drinkers, the French drink wine (but less so than the Italians) and the Chinese do not eat much sugar. A moral lesson is included. The British spend a lot of time at the dentist, because they are the greatest sweet eaters in the world. The second example, reproduced in Excerpt 3.7, is part of a set of tasks that deals with our attempts to discover the space (see RE2000/11, 166–175). Three astronauts—one from the USA, one from the Soviet Union, and one from Vietnam— are depicted next to each other. Pham Tuan, who was the first Vietnamese and the first Asian citizen in space, flew aboard the Soviet Soyuz 37 mission in 1980. The dominant sphere in Excerpt 3.7 is different from that of Excerpt 3.6, but the different nations are again presented as equals (see also Excerpts 3.4 and 3.5). Political tensions, related to the space race, the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, or between the “Western” or “First World” and the “Communist” or “Second World,” are again not discussed. For the textbook developers, it rather seemed important to present the different nations as equal. Both the topic, which is chosen, and the way in which it is represented in RE2000/11, suggest that Vietnamese students have reason to be proud of the accomplishments of their Excerpt 3.6 Eating habits around the world (E1980/11, 47)

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Excerpt 3.7 Astronauts from the US, Russia and Vietnam (RE2000/11, 166)

own nation and its leaders (just as the Russians and Americans may be proud of what they have been able to accomplish). The Vietnamese textbooks avoid depicting antagonistic relations; some geopolitical tensions are implicitly present in the oldest textbook series, but the more recent textbooks avoid including ‘one-sided’ images about particular nations or traditions. The dominant underlying image now is that of a world of nations, within which Vietnam has its proper place.

3.2.4 Raising Intercultural Awareness As we have seen, the orientation of the EFL textbooks turns somewhat away from the traditional target culture (Murayama, 2000; Reimann, 2009). Both the Vietnamese source culture and the international target culture have gained in visibility in the textbooks of the twenty-first century. Instead of being oriented to the particularities of the Anglo-Saxon part of the world, English in the school curriculum has become linked with goals such as intercultural exchange and intercultural understanding (which are at times also referred to as meta-cultural or multi-cultural competences). Such trends are also discussed in the broader literature on school textbooks. At times, a heightened sense of cultural sensitivity to ‘others’ and ‘otherness,’ as well as tolerance for cultural diversity, is now expected of school curricula. Andrew Reimann (2009), for example, has evaluated the EFL textbooks in Japan, and has particularly looked at the development of intercultural “awareness,” and thus at the inclusion of activities which actively seek to increase tolerance of others, otherness and cultural

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Table 3.2 Interaction situations with locals and foreigners (Absolute numbers) Interlocutors

1980s

1990s

2000s Regular

Local(s)-Local(s) Local(s)-foreigner(s) Foreigner(s)-foreigner(s)

2010s Advanced

10

6

9

5

20

9

4

5

11

19

75

54

4

4

9

diversity. He concludes, however, that most Japanese textbooks “fall short in meeting the specifications required for effective cultural awareness raising” (2009, 96; see also Murayama, 2000). A similar study about textbooks used in Pakistan has been conducted by Ahmed and Narcy-Combes (2011), who claim that the authors of these textbooks mostly fail to appropriately represent the cultures to which they do not belong. They speak of the “problem of cultural unfamiliarity” (2011, 33) and suggest that EFL textbooks should be the collaborative work of authors from each of these cultures. They not only argue against the use of internationally produced and marketed textbooks, but also call more generally for an increased sense of cultural sensitivity within EFL textbooks.4 In this light, we look hereafter in more detail at the ways in which the broader goal of stimulating intercultural awareness has been specified in the Vietnamese EFL textbooks. In addition to what we already observed about the representation of otherness, it is relevant to note that the more recent Vietnamese EFL textbooks at times present the world as a global village, with English as the modern lingua franca. Both the number of situations in which locals interact with one another in English and in which locals interact with foreigners have increased markedly in the twenty-first century (see Table 3.2). Interactions between locals and foreigners, such as those in which one asks for the way or discusses specific national customs, can be found in all textbook sets. In the latest series of textbooks, however, there is a sharp increase in the number of situations in which locals and foreigners jointly take part in certain activities or jointly discuss particular topics or persons. About 40% of the interaction situations depicted in the currently used EFL textbooks include both Vietnamese individuals and foreigners. Similarly, about 42% of the interaction situations in the most recent textbooks include locals who communicate with one another in English. It thus seems to have become natural to speak English in Vietnam; the textbooks now tacitly suggest that locals have to be able to express themselves in English. In the same period, the number of interactions between foreigners has decreased sharply: the decrease is from 75 out of 94 interaction situations in the E1980 series to merely 9 out of 48 situations in the E2010 series. Although the nationality of individuals is not always revealed, and although we are thus not able to code and count all individuals for this topic, most interaction situations in the textbooks of the 1980s and 1990s do not only seem to include English-speaking, but also, and more particularly, English people. Even in the more recent textbooks, one has the 4

See, for example, Xiong and Qian (2012) for related observations on EFL textbooks used in China or Syahri and Susanti (2016) on EFL textbooks used in Indonesia.

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impression that the foreigners, who communicate with one another, do have the same nationality (such as in the conversation about lifelong learning between “Angela” and “Grandpa” in E2010/12-2, 58–59). Altogether, however, the number of situations in which this ‘foreign’ world is as such represented in the EFL textbooks has decreased substantially (Excerpt 3.8). In addition, we can look at the ways in which cultural diversity is expressed (Weninger & Kiss, 2013). Although only one textbook unit is specifically devoted to the topic of “cultural diversity” (AE2000/12, 24–32), all textbook series contain text passages or exercises, which highlight the specificity of different cultures. Again, the more recent EFL textbooks contain more situations which explicitly direct attention to forms of cultural diversity. At times, these textbooks incorporate texts or tasks, which compare similar cultural events, such as the celebration of New Year’s Eve in countries like Spain, Portugal, Iran and Japan (e.g., RE2000/11). Table 3.3 provides

Excerpt 3.8 Communication between persons of similar national background in English (E2010/ 12-2, 58–59)

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an overview of the topics explicitly introduced to depict cultural diversity in the recent, i.e. the twenty-first-century, EFL textbooks (RE2000s, AE2000s and E2010s). The more recent EFL textbooks explicitly aim at stimulating an interest in cultural traditions, either by means of specific tasks or by providing space for students’ own projects on other cultures, or both. In Unit 3, presented in E2010/10-1, 33–35, for example, students are provided with some information (including visual images and audio fragments) about two folk music styles: Quan Ho singing in Vietnam and Dangdut, which is popular in countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia (Excerpt 3.9). The unit ends with a project, which requires students to do some work of their own. They are asked to search more information about the origin, influence, and popular success of both music styles, and to express their own attitudes towards this style of folk music. In other units, an alternative strategy is used. As we have already seen, the more recent EFL textbooks at times present foreign cultural practices, but prompt students to reflect on the specificities of their own tradition. In E2010/10-2, 16–17, for example, students are asked to discuss weddings in Vietnam after having been confronted with a conversation between Kevin and Maria about wedding customs in their hometown. Excerpt 3.5 (above) provides another example from the same textbook (E2010/10-2). In this sense, the number of situations which stimulate cultural comparisons (and intercultural awareness) is higher than the explicit comparisons listed in Table 3.3. Raising intercultural awareness is thus important to the textbook developers in Vietnam as well. The recent textbook series depart from the legitimacy of cultural diversity; they do no longer depart from the existence of political or cultural cleavages. They typically also include topics, which have links with developments within the learners’ source culture. For the textbook developers, English is the foreign language with which the different world cultures can be related. This is an important message embedded within these EFL textbooks.

Table 3.3 Cultural comparisons in the recent EFL textbooks Cultural topics

EFL textbooks

National references

Family values

RE2000/12

USA, China, India

New Year traditions

AE2000/11

Spain, Portugal, Iran, Japan

Population trends

AE2000/11

Britain, China, France, Spain

Traditional dances

E2010/10

Cambodia, Lao, Indonesia

Opinions about success

E2010/10

East and West

Higher education

E2010/11

USA, UK, Singapore

Family trends

E2010/11

USA, UK

City life in the future

E2010/11

England, Japan, USA

City life now

E2010/12

South Korea, Indonesia

3.3 Conclusion

69

Excerpt 3.9 Cultural comparison (E2010/10-1, 33)

3.3 Conclusion This chapter has looked at the ways foreign cultures have been represented in the EFL textbooks used in Vietnam since the 1980s. After having clarified the basic concepts and distinctions upon which our analyses are built, we have first looked at how different cultures can be brought to life, viz. via people, products and practices. Afterwards, we have distinguished between source culture, target culture, international target culture, and global culture. Given the fact that the EFL textbooks serve to facilitate and enhance communication with others (foreigners), we have finally looked at the kind of intercultural awareness that is aimed for. In sum, the expectations about the representation of other cultures have changed substantially during the last decades. In the 1980s, these textbooks were (still) predominantly supposed to represent facts about the target cultures, which would enable students to integrate well into English-speaking communities. Students were expected to learn to communicate in a native-speaker-like way (England, 1982; Schumann, 1986). At the end of the twentieth century, the central role of the target cultures in curriculum materials began to be questioned, however. In a period in which English was becoming an international language in and for the “expanding circle” (B. Kachru, 1990), it also became relevant to incorporate inter- or transcultural material in EFL textbooks (Kramsch, 1998; Prodromou, 1992; Pulverness, 1995). Our analyses indicate a corresponding shift in orientation in the Vietnamese EFL textbooks: the visibility of the traditional target cultures has reduced greatly over time, while more attention has been directed to both the local source culture and other foreign cultures (international target culture and global culture). This shift reflects the changing role of English as a global language in a globalized world, even if specific

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global themes, such as world organizations and world problems, still only occupy a small place in the EFL textbooks. If, as has Triandafyllidou (1998) has argued, national identity is “double-edged” by nature, and if the “external others” constitute the other side of national identity, it can be concluded that the EFL textbooks now present Vietnamese high school students with a more dynamic understanding of the world they live in. While the differences between nations and cultures operate as point of departure, these textbooks are mostly oriented towards the goal of intercultural communication. But one may question whether the cultural topics represented in these textbooks provide the Vietnamese secondary school students with an adequate view of the world they live in. The emphasis seems too much on the peaceful coexistence of different nations and cultures, and too little on the inequalities and tensions within our world.

References Ahmed, F., & Narcy-Combes, M. F. (2011). An analysis of textbooks from a cultural point of view. TESOL Journal, 5, 21–37. Alptekin, C. (1993). Target-language culture in EFL materials. ELT Journal, 47(2), 136–143. An, N. T. H. (2002). Cultural effects on learning and teaching English in Vietnam. Language Teacher Kyoto Jalt, 26(1), 2–6. Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities. Verso Books. Asgari, A. (2011). The compatibility of cultural value in Iranian EFL textbooks. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2(4), 887–894. Baker, W. (2012). From cultural awareness to intercultural awareness: Culture in ELT. ELT Journal, 66(1), 62–70. Bennett, J. M., et al. (2003). Developing intercultural competence in the language classroom. In D. Lange & M. Paige (Eds.), Culture as the core (pp. 237–270). Information Age Publishing. Boriboon, P. (2004). ‘We would rather talk about plaa raa than hamburgers’: Voices from lowproficient EFL learners in a rural Thai context. Retrieved from: academia.edu. Byram, M. (2008). From foreign language education to education for intercultural citizenship. Multilingual Matters. Canagarajah, S. (2007). Lingua franca English, multilingual communities, and language acquisition. Modern Language Journal, 91(Focus Issue), 923–939. Connor, W. (1993). Beyond reason: The nature of the ethnonational bond. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 16(3), 373–389. Cortezzi, M., & Jin, L. (1999). Cultural mirrors: Materials and methods in the EFL classroom. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Culture in second language teaching and learning (pp. 196–219). Cambridge University Press. Dinh, T. N. (2016). Culture representation in locally produced English textbooks: A case study of Vietnam. Korea TESOL Journal, 12(1), 133–152. Dinh, T., & Sharifian, F. (2017). Vietnamese cultural conceptualisations in the locally developed English textbook: A case study of ‘Lunar New Year’/‘Tet.’ Asian Englishes, 19(2), 148–159. Elliott, D. W. (2012). Changing worlds: Vietnam’s transition from Cold War to globalization. Oxford University Press. England, L. (1982). The role of integrative motivation in English as a second language. Paper presented at the Annual Convention of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Honolulu.

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Schumann, J. H. (1986). Research on the acculturation model for second language acquisition. Journal of Multilingual & Multicultural Development, 7(5), 379–392. Shaules, J. (2007). Deep culture: The hidden challenges of global living. Multilingual matters. Shin, J., et al. (2011). Presentation of local and international culture in current international Englishlanguage teaching textbooks. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 24(3), 253–268. Silvia, A. (2015). The representation of culture in English textbooks prescribed for high schools in Indonesia. Indonesian Journal of English Education, 2(1), 1–16. Smith, A. D. (1996). Culture, community and territory: The politics of ethnicity and nationalism. International Affairs, 72(3), 445–458. Smith, A. D. (1991). National identity. University of Nevada Press. Syahri, I., & Susanti, R. (2016). An analysis of local and target culture integration in the English textbooks for senior high school in Palembang. Journal of Education and Human Development, 5(2), 97–102. Tajeddin, Z., & Teimournezhad, S. (2015). Exploring the hidden agenda in the representation of culture in international and localised ELT textbooks. Language Learning Journal, 43(2), 180– 193. Tomalin, B., & Stempleski, S. (1993). Cultural awareness. Oxford University Press. Triandafyllidou, A. (1998). National identity and the ‘other.’ Ethnic and Racial Studies, 21(4), 593–612. Vân, H. V. et al. (2006). Đổi mới phương pháp dạy tiếng Anh ở trung học phổ thông Việt Nam [Changing English teaching approaches in high schools in Vietnam]. NXB Giáo dục. Weninger, C., & Kiss, T. (2013). Culture in English as a foreign language (EFL) textbooks: A semiotic approach. TESOL Quarterly, 47(4), 694–716. Williams, R. (2013). Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society. Routledge. Xiong, T., & Qian, Y. (2012). Ideologies of English in a Chinese high school EFL textbook: A critical discourse analysis. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 32(1), 75–92. Yamanaka, N. (2006). An evaluation of English textbooks in Japan from the viewpoint of nations in the inner, outer, and expanding circles. JALT Journal, 28(1), 57–76. Yuen, K.-M. (2011). The representation of foreign cultures in English textbooks. ELT Journal, 65(4), 458–466. Zu, L., & Kong, Z. (2009). A study on the approaches to culture introduction in English textbooks. English Language Teaching, 2(1), 112–118.

Chapter 4

National Identity and Gender Identities

Abstract “Imagined” national identities are linked with gender identities, and vice versa. Images of national identity shape the ways in which citizens are expected to perform gendered roles, and gendered identities help to shape and distinguish specific national identities. Gender equality is constitutionally guaranteed in Vietnam since 1945. Different legal and social norms encourage the equal treatment of women and men in all domains of life. Against this background, we examine how female and male roles are specified in a variety of social settings in Vietnam, and in particular in family settings. We show how gendered expectations continue to exist in many domains. Although the EFL textbooks depict at times rather progressive images of Vietnam, our analyses also show that men are often presented in ways that give them individuality and autonomy. While women and men are depicted as fulfilling domestic duties, women take up more domestic chores than men. Women have to “excel at work, [and] be perfect at home” (Giỏi việc nước – Đảm việc nhà). Our analyses of the EFL textbooks illustrate that this double responsibility imposes a double burden on modern women in Vietnam and therefore also stands in the way of women’s empowerment. Keywords Gender identities · Hidden curriculum · Vietnam · EFL textbooks

In the broad stream of publications on gender, some attention has in the past decades been paid to the relation between the construction of national identity and gender identities (e.g., Ignatieff, 1994; Mayer, 2012; Oakley, 2016; Walby, 2000; YuvalDavis, 1997). People are confronted with a variety of social contexts and social expectations; they are often forced to build their own gender identity in and through the process of dealing with these diverse expectations (e.g., Cameron, 1998; Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 2013). Social expectations, which are promoted within a specific nation through mass media or public institutions, such as schools, play a role in the construction of a person’s gendered identity. In turn, gendered identities also contribute to national identity. To underline the ways in which gender and nation are informed and constructed by each other, Nira Yuval-Davis, for example, speaks of “nationed gender and gendered nations” (1997, 33). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 T. D. Phuong and R. Vanderstraeten, The ‘Hidden Curriculum’ of Vietnam’s English School Textbooks, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-1196-3_4

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Vietnam has undergone the influence of several cultural traditions and related moral codes, including Buddhism, Confucianism and, more recently, Communism (e.g., Dao, 2002; Nguyen, 2016; Pettus, 2004; Slote, 1998; Wells, 2005). Especially under Communism, as defended by the Communist Party of Vietnam under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh in 1930, the focus on gender equality has been strong. Already in 1930, the first credo of the Communist Party of Vietnam stipulated that “men and women have equal rights” (nam nữ bình quyền) (Ho Chi Minh, 2000, 1). Following the wars for independence and the rise to power of the Communist Party, this doctrine was incorporated into a range of laws that had to ensure gender equality in the nation, such as freedom of marriage and divorce, full suffrage, and equal pay for equal work for both sexes. In the 1980s a two-child policy was officially introduced in Vietnam. As the more severe one-child counterpart in China, this policy was formulated to stem the rapid population growth. Parents were and still are encouraged to have no more than two children. The official family-size goal is “one or two children.” To promote family planning, this policy is often depicted as contributing to national welfare, family happiness and “women’s liberation” (giải phóng phụ nữ) (Goodkind, 1995). In this context, several initiatives were undertaken to counteract gender imbalances and enforce gender equality, including the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women in 1982, the Marriage and Family Law of 2000, the Law on Gender Equality of 2006, the Law on the Prevention and Control of Domestic Violence of 2007, and the National Strategy on Gender Equality for 2011– 2020. The Law on Gender Equality (2006) explicitly tries to provide the legal basis for “eliminating gender discrimination, creating equal opportunities for men and women with regard to socio-economic and human resource development in order to reach substantial equality between men and women, and establishing and enhancing cooperation and mutual assistance between men and women in all fields of social and family life” (Article 4).1 Hence, women and men have to be treated as equal in all domains of life, including education, the labour market, participation in politics, family life, sexuality and reproductive decisions. On this legal basis, campaigns for gender equality have had positive results. In education, for example, women and men equally participate at the higher secondary level (Tran, 2012). The proportion of women who acquired bachelor’s or master’s degrees in the period from 2006 to 2010 was around 49.9% and 41.1% respectively. However, only 22.4% of the Ph.D. degrees were awarded to women, and only 18% of the appointments at the level of (Associate) Professor were for women (Bao Thi Nguyen, 2016). While gender equality thus seems ensured until the bachelor’s degree, the gender gap rapidly increases for the higher academic levels and positions (Do & Brennan, 2015).

Điều 4: Mục tiêu bình đẳng giới là xoá bỏ phân biệt đối xử về giới, tạo cơ hội như nhau cho nam và nữ trong phát triển kinh tế - xã hội và phát triển nguồn nhân lực, tiến tới bình đẳng giới thực chất giữa nam, nữ và thiết lập, củng cố quan hệ hợp tác, hỗ trợ giữa nam, nữ trong mọi lĩnh vực của đời sống xã hội và gia đình.

1

4.1 Concepts

75

Such discrepancies can also be seen in other domains. In leadership positions, men continue to dominate in Vietnam. According to a UNDP report, the proportion of women in the National Assembly and the local People’s Councils has fluctuated between 24 and 27%, respectively 22% and 26%, during the period from 1999 to 2016. Also, women are ill represented in management functions in the national academies (including 31 institutes for the social sciences and 24 institutes for science and technology), especially within the fields of science (8%) and technology (14%). Up to the year 2009, all top management positions were held by men (Munro, 2012). According to a report of the World Bank (2011), moreover, the average salary of women was 25% lower than that of men in 2005, while women spend 0,7 h extra per day to household work, childcare excluded. Although, in short, significant improvements have been made regarding gender equality in Vietnam, gender differences still remain quite visible in different domains of life. In this light, we look in this chapter at the ways in which school textbooks are gendered. We look at the relation between the national context in which they function and the gender identities they propagate, both explicitly and tacitly. In many different regards, school textbooks are seen to constitute an effective vehicle for inculcating specific values and norms. Against this background, we analyse in this chapter historical changes in the representations of gender identities in the EFL textbooks, which are used nation-wide at the higher secondary school level in Vietnam. We look, more particularly, at changes in the ways in which the EFL textbook series present gender differences and either explicitly or implicitly promote particular gendered identities.

4.1 Concepts We start with a brief discussion of the theoretical concepts, which are of importance to this chapter, although it should be added that we use these concepts as they are now commonly defined by international organizations, such as UNESCO. Gender equality currently is an important concern in the world polity. The frameworks developed by these international organization often also include tools to revise textbooks (see Pingel, 2010). In recent years, quite some researchers have moreover looked at the ways in which these guidelines have been implemented in a wide variety of school textbooks. We here cannot provide a full overview of the global literature on the gender identities included in school textbooks, but we conclude this section with an overview of available scientific research on gender identities and gender stereotypes in EFL textbooks used in nation-states of the ‘outer’ or ‘expanding’ circle of the English language (Kachru).

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4.1.1 Gender and Related Concepts It should first be reiterated that gender and sex are considered to be different (Diamond, 2002; Mayer, 2012), although they may mutually interact (Banerjee, 2005). While sex refers to the biological differences between men and women, “gender is a social and cultural construct, which distinguishes differences in the attributes of men and women, and accordingly refers to the roles and responsibilities of men and women. Gender-based roles and other attributes, therefore, change over time and vary with different cultural contexts. The concept of gender includes the expectations held about the characteristics, aptitudes and behaviours of both women and men (femininity and masculinity)” (UNESCO-Bangkok, 2009, 23). In line with this definition, we believe that the concept is useful for analysing how commonly shared practices legitimize discrepancies between the sexes (ibid.; see also OECD, 2020). In this light, gender equality refers to the equal valuing within Vietnam (or any other nation-state) of the similarities and the differences of men and women, and the roles they play within different social contexts. It is, according to UNESCO, based on women and men being full partners in different contexts (their home, local community and society). Based on this inclusive definition, “gender discrimination refers to any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of socially and culturally constructed gender roles and norms which prevents a person from enjoying full human rights” (UNESCO-Bangkok, 2009, 26; see also Ramirez et al., 2006; Suárez, 2007). Gender roles are “social and behavioral norms that, within a specific culture, are widely considered to be socially appropriate for individuals of a specific sex. These often determine differences in the responsibilities and tasks assigned to men, women, boys and girls within and outside the private sphere of their household” (UNICEF, 2017, 5). Some authors also speak of gender stereotypes instead of gender roles, but these concepts do not differ much in meaning. Gender stereotypes, according to a common definition, are the “culturally shared assumptions and expectations about sex differences in abilities, personality traits, activities, and roles” (Weinraub et al., 1984, 1493). Most of the concepts are in fact not only recommended as descriptive terms by international organizations, such as UNESCO, but are also used to make evaluations and direct efforts to improve gender equality, especially through the education system. Moreover, the use of gender-neutral concepts is nowadays explicitly recommended by many scholarly organizations. Altogether it is evident that gender neutrality is an idea, which is backed up by many powerful organizations within the current world polity (Swiss, 2012; True & Mintrom, 2001). It should therefore not come as a surprise that a number of researchers have already looked at the ways in which different school textbooks do or do not adhere to these guidelines.

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77

4.1.2 Gender-Related Contents in EFL Textbooks From existing research, we know that textbooks are used to organize activities in gendered ways, both inside and outside classroom settings (Sadker & Zittleman, 2010; Wood, 2012). It is also widely assumed that the gender-related contents included in textbooks have a strong impact on the students or learners, who have to use these textbooks (see, e.g., Blumberg, 2007; Gershuny et al., 1977; Otlowski, 2003; Stanley, 2001). Of course, the influence may go in different directions. Users can tacitly internalize or critically react to the textbooks’ gendered representations. They can accept or resist the gendered expectations communicated by the textbooks. Some scholars even seem to hope that the inclusion of stereotypical gender images may motivate textbook users to think critically about gender-related issues and develop a greater awareness of gender equality (Jones et al., 1997; Rifkin, 1998; Sunderland et al., 2000; Swann, 1992). Mostly, however, it is expected that the gendered characters, which are included in school textbooks, are instrumental in suggesting how men/women have to behave and how they ‘normally’ will be assessed by others (e.g., DeZolt & Hull, 2002; Lott & Maluso, 2002). Often gender identities, included in textbooks, are also part of particular national projects. Explicitly and tacitly, they may play a key role in national imaginaries and reflect or inspire certain expectations about the gendered ‘order’ within the nation-state (e.g., Brugeilles & Cromer, 2009a, 2009b; McConnellGinet, 2003). Moreover, the presentation of gendered identities in EFL textbooks, which intend to help students communicate with foreigners, may profoundly impact the students’ understanding of both their own and other national cultures (Ebadi et al., 2015; Rifkin, 1998). Discussions of the representation of gender roles or stereotypes in EFL textbooks have started to gain prominence in the 1970s. Both internationally used EFL series and locally produced ones have attracted quite some scholarly interest, but most studies have hitherto focused on the presentation of gender-related issues in internationally used and widely marketed EFL textbook series, such as Headway, Hotline, Face to Face, Look Ahead, Contact, English File, Interchange, or New Person to Person. Many of the latter studies highlight the ‘thoughtful’ or ‘careful’ representations of gender identities in the international textbooks. For example, Söylemez (2010) highlights the diversity of adjectives which are used to describe the physical appearance, the personal characteristics and the emotional states of both women and men in Face to Face and New English File, and especially underlines the neutrality regarding feelings and emotions in the latter series. Jones et al., (1997, 469) indicate the “encouraging level of gender fairness” in several EFL textbook series including Headway Intermediate, Hotline Intermediate and Look Ahead 2. Similarly, Healy claims that Touchstone Book 2 “has succeeded in avoiding gender bias” (2009, 9). However, quite some studies also uncover the persistence of gender biases or sexist views in some of these school textbooks. Giaschi (2000), for example, has studied the images contained in a range of international EFL textbook series, including Headway and 4th Dimension. His findings indicate that these images are often quite outspoken

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in terms of reproducing infamous gender stereotypes: men are represented as strong and active, but women as submissive and fashion-oriented. Ghorbani (2009) reports quite similar findings. Gender representations in locally produced and used EFL textbooks have also attracted interest from scholars all over the world. There are now, for example, studies on gender-related contents in locally produced and locally oriented EFL textbooks in countries such as Iran (Bahman & Rahimi, 2010; Jannati, 2015), Turkey (Aydınoğlu, 2014), Japan (Mineshima, 2008; Otlowski, 2003), Indonesia (Yansyah, 2018), Jordan (Nofal & Qawar, 2015), and Pakistan (Khurshid et al., 2010). Although most of these studies do not follow the same line of inquiry and focus on different aspects and/ or different time periods, their main findings point in the same direction, viz. the (latent) presence of gender biases and forms of gender inequality in nearly all of these textbooks. It is worthwhile to articulate some conclusions from these studies in more detail. First, men are more visible than women in the EFL textbooks. Measured in terms of the number of appearances, women are less visible in the EFL textbooks analysed in the studies of Mineshima (2008), Bahman and Rahimi (2010), Jannati (2015), and Yansyah (2018). In the English textbooks for the secondary school level in Pakistan, female characters are “mostly invisible” in both the visual and textual content (Khurshid et al., 2010, 436). Second, this imbalance is not just evident at the level of the total amount of references to women and men, but also appears at the level of the roles or responsibilities attributed to women and men. The results from a study of EFL textbooks in Nigeria by Mustapha (2012) are quite like those obtained by Aydınoğlu (2014) and Khurshid et al. (2010); these studies show that a broader variety of roles is open to men. Moreover, the activities and responsibilities for women and girls are mostly situated indoors, while men and boys are often portrayed in a variety of roles in both indoor and outdoor settings. Third, several scholars also criticize the use of sexist language in EFL textbooks. Examples include the study of Pattalung (2008) on EFL textbooks used in Thailand, and the analyses conducted by Bahman and Rahimi (2010) on EFL textbooks used in Iranian secondary schools. In their analyses of the EFL textbooks used in Pakistan, Khurshid et al. (2010) conclude that the social status of women or girls is overwhelmingly depicted as being inferior to that of men or boys. Regarding Japan, research provides a mixed image. Kato (2003) and Mineshima (2008) indicate gender biases in some visual images and texts, and Otlowski (2003) points out that women are mainly depicted in the role of homemakers, caregivers and mothers. However, it is also maintained that Japanese EFL textbooks generally display a balanced representation of gender roles or gender identities. In her analyses of 48 EFL textbooks, each containing an average of 10 lessons, Kato (2003), for instance, identified 75 topics (out of 567 topics, thus about 13%), which deliberately promote gender equality, including stories revolving around female protagonists, women depicted in adventure stories, women facing difficulty and disease, and sexual discrimination. Likewise, Mineshima (2008, 121) points to the “finely balanced appearances of both genders … in the numbers of male and female characters, their utterances and their first appearances” in Birdland Oral Communication

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79

I.2 On this basis, he concludes that women and men are treated almost equally in picture representations. Despite certain limitations, such as presenting women in ways “that no longer accurately represent their role in society” (Otlowski, 2003, 50), gender-related issues seem on the whole to be included in quite balanced ways in the EFL textbooks produced and used in Japan. Overall, however, the existing scholarly literature seems to indicate that the presentation of gender identities in the internationally produced and marketed EFL textbooks is more balanced and less discriminatory than that in the locally produced and used EFL textbooks. There clearly still exist differences between world culture and national culture(s). In Vietnam, gender-related issues in textbooks in general and EFL textbooks in particular started to attract attention from the authorities in the late 2000s. In 2009, UNESCO and the Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam (MOET) undertook a project titled “National textbook review and analysis from a gender perspective, including piloting teacher-training programs to incorporate gender equality issues in line with the Law on Gender Equality and the Law on Domestic Violence Prevention and Control.” Technical assistance was provided by UNESCO’s International Bureau of Education (IBE). For the primary school level, the findings indicate that the curricula and textbooks contain topics intended to raise gender sensitivity and gender equality, such as situations in which both female and male characters participate on an equal basis in joint activities in the same environment. However, the curricula and textbooks also contain evidence of gender bias (men, for example, are often depicted as the decision-makers and the pillars of their families) and gender stereotypes (women are often depicted while carrying out domestic tasks or in caregiving jobs, such as teacher or nurse, while men are depicted as boss or manager). Altogether, the pupils in the Vietnamese primary schools are thus confronted with topics which seem both sensitive and insensitive towards gender issues at the same time (Do et al., 2009). In 2011, as part of the project titled “Gender issues in Southern Vietnam in the context of rapid social changes: research, education and community life,” which was carried out by the Southern Institute of Sustainable Development, the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences and the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, textbooks for the main subjects in general education in Vietnam (from grade 1 to grade 12) were analysed. This part of the project, known under the title of “Exploring the gender dimension in textbooks of Vietnam’s National Education System,” was executed by Tran and associates (Tran, 2012). These researchers used a quantitative approach to analyse 76 textbook volumes, including three volumes of English textbooks for the lower secondary level and three textbooks of Regular English published in 2000s 2

“Firstness” or “first appearances” refers to the order in which two nouns paired for sex or gender are mentioned, such as Mr. and Mrs., son and daughter, brother and sister, or husband and wife. Traditionally the masculine word often comes first. Such automatic ordering can be seen to reinforce the second-place status of women, but Mineshima concludes in his study of the Japanese EFL textbooks that “both genders are provided with almost the same chances to be the first if slightly in favor of females, which could be interpreted as another indication of equal treatment of the genders” (2008, 125).

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(RE2000) for the higher secondary level. The results show that the Vietnamese textbooks are not well-balanced regarding gender. Male characters are more visible than female characters, although differences exist regarding subject area. Compared with other subjects, Tran concluded, “textbooks of science and of English language turn out to have the most quantitatively balanced gender proportion” (2012, 55). He also found that women are mainly depicted in household contexts, with such roles as wife, mother or grandmother. The frequency with which women appear in professional roles is lower than that for men, and the range of professions in which women appear is also smaller than that for men. Of the intellectual professions in which women are depicted, teaching makes up for 80% (Tran, 2012). In other words, important parts of the content of the textbooks used in secondary education in Vietnam do not seem to contribute to a fair gender balance (Murru, 2018; Vu, 2010; Werner, 2009). Apart from these two officially sponsored projects, not much other research has been published on gender representation in the school textbooks used in Vietnam. We only know about a few studies in this field, viz. a study on gender stereotypes in story textbooks for primary pupils by Phuong Anh Vu (2008) and one on gender stereotypes in Vietnamese language textbooks by Thi Huong Nguyen (2014). Both studies focus on the primary school level, and both highlight discrepancies between the representation of women and men (especially the higher status of men, the wider range of jobs open to men, and the portrayal of women in household settings doing household work). Nguyen (2014) even claims that in these language textbooks, men appear as the source of national progress and development, while the role of women is limited to that of wife and mother. Women are also expected to ‘satisfy’ others by means of their (physical) beauty and other ‘feminine’ characteristics. To our knowledge, nobody has hitherto looked at historical changes in the representation of gender identities in the Vietnamese school textbooks. By focusing on gender identities in the Vietnamese EFL textbooks, this chapter aims to fill this gap. We hereafter explore how these identities are linked with representations of national identity.

4.2 Findings For this purpose, we look at both the textual and visual contents in the 18 volumes of EFL textbooks used in the Vietnamese public secondary schools in the past four decades. Before we present the results of our textbook analyses, we start with a brief methodological note. Afterwards we provide an overview of the results of our analyses. We move from a brief numerical summary of historical changes in the visibility of female and male characters to more qualitative, in-depth analyses of the imbalance in the representation of female and male characters. We look at the variety of roles in which women and men appear and the different gendered models with which students can identify (Oakley, 2016; Williams, 2014). Because, as mentioned, women are often confined to household settings in Vietnamese textbooks, we also

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81

deal with the depiction of gendered roles in these settings. In the final section, we provide a brief summary of our results.

4.2.1 A Note on Methodology To code the different gendered identities, we have applied the guidelines recommended by Brugeilles and Cromer (2009a, 2009b), which specify the approach proposed by UNESCO’s International Network for Research into Gendered Representations in Textbooks (Pingel, 2010; UNESCO-Bangkok, 2009). These guidelines are also applied in other studies of English textbooks, such as those undertaken by Otlowski (2003), Ghorbani (2009), Bahman and Rahimi (2010), and Barton and Sakwa (2012). The findings of our analyses can thus easily be compared with those of other studies. We already presented our general methodological principles in Chap. 1. In addition, we here distinguish between individual characters (such as a person, a personal pronoun, a family role, etc.) and a group of gendered characters (whether specified in words, such as “husband and wife,” or in visual material, such as pictures or drawings of nuclear families). We treated each section of the course material as a single unit and coded each gender-related character in each unit individually. As nothing indicates that certain characters reappear in different units or lessons, we treated the characters in the different units as different ones. The name “Tom,” for example, is used in altogether seven units in the E2010 textbook series, viz. in E2010/10-1 (once), E2010/11-1 (three times), E2010/11-2 (once) and E2010/12-1 (twice), but because there is no indication that “Tom” here refers to the same character, we coded each of these different units. In the case of visual material, we used the following approach. If the same character appears in different parts of the same unit, for example in different boxes of a short comic strip, it is coded only once. If, however, the same character appears in different contexts, each of these contexts is analysed as one unit. Moreover, in comic strips which contain images and text in bubbles, the bubbled text is seen as part of the picture, and the bubbled text and image are together treated as one appearance. The individual characters are classified on the basis of gender into two categories: female or male. As previously mentioned, the gender diversity in the Vietnamese EFL textbooks is not so large as to include explicit signals that could be attributed to homosexual or transgender identities. Groups have been coded as male-only, female-only, or mixed-gender. To analyse gender equality in the Vietnamese EFL textbooks, we have combined this classification with a number of other classifications. In the following, we look at the articulation of gender identities in different roles, different activities, different settings, and different professions. We also look at the inclusion of celebrities because this viewpoint allows us to analyse the agency attributed to different gendered characters. Although our main emphasis is on presenting long-term, quantitative analyses, we also try to give meaning to the quantitative results by situating them within the broader socio-cultural environments.

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4.2.2 The Visibility of Women and Men To obtain a broad overview of gender representations, we first quantitatively examine historical changes in the visibility of female and male characters. We then look in more detail at the ways in which the gendered characters are visible to the textbook users. For this purpose, we distinguish between main or principal characters, on the one hand, and side or minor characters, on the other. The main character is the character around whom the story revolves, whereas supporting characters typically receive less attention. In most textbooks, the principal characters are normally part of the course material which “is most likely to be studied, whether in class with the teacher or by the pupil as homework” (Brugeilles & Cromer, 2009b, 23). Accompanying tasks or exercises often re-affirm the central position of these characters. Main characters are thus more visible than supportive characters—and also seem to present role models with which students may identify. To give an overview of the visibility of gendered characters, we draw a distinction between presentations of individuals and of groups—whereby groups are identified in the textbooks by means of plural nouns (such as women or men) or images of at least five individuals. Although it is at times argued that the socialization effects are stronger when learners are confronted with group identities (e.g., Leaper & Friedman, 2007), Chart 4.1 shows that the EFL textbook developers in Vietnam have mostly used individual characters to present or illustrate the curriculum content students need to learn. Chart 4.1 also shows that men outnumber women. The imbalance is highest in the E1980 textbook series, where male individuals appear more than twice as much as female individuals (300 times or 65.2% of the total number of gendered characters vs. 137 times or 29.7% of the total), but it is also visible in the content of the later textbook series (the numbers are 517/409, 281/233, 263/163 and 299/195 for men and women in E1990, RE2000, AE2000 and E2010 respectively).3 The dominance of male characters can easily be illustrated at the level of single lessons, such as Lesson 19 in E1980/10, 102–105. This lesson consists of seven tasks: Reading (one task), Practices (three tasks, numbered 1 to 3) and Homework (three tasks, numbered 1–3). Four of these tasks (Practice 1 and 2, Homework 1 and 3) contain grammatical exercises—around ways to ask and tell the time in English— without gender-related content. In one of the three others (Reading), a female character appears in a letter which begins with “Dear Mum.” In the same task, a male character appears as well, viz. as “Uncle John,” but men appear at the same time as the principal characters in Practice 3 and Homework 2. Here their visibility is particularly strong: Martin’s daily time schedule in Practice 3 is illustrated by means of eleven images, which show him in different activities (see Excerpt 4.1), and Walter 3

Despite some differences, our results are quite like those obtained by Tran (2012). The differences mainly ensue from the fact that Tran does in part study other EFL textbooks. Tran’s study includes samples from EFL textbooks for lower secondary education (3 volumes) and higher secondary education (3 volumes of RE2000), while our study provides content analyses of the EFL textbooks used in higher secondary schools. Our study looks, on the other hand, at the long-term evolution of the value systems in these textbooks (from the 1980s to the present), whereas Tran only focuses on textbooks used in the early 2000s.

4.2 Findings

83

600

517

500

409

400 300

281 233

300 200 100

263

195

163

137

299

72 1 5 17

2 16 9

12 12 24

15 18 21

12 12

0 1980s

1990s

RE2000s

AE2000s

2010s

Series of EFL Textbooks Individual women

Individual men

Man-only groups

Mixed-gender group

Women-only groups

Chart 4.1 Gendered identities in the EFL textbooks (absolute numbers)

Moaney is the main character in Homework 2, whose daily activities students are asked to work with. Almost the entire curricular content of this lesson is structured around the life of male characters. As already indicated, Chart 4.1 also contains an overview of the number of times that groups are included in the different textbook series. Single gender groups, whether female-only or male-only ones, rarely appear. The frequency with which mixed-gender groups appear is a little higher, with the exception of the E1990 series. Mixed-gender groups are most often found in the E2010 series, where they appear in 72 units, which is about six times the number of appearances of the single-sex groups. If we limit our analyses to gendered characters in the role of principal character, we see again that women are generally outnumbered by men, although the discrepancies are less outspoken now (Chart 4.2). The gap is largest in the E1980 textbook series,

Excerpt 4.1 Describe Martin’s activities in the following pictures (E1980/10, 103–104)

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4 National Identity and Gender Identities 167

180 160

140

140

139

120 100 80 60

74

74

58

86 65

94 75

40 20 0 E1980

E1990

RE2000

AE2000

E2010

Series of EFL textbook Female

Male

Chart 4.2 Protagonists by gender (absolute numbers)

where the number of male protagonists is more than twice as high as that of the female protagonists (58 vs. 140). On the other hand, the number of female and male protagonists is exactly the same in the RE2000 series (74 vs. 74). It should be added, however, that male and female main characters often appear side by side. Some examples are provided in Excerpt 4.2. In a reading task in E1990/11, 15, for example, a female character (Diana Pye) and a male one (Koji Yamashita) formally appear as equals (Excerpt 4.2b). These examples counterbalance the quantitative discrepancies, which Charts 4.1 and 4.2 show, in at least some respects. In short, both female and male characters are frequently used to convey specific curriculum content in the school textbooks, but men are clearly more visible. When we confine the analysis to the characters that are central to the various curriculum units, the difference remains in place, but weakens. Students are more often demanded to take the role of male characters than that of female characters. Forms of gender inequality thus (continue to) exist in the Vietnamese EFL textbooks. In the most recent textbooks, however, mixed gender groups are more often portrayed. The idea behind this shift probably is to enhance a positive feeling about (particular representations of) both genders and to focus on their complementarity.

4.2.3 Legal Equality, Sociocultural Inequality Let us now look more carefully at different forms of gender (in-)equality. We first turn to the ways in which gendered identities are linked with different settings. We therefore focus both on the frequency with which gendered characters are depicted in different settings and on the activities they are engaged in. We distinguish between three sites: the household, the study or work environment, and other

4.2 Findings

a

85

b

c

Excerpt 4.2 a Women and men work together in the field in E1980/10, 45, b a brief CV of a woman and a man in E1990/11, 15, c a mixed-sex group in an outdoor activity in RE2000/11, 12

public sites, such as sport centres, parks, (super-)markets, and so on. While discrimination based on gender is legally forbidden in each of these sites, gender biases may nevertheless occur. Social norms may discriminate based on gender. Women or men may be presented as spending their time primarily in particular sites (such as their household)—and not in others. Women or men may also be expected to take up particular ‘feminine’ resp. ‘masculine’ tasks and responsibilities—and avoid others. The distinction between the three sites thus enables us to analyse the textbook presentations of gendered identities in more depth (Kurfürst, 2012). The findings presented in Table 4.1 reveal that both women and men are often depicted in all three of the aforementioned sites (family, study/work, and other public settings). Of course, it should be remembered that men are more visible than women in all textbook series. But efforts are made to present female and male characters in different spaces, doing different things. Women and men are depicted in various activities, including professional activities, household duties, and social interchanges. Several interaction effects can be discerned, however. Career-related activities are included in all textbook series, for example, but, in the 1980s and 1990s, women are mostly presented as taking up professional duties in work environments, whereas men are depicted as pursuing such activities both at work and at home. In the most recent decades, the 2000s and 2010s, only very few gendered characters are depicted in professional activities in family or household settings. Not surprisingly, women are more often presented as taking up domestic duties than men. They are, moreover, not only depicted in domestic activities within their household, but also outside this context, such as shopping in supermarkets, or taking their child to the doctor. Men often appear in household settings, but they are here

76

9

55

Others (eating, sleeping…)

TOTAL

15

3

Career-related activities

*

26

15

14

45

Others

TOTAL

79

38

0

52

15

5

Domestic duties

15

37

Social 11 communication

40

TOTAL

Entertainment

14

Others

Unidentifiable spheres are excluded.

Other public sites (entertainment, playing fields, markets …)

26

Career-related activities

12

41

17

Entertainment

8

26

Domestic duties

Sites related to Domestic duties professional life Entertainment

Family sites

1990s

RE2000s

AE2000s

2010s

2

2

14

14

12

5

0

3

4

54

7

20

22

28

8

20

51

5

2

22

22

92

18

27

47

49

14

35

61

3

12

33

13

7

7

2

0

2

8

1

0

6

1

34

11

10

12

30

0

30

25

1

0

15

9

36

9

10

17

42

2

40

20

1

3

10

6

22

22

10

0

10

13

1

0

8

4

38

8

22

8

37

0

37

15

2

1

5

7

48

9

22

17

50

1

49

6

1

0

5

0

6

6

15

0

15

5

0

0

5

0

53

29

15

9

71

1

70

69

13

2

18

36

80

38

24

18

78

0

78

65

13

5

26

21

21

21

45

0

45

15

1

0

9

5

Female Male G.Mixed Female Male G.Mixed Female Male G.Mixed Female Male G.Mixed Female Male G.Mixed

1980s

Table 4.1 Activities by gender in different spheres (absolute numbers)*

86 4 National Identity and Gender Identities

4.2 Findings

a

87

b

Excerpt 4.3 A woman’s activities in different spheres and with her husband at home (RE2000/12, 162)

often engaged in ‘lighter’ types of activity, such as watching television, playing games, or other types of entertainment. In public sites, men are also more associated with entertaining and social activities. Women participate much less in such activities in public sites than men, especially in the oldest textbook series (E1980 and E1990). Although the gap narrowed significantly in the AE2000 and RE2000 textbook series (38 vs. 48 and 34 vs. 36 times resp.), we cannot speak of a historical shift as it widened again in the E2010 series (53 vs. 80) (Excerpt 4.3). Women and men are equal before the law in Vietnam—and the EFL textbooks obviously respect this principle. But this legal equality goes along with forms of sociocultural inequality. The way gender identities are presented in the EFL textbooks is traditional. Men do less housework than women, even though husband and wife are generally expected to have a full-time job and support their family financially. This traditional value pattern is historically rooted in what is called Vietnamese folk religion and Confucianism, which tie domestic duties to women. It is still widely accepted in present-day Vietnam by women and men alike (see Franklin, 2000; Ngan Binh, 2004; Schuler, 2006; Shohet, 2017), but it is also supported by value systems, which have broader, global influence (e.g., Folke & Rickne, 2020; Oakley, 2016). Within the private household setting, men seem to invest more time and effort in forms of entertainment than in ‘real’ housework. From a sociological point of view, it can be added that male characters are given more options to enjoy or develop their own individual interests. Men are more often depicted in activities associated with individuality, whereas women are often expected to fulfil an entire range of household duties and to take care of their family members.

4.2.4 Gender and Agency Against this background, we now focus on gender in relation to social influence. We look, more particularly, at the presence of women and men in a variety of professions, their involvement and visibility in decision-making networks and the broader cultural

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influence they may have as so-called celebrities (who receive attention because they are celebrities). The findings presented in Table 4.2 show that both women and men appear in a wide variety of positions. Efforts are made to depict women and men as equals. They are both depicted in less-skilled, manual jobs (as farmer, labourer, etc.) and in highskilled ones (as doctor, chemist, etc.). They also both appear as scientist, politician, fire fighter, or astronaut. The school textbooks introduce students to successful men, such as Louis Pasteur, Michael Faraday and Nelson Mandela, but also to successful women, such as Marie Curie and Indira Gandhi. The tacit message is that professional success does not (have to) depend on gender. The textbooks try to motivate students to aspire to a successful professional position, irrespective of gender characteristics. In this light, it should be added that all textbooks tacitly emphasize success in the labour market. Women and men are presented as being successful in their work— whatever this work or this profession is. It is highly uncommon to find women or men depicted in the state of unemployment or as “stay-at-home mom” (housewife) or “stay-at-home dad” (for details, see Table 4.5 supra). Yet, gender differences do evidently exist. First, male characters more often appear in professional activities than female characters. Men appear from two to almost five times as often as women in professional roles. Even in the most recent textbook series (E2010), this difference is still outspoken. Second, nearly all the most powerful or influential positions are taken by men. As shown in Table 4.2, almost all decisionmaking positions in the economy and in politics are male. In the E1990 series, for example, eight male politicians appear in 10 different units (they include Mahatma Gandhi, John F. Kennedy, V.I. Lenin, Napoleon, George Washington, Ho Chi Minh, an English politician named Jim, and the UN General Secretary, whose gender is indicated by the possessive pronoun “của ông” or “his”). Female politicians, by contrast, only appear in three different units: Margaret Thatcher appears twice and Indira Gandhi once. It should be added that the discrepancies are much less outspoken in the E1990s than in the E1980 series, where the figures are 20 vs. 2. Excerpt 4.4 provides an illustration taken from the RE2000 textbook series. The academic world is depicted in an analogous way. Male scientists clearly outnumber their female colleagues. The gap is smallest in the RE2000 series, where male scientists appear only twice as often as female scientists. It is most outspoken in the E1980 series. In altogether 25 units 10 male scientists are mentioned in this series (Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Ivan Pavlov, James Watt, Mikhail Lomonosov, Louis Pasteur, Guglielmo Marconi, Pierre Curie, and Michael Faraday). By contrast only one female scientist, viz. Marie Curie, is included, albeit in three different units. Also, cultural work is a male prerogative: writers, music composers and painters are majorly male. In the RE2000 and E2010 textbook series, all these cultural professionals are male. In short: as not many women are depicted in decision-making positions, whether in the fields of politics, science or the economy, access to such positions may also be seen to constitute an exception for “the second sex.” We might conclude that the EFL textbooks do not suggest that such positions are ‘really’ open to female students. The very few times that very few women are depicted in decision-making positions

4.2 Findings

89

Table 4.2 Women and men depicted in specific occupations (absolute numbers) Jobs

1980s

1990s

RE2000s

AE2000s

2010s

Female Male Female Male Female Male Female Male Female Male Actor

0

2

4

7

2

1

5

5

2

10

Astronaut/ pilot/explorer

0

2

0

6

2

15

1

3

1

0

Boss/CEO

0

3

1

13

0

4

1

11

0

6

Composer/ writer/painter

2

19

5

13

0

10

1

21

0

17

Cook/ labourer/ farmer

0

2

2

8

2

2

0

4

2

3

Doctor/ dentist/ chemist

0

4

6

5

0

4

2

4

4

8

Engineer/ architect

0

2

1

10

0

0

0

2

0

1

Journalist/ translator/ photographer/ tourguide

1

2

2

3

1

1

0

0

2

1

Nurse/ shopkeeper/ attendant/ librarian/ hairdresser

4

2

13

4

1

1

3

0

5

0

Office staff

1

0

3

3

0

0

0

1

2

0

Police/army officer/ firefighter

1

4

1

9

0

3

0

1

2

2

Politician

2

20

3

10

2

4

2

7

1

9

Porter/driver

0

1

0

3

0

0

0

0

0

0

Royalty

2

3

0

2

2

3

0

2

0

1

Scientist/ professor

3

25

2

9

2

4

3

16

2

11

Sports figure

0

1

1

1

4

13

5

25

2

3

Teacher

1

2

10

5

3

0

5

1

7

3

Unemployed/ housewife/ husband

3

0

5

0

0

0

0

0

4

1

TOTAL Range of occupations (*)

20

94

59

111

21

65

28

103

36

76

9

16

15

17

10

13

10

14

12

13

(*) Unpaid work, such as volunteering or domestic work, is not included.

90

4 National Identity and Gender Identities

Excerpt 4.4 A nation’s leader is male or female (Asian Leaders in RE2000/12, 176)

suggests that these women have to be admired for their exceptional performances, and that their trajectories do not constitute examples which female students are likely to match. A closely related theme is the inclusion of gendered celebrities as the locus of “formative social power” (Marshall, 2014, 51). Textbook developers often seem to use celebrities as a kind of ideal-type, as persons who have accomplished something which textbook users may aspire to themselves (Duits & van Romondt Vis, 2009; Marshall, 2014; Stevenson & Zlotnik, 2018). The inclusion of gendered celebrities thus affects students’ perception of their position in society, of their social identity. In this sense, the celebrities in the EFL textbooks can be expected to influence students’ views on (the social careers and social visibility linked with) femininity and masculinity. The celebrities depicted in the textbooks include both women and men, active in different social fields. Typically, women and men, who have gained fame in the same field, are introduced side by side in the same lesson, unit or task. For example, world famous scientists, such as Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Louis Pasteur and Marie Curie, are presented together in E1980/12, 60, while Ho Chi Minh is coupled with the two Trung sisters in AE2000 (AE2000/11, 91 and AE2000/12, 186).4 Britney Spears 4

The Trung sisters (Vietnamese: Hai Bà Trưng, literally “Two Ladies [named] Trung”) were military leaders, who revolted against the first Chinese domination of Vietnam (ca. 40 AD). They have come to be regarded as the heroines of the first independence movement of Vietnam.

4.2 Findings

91

and Michael Jordan also appear next to one another in the same task (AE2000/10, 85–86). As the figures in Chart 4.3 show, however, male celebrities remarkably outnumber their female counterparts. The gap is widest in the E1980 textbook series, where male celebrities appear about 9 times as often as female celebrities (73 vs. 8 appearances), but in the E2010 series the gap is also very substantial (62 vs. 7 times). Even in the E1990 series, where the gap is relatively small, the male superstars appear three times as much as their female counterparts. A few examples may illustrate the overwhelming dominance of male superstars. In RE2000/11, 36–40, for example, Unit 12 introduces 10 of the most successful athletes in the 22nd Southeast Asian Games, which were held in 2003 in Vietnam. Of these athletes, seven are men. In E2010/ 10–1, 26–36, Unit 3 refers 17 different times to (inter-)national celebrities in the field of music. Next to Trinh Cong Son (who is mentioned twice), Van Cao (2), Luu Huu Phuoc (2), Justin Bieber, Michael Jackson (3), Elvis Presley (3), Frédéric Chopin (2), Elton John (1), only one female artist, viz. the female singer who won Vietnam Idol, is mentioned once (Thu Anh). Obviously, female students barely see in their EFL textbooks examples of other women who have acquired great fame. If the introduction of celebrities presents an opportunity to engage in discussions of authenticity, individual agency and individual autonomy (Duits & van Romondt, 2009), this also means that female students dispose of very few opportunities to perceive their own life or career trajectory from this point of view (Excerpt 4.5). In many ways, the presentation of gendered characters in the EFL books seems to reflect existing gender differences, not just in Vietnam, but also in other parts of the world. Based on the content of the textbook series, it can, on the one hand, be concluded that women and men are equal—and that all professions are open to both genders. But the higher visibility of men suggests, on the other hand, that men are superior to women in quite some respects. The content of the Vietnamese EFL 80

73

70 Appearances

62

59

60

53 47

50 40 30 20 10

14

14

14

8

7

0 E1980

E1990

RE2000 Series of EFL textbooks Female

Chart 4.3 Celebrities by gender (absolute numbers)

Male

AE2000

E2010

92

4 National Identity and Gender Identities

Excerpt 4.5 Gendered celebrities in E2010/10–1, 33

textbooks may reflect existing gender differences in Vietnam and in many other parts of our world society, but it also gives credence to these gender differences and to the dominant sociocultural position of men (Vu, 2008).

4.2.5 Gender Differences in Family Settings Children learn gender roles in their family of origin, as they become familiar with the social division of labour between their parents (Michel, 1986). How mothers and fathers perform their social roles plays an important part in the formation of an individual’s gender identity. In the case of Vietnam, family structures are particularly important. As mentioned before, a belief in one’s ancestors’ support and protection is part of Vietnamese culture. Parents can thus be expected to have a strong influence on their children. This influence is also supported at the level of the nation-state (Pettus, 2004; see also Hirschman & Minh, 2002; Ralston et al., 2006). June 28, for example, has been made a national holiday with the official purpose of honouring the traditional cultural values of the Vietnamese family (National Family Day). It should hence not come as a surprise that family settings often appear in school textbooks in Vietnam, including EFL textbooks. It is to the different gender identities represented in these settings that we now turn. As the general overview presented in Table 4.1 has shown, women and men often appear in family spaces. Table 4.3 presents more detailed figures about representations in the role of parent (father vs. mother) and of marriage partner (husband vs. wife). Remarkably, women and men are more often depicted in the role of mother or father than that of wife or husband. The differences are substantial. Important, too, is that both parents often jointly appear in the textbooks. In visual images of families, both parents typically appear together (see, e.g., Excerpt 4.3 and Excerpt 4.6). In textual curricular material, they also mostly appear together, while the order in which they are mentioned seems to vary randomly. At times, the masculine word comes first, at times the feminine word: “My father and mother live in Hanoi” (E1990/10,

4.2 Findings

93

78) or “My mother works as a nurse in a big hospital… My father is a biologist” (RE2000/12, 13). The image reproduced in Excerpt 4.6 accompanies the latter unit. One of the parents is sometimes mentioned in stories about an individual’s life or in dialogues between friends. In these cases, the fathers are more frequently mentioned than mothers. However, in visualized family spaces, mothers are more often seen, mostly in the role of homebuilder. The figures in Table 4.1 also show differences in the kinds of activity women and men perform in family spaces. Although they both do housework in all textbook series, women more often appear in domestic duties than men. We coded 26, 22, 9, 7 and 36 vs. 8, 13, 6, 0 and 21 appearances respectively. And although it is often suggested that women have their own ‘regular’ job outside the household, they are thus more often expected to conduct a lot of housework. Excerpts 4.1 and 4.3 provide typical examples. Excerpt 4.1 comes from the oldest EFL textbook series, published in the 1980s, and Excerpt 4.3 is from a series used at the beginning of the twentyfirst century (AE2000), but the differences in the hidden curriculum are minor. In

Excerpt 4.6 A family image in RE2000/12, 12

Table 4.3 Appearances in different family roles (absolute numbers) Family role

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010

RE

AE

Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women Father/ mother Husband/ wife

30

40

41

31

26

18

11

16

49

42

4

6

6

12

4

5

2

0

4

3

94

4 National Identity and Gender Identities

Table 4.4 The performance of married characters in family spheres (absolute numbers) 1980s

1990s

2000s

2010

RE

AE

*Others Family Others Family Others Family Others Family Others Family duties duties duties duties duties Mother/ wife

3

21

5

14

1

5

1

9

6

18

Father/ 11 husband

2

14

4

4

2

2

1

8

5

*

Others include all non-domestic duties, such as entertaining, eating, …

Excerpt 4.1, Martin takes his meals (breakfast and dinner), watches TV and sleeps at home. The father and husband in Excerpt 4.3 eats and relaxes with his family members at home, but similarly does not seem to take up other duties. By contrast, the young mother and wife is responsible for several domestic tasks: shopping for food, helping the children with their homework for school, recycling the garbage. Similar views on the division of household labour are portrayed in the other textbook series, both in the textual and visual parts of the curriculum. Table 4.4 shows the frequency with which married persons are engaged in household chores by gender. If we compare the figures in Table 4.1, which are about all women and men, and those in Table 4.4, which are about married women and men, it can be seen that the differences in the types of household activities which women and men engage in before and after marriage are minor. Marriage does not change one’s involvement in typical household duties. Males have more time for their hobbies and do less housework in comparison to females, regardless of their marital status. The results presented here indicate that caring for the family is mostly depicted as a female duty. Narratives that contain and transfer this message can be found in any of the EFL textbook series. The reading paragraph in RE2000/12, 13 (Excerpt 4.7) constitutes an illustration.5 A young girl recounts a story about her family and the division of household chores. According to her story, both her parents are “very busy.” They have their own full-time jobs and “join hands” to give her and her siblings “a nice house and a happy home.” Although the family is presented as somewhat unusual and emancipatory, her mother “takes the responsibility for running the family,” which means, among other things, that she gets up first in the morning to make sure that the children have breakfast and dress suitably before leaving for school, and that she “rushes to the market” after work to be able to serve dinner by the time her husband comes home from his work. Her father is “willing to give a hand with cleaning the house” and sometimes does the cooking, because he likes cooking. Again, we can conclude that men are granted more autonomy and individuality, while women are

5

Similar examples are legion. See, for example, E1980/10, 86 and E1980/10, 98 in the oldest textbook series, or RE2000/12, 15 (“I talked to Tam. Both his parents work. But only his mother does the household chores…”) and E2010/10–1, 7 in more recent EFL school textbooks.

4.2 Findings

a

95

b

Excerpt 4.7 a Married couples and household chores (RE2000/12, 13) b Mother, the family caregiver (E1980/10, 86)

expected to take “responsibility for running the family” and devote themselves to their family. At times, illustrations of a gender-balanced division of labour are portrayed, especially in the most recent EFL textbook series. Excerpt 4.8a and 4.8b provide examples. In E2010, the idea that household chores have to be equally divided between all members of the family is emphasized. According to Lam, “my dad is responsible for mending things around the house. He also cleans the bathroom twice a week. Mum does most of the cooking and grocery shopping…” (E2010/10–1, 12). We thus also see shifts in the way in which gender is linked with household duties: housework can be the responsibility of women and men. Housework is not something men might help with; it is also their responsibility. Financial matters are not often brought up within the family context, although there are some exceptions. In these cases, only fathers are referred to. Examples include: “My father bought a car in 1925, an Austin Seven. He paid £ 150 for it!” (E1990/11, 229), and “Ha’s father promised to pay for her holiday in Singapore if she passed her English test” (E2010/11–2, 62). Such views seem still widely disseminated in Vietnam. While women can autonomously make decisions about daily expenses (when they buy groceries in the supermarket, for example), men ‘normally’ still take the lead when decisions with larger financial implications, such as the purchase of a car, have to be made (e.g., Do & Brennan, 2015; Franklin, 2000; Leshkowich, 2006). Parents neither often appear as providers of psychological support in these textbooks, although there are again a few exceptions. A story, included in about the same wording in the E1980 and E1990 series, tells for example about the way both parents are going to react in case their son will need an operation in a hospital. The mother is expected to react emotionally, while the father seems more rational and “will stay

96

a

4 National Identity and Gender Identities

b

Excerpt 4.8 a Family members and housework (RE2000/12, 12) b Lam’s story about the division of housework in his family (E2010/10–1, 12)

with him” (see Excerpt 4.9a). In difficult situations, the family seems able to count on the father, not on the mother. As these reactions are predicted by the child, the underlying idea seems to be that such gender differences can standardly be observed in household contexts. The number of times such kinds of situations are included in the textbooks increase in time: from just once in E1980 and E1990 to three, four and eleven times in the RE2000, AE2000 and E2010 textbook series respectively. But the gender differences remain quite outspoken. Mothers are mostly depicted as the physical caretakers of the family; an exception is shown in Excerpts 4.3 and 4.6, where the mother is helping her child with homework. Fathers are more frequently portrayed as adults on which children can rely in ‘crucial’ situations. In AE2000/11, 176, for example, one reads:

a

b

Excerpt 4.9 a Gendered reactions to a medical problem in the family in E1980/11, 104 b A father’s advice for his son in E2010/11–1, 38

4.2 Findings

97

“it’s my father’s advice which helps me succeed in my work.” Excerpt 4.9b provides another example which reveals their ‘crucial’ position in their children’s life.

4.2.6 Gender and Advocated Family Models Let us finally look more closely at the family values advocated in the Vietnamese EFL textbooks, and the changes in the gender identities included in these value patterns. Families appear in all EFL textbooks. As specified in Table 4.5, families with two parents and offspring of different sex are most often included. Most the families are two-parent households; only in RE2000 and AE2000 a single-parent family appears. The single-mother family in RE2000/11, 30 is, more particularly, the family of Little Red Riding Hood, the little girl in the famous European (!) fairy tale about a young girl and a Big Bad Wolf. In this fairy tale, Little Red Riding Hood lives with her mother and walks through the woods to deliver food to her sickly grandmother. A single-father family is depicted in AE2000/12, 110, no information about other family members is provided here. Families with offspring from the same sex not often appear, especially families with only daughters. Families without children are not included in any of the textbooks. Hence in the period of 40 years, which our EFL textbooks cover, the ideal-type of the Vietnamese family has remained that of two parents of different sex with children of different sex (Jacka, 2010; Murru, 2018; Shohet, 2017). The government of Vietnam adopted a two-child policy to curb population growth in the 1980s, and depictions of this policy can be found in all textbooks (Excerpt 4.10). The dominance of this ideal-type is remarkable. In Vietnam, it has long been believed that a family is blessed when it has many children (Vietnamese: con). However, children/con refers to sons. A brutal Vietnamese proverb illustrates this masculine, patriarchal order: Nhất nam viết hữu, thập nữ viết vô (to have one son means to have a descendant, but to have ten daughters means to have no children). Table 4.5 Family representations in the EFL textbooks (absolute numbers) Family structure

1980s

1990s

2000s RE

2010s AE

0

0

1

1

0

Two-parent family

14

24

14

2

23

Total family appearances

14

24

15

3

23

With girl(s) and boy(s)

12

16

12

2

19

With only girl(s)

1

0

1

0

2

With only boy(s)

1

4

2

1

2

Without child(ren)

0

0

0

0

0

With ungendered child(ren)

0

4

0

0

0

Single-parent family

98

a

4 National Identity and Gender Identities

b

Excerpt 4.10 a A family depicted in E1980/11, b A nuclear and an extended family depicted in E2010/10–1, 15

A daughter or wife could be the servant of her father or husband (Bergman, 1974; Pettus, 2004; Werner, 2009). However, women and men are equal before the law since the establishment of the modern Vietnamese republic. This ideal-type can be linked with some side-effects. It should be mentioned that it is hard to divorce in Vietnam. The obligations to the family remain dominant (e.g., Jacka, 2010; Murru, 2018; Wells, 2005). Single-parent families and their children often also experience forms of social stigmatization (e.g., Hoang & Yeon, 2011). Moreover, the cultural preference for sons seems to survive. An explanation is rooted in local value systems. Vietnamese believe in destiny and in forces beyond their immediate control, such as their ancestors’ blessings (hồng phúc của tổ tiên) and protection (sự phù hộ của tổ tiên), or their karma (phúc đức). Maintaining the relation with the ancestors is a responsibility of the son(s). A married woman and her children are protected by her husband’s family, and she is expected to fulfil her duties to her husband’s family before taking care of her family of origin. This idea is, for example, expressed by the old saying “Con gái là con người ta” (a daughter is an outsider or a child of another family). In other words, the family line will be discontinued without son(s). This cultural preference for male descendants can be reconciled with the idealtype of the family with two parents and two children of different sex (Bélanger, 2002; Haughton & Haughton, 1995). But it should be added that Vietnam is characterized by high abortion rates and that sex selected abortions are not uncommon (Gammeltoft, 2014; Guilmoto, 2012; Guilmoto & Tove, 2015; World Bank, 2011). When no male descendants are born in a family, mothers are particularly vulnerable, because it is popularly believed that karma is primarily the responsibility of the mother (Phúc đức tại mẫu). Having male descendants is seen to be a combination of the ancestors’ blessings and the mother’s karma (Slot, 1998; Nguyen, 2001). Tacitly, the ideal-type of the nuclear family portrayed in the Vietnamese EFL textbooks seems to enhance traditional gender differences. In many ways, Vietnam is still a patriarchal society, in which having sons is necessary, while having daughters is not. This belief is also visible in the EFL textbooks,

4.3 Conclusion

99

even though many attempts are made to avoid gender biases or gender stereotypes. Besides, the presented ideal-type of the family is also at odds with other family types (including single-parent families, unmarried and same-sex couples), which have increasingly become visible in present-day Vietnam and in other parts of the world.

4.3 Conclusion A nation is an “imagined community.” Its inhabitants are expected to share certain cultural codes and practices. Unmistakably, national identity is also linked with gender identities (Collins, 1998; Mayer, 2012). Images of national identity shape the ways in which citizens are expected to perform particular gendered roles. Gendered identities, in turn, help to shape and distinguish specific national identities (Smith, 1991; Yuval-David, 1997). In this chapter, we have examined how female and male roles are specified in a variety of social settings in Vietnam, and in particular in family settings. Gender equality is constitutionally guaranteed in Vietnam since 1945. Different legal and social norms encourage the equal treatment of women and men in all domains of life. As we have seen, however, gendered expectations exist in many domains. The higher visibility of men in the EFL textbooks is correlated with traditional value systems. Men often appear in ways which give them more individuality and more autonomy. Considering existing practices, however, the textbooks seem at times to depict progressive images of Vietnam. The curriculum developers might have had the intention to empower women in the nation-state. But the question is whether these progressive images appear as realistic ones, and whether they ‘really’ suggest that all social positions are open to female students. The way gendered characters appear in the private sphere is related to both modern currents and cultural traditions. Both women and men are depicted as fulfilling domestic duties, but women assume more domestic chores than men. These chores are frequently presented as female responsibilities. Women are only successful in life when they are able to manage their household duties successfully. Women must “excel at work, [and] be perfect at home” (Giỏi việc nước – Đảm việc nhà), according to the official slogan of the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour and the Vietnam Women’s Union. As other Vietnam scholars have argued, this double responsibility imposes a double burden on modern women in Vietnam and thus stands in the way of women’s empowerment (e.g., Nguyen, 2001; Pettus, 2004). Our analyses of the EFL textbooks point in the same direction.

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Chapter 5

Student Engagement with National Identity

Abstract In this chapter, we address the didactical principles in the EFL textbooks in relation to national identity. We look at how the textbooks prompt students to engage with learning material that expresses ideas and values about Vietnam’s national identity. Relying on the ICAP framework, proposed by Chi & Wylie, four categories of student engagement are distinguished: Interactive, Constructive, Active, and Passive. Our analyses document the significant rise in the tasks that demand ‘higher’ levels of student engagement. Tasks promoting passive and active forms of engagement dominate in the 1980s and 1990s, but in the more recent textbook series different emphases emerge and students are increasingly prompted to construct and co-construct their own learning output. Our analyses also show that the textbook developers continue to include normative messages about the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, its distinctive values, and its position in the globalizing world. While the textbooks thus change in the direction of encouraging students to understand themselves as active and responsible students/citizens, their hidden curriculum continues to be important. Under the surface of didactical strategies, the EFL textbooks continue to promote messages of national unity, national identity and national cohesion within Vietnam. Keywords National identity · Student engagement · ICAP · Vietnam · EFL textbooks

National identity is thought to be constitutive of nation-states; it is a symbolic reality that brings people together within their “primary” community. As Poole (1999) argues, for example, national identity is the primary form of identity which underlines and informs other social identities, such as those related to ethnicity, gender, religion and social class. National identity is expected to bring together a population based on a sense of national community or unity, regardless of differences in other regards. At the same time, such a national identity is neither innate nor stable. It ensues from a “claim-making process” (Poole, 1999, 62); it is the result of “a process of ongoing negotiation” (McCrone & Bechhofer, 2015, 42). For everyone, the meaning of national identity may thus depend on time and context (Brown & Palincsar, 1989; Guibernau, 2004). Throughout their life, individuals may also have © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 T. D. Phuong and R. Vanderstraeten, The ‘Hidden Curriculum’ of Vietnam’s English School Textbooks, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-1196-3_5

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to adapt to changing expectations regarding the nature of their national identity (Anderson, 1983; Smith, 1991). The formation of national identity has been one of the key elements of the politics of cultural development in contemporary Vietnam. “Preservation and reinforcement of national identity” (giữ gìn và phát huy bản sắc dân tộc) is a leitmotif stipulated in the Vietnamese Constitution of 1992 (Article 5) as well as in a range of other documents dealing with cultural development. Not only the official media in Vietnam are instructed to popularize this idea. Inculcating national identity is also the goal and mission of school education in general and of school textbooks in particular. In this chapter, we address the didactical principles, suggested in the Vietnamese EFL textbooks used at the secondary level, in relation to national identity. We examine the ways in which these EFL textbooks engage students in such learning activities. We rely on the ICAP framework, proposed by Chi and Wylie (2014), which puts emphasis on the distinction between four categories of student involvement or engagement: Interactive, Constructive, Active, and Passive. We document how these levels of student engagement are brought into play and examine historical changes in the reliance on specific didactical strategies. We also show how the textbook developers communicate normative messages about the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, its distinctive values, and its position in the globalizing world. In many ways, the EFL textbooks intend to enhance social solidarity and cohesion within Vietnam. We proceed in the same way as in the foregoing chapters: we begin with a presentation of the broader background and the conceptual distinctions that guide our analyses and then present and illustrate the main findings of these analyses. The empirical analyses again focus on the period from the 1980s until the present. In the concluding section, we briefly return to the prominent role which imagined communities and constructions of national identity played and play in the Vietnamese school textbooks.

5.1 Concepts For the analyses presented here we could not make use of specific templates. Questions about how students are engaged in learning activities in general and in learning activities involving constructions of national identity in particular have hitherto hardly been explored from either an historical or a sociological angle. We start with a brief overview of the shifting role of education and of English in our contemporary global society—and the consequences of this shift for teaching English in (Vietnamese) schools. Afterwards, we look at ways in which levels of student engagement can be distinguished, both conceptually and empirically.

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5.1.1 Education and Learning in the Twenty-First Century Our expectations regarding education and learning are changing nowadays, in part due to broader social transitions. Importantly, first, is that the world has been changing quickly because of globalization and technological innovations. Not only does the Internet make (true and fake) information abundant, but it also makes true information quickly outdated. Memorization of basic facts has become neither possible nor sufficient the present-day information-driven world (Paige et al., 2003; Trilling & Fadel, 2012). In our ‘global village,’ characterized by global mobility and migration, people also must be prepared to work, communicate and live with ‘strangers’ coming from cultural contexts that are largely unknown to them. Basic education, as described in many UNESCO documents (e.g., Delors, 1998; UNESCO, 2000), is therefore expected to become a lifelong process of improving knowledge and skills, which must enable individuals to function competently in different roles in different social spaces with people from different cultural background. In Learning: The Treasure Within (Delors, 1998), UNESCO indicates four pillars for learning in the twenty-first century, namely learning to know/learn, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be. Education is expected to lay the foundations (knowledge and skills) for lifelong learning. Also, education is expected to meet basic learning needs, which comprise, as specified in the first article of the World Declaration on Education for All, the tools and the contents “required by human beings to be able to survive, to develop their full capacities, to live and work in dignity, to participate fully in development, to improve the quality of their lives, to make informed decisions, and to continue learning.” While factual knowledge might be quickly outdated, some specific learning tools (such as literacy, oral expression, numeracy, and problem solving) might be of lifelong usefulness (Trilling & Fadel, 2012). English has become predominant in our globalizing world; it has become the tool for people coming from different cultural background to communicate in an international environment. As English is seen to enable individuals “to live and work together and with others” (Delors, 1998), learning English has become intimately linked with cultural exchanges (if not with the cultural hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon nations). When learning English, individuals not only learn the “sociolinguistic conventions for language uses,” but also acquire the “interactional competence” needed in the global village (Paige et al., 2003, 6). But to interact competently with others, learners also need to become better familiar with their own cultural traditions (Byram, 1988). In the Delors Report for UNESCO, this viewpoint was expressed as follows: “How can we learn to live together in the ‘global village’ if we cannot manage to live together in the communities to which we naturally belong—the nation, the region, the city, the village, the neighborhood?” (Delors, 1998, 14). Another important transition that needs to be mentioned is the ‘upgrading’ of learners. A more active understanding of learning and learners has become part of educational thinking. Learners are neither seen as empty boxes to be filled with knowledge nor as trivial machines in which a particular input (such as textbook

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material) is automatically turned into a particular output (such as skills or understandings) (Astin, 1984). The ways in which individuals learn or internalize external knowledge is described as “deeply personal” and depends on their previous understanding and/or experience (McCrone & Bechhofer, 2015, 66). It is expected that the ways students engage in learning have a strong influence on the learning outcomes. This more active view on learning and learners is corroborated by the findings of much empirical research. The National Center on Effective Secondary Schools in America, for example, has argued that student engagement is one of the key factors affecting student outcome and student performance at school (Lamborn et al., 1992). Similar conclusions are drawn in a variety of other studies, such as Blumenfeld et al. (2006), Fredricks et al. (2011), Finn and Zimmer (2012). King, for example, likewise indicates that students can learn both passively and actively, but that active learning “always leads to deeper understanding” (1993, 31).1 Several studies have also looked at student engagement in relation to EFL textbooks. Shin et al. (2011), for instance, have investigated student involvement in the learning content in seven series of internationally distributed English textbooks, viz. Side by Side (Pearson Longman), World Link (Thomson Heinle), New Headway English (Oxford University Press), Fifty-Fifty (Pearson Longman), True Colors (Pearson ESL), Interchange (Cambridge), and World View (Longman). The results of this study show that the ‘inner circle’ cultural content still dominates most textbooks and that cultural presentation still largely remains at the traditional knowledgeoriented level and does not engage learners in deep levels of reflection. Research about locally produced EFL textbooks has also been increasing. Wu (2010), for instance, has looked at the cultural contents in Chinese EFL textbooks. Although EFL textbooks must introduce students to the cultures of different countries and regions, and foster cultural awareness and competence in intercultural communication, Wu points out that “cultural content input has not received due attention” and that the textbooks primarily “cover cultural information implicitly” (Wu, 2010, 143). The study conducted by Weninger and Kiss (2013) on Hungarian EFL textbooks points in a similar direction. The authors highlight the substantial number of facts presented in the textbooks, but simultaneously show that only a limited number of tasks are designed in ways that actively engage students in cultural learning. Again, in other words, a discrepancy is observed between the expectations regarding English language learning and the way in which EFL textbooks are constructed. Textbook developers can in principle choose from a large collection of instructional or learning tasks for students to do, but most EFL textbooks only provide few instructions about how to stimulate students to actively engage with the learning tasks and contents (Chi & Wylie, 2014, 219). Very few studies address culture-related contents in Vietnamese EFL textbooks. Neither has the way in which the tasks in these textbooks stimulate student’s participation hitherto attracted much attention. To the best of our knowledge, the only study 1

Active learning, according to King, means to get “involved with the information presented, really thinking about it (analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating) rather than just passively receiving it” (King, 1993, 31).

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that examines the way in which cultural contents are integrated into EFL teaching is Nguyen (2013). But this PhD dissertation focuses on the higher education level in Vietnam. This ethnographic study shows, more particularly, that teaching/learning materials that are used in higher education provide almost no explicit didactical instructions for cultural teaching/learning.

5.1.2 Varieties of Student Engagement Activities The motivation of students to engage with learning content depends on the connection between the inner states of students and the tasks they must perform (Järvelä & Renninger, 2014). The attention and effort, which student are willing to invest in these tasks, is likely to affect the learning outcomes (Marks, 2000). From this point of view, we here look at the ways in which the Vietnamese EFL textbooks used at the level of secondary education are engaging students in learning cultural contents, particularly in relation to national identity. To distinguish between levels of engagement, we mainly draw on the so-called ICAP framework, developed by Chi and Wylie (2014), in which overt (i.e., visible) engagement with learning material is categorized into one of four modes: Interactive, Constructive, Active, and Passive. A passive mode of engagement means in this taxonomy that learners are oriented toward and receive information from the instructional materials without overtly doing anything else related to learning. Their main activity thus consists in this category of paying attention and listening. Undertaking active activities exceed the level of passive activity, such as when learners are asked to underline the text sentences that they think are important, mix certain chemical amounts in a hands-on laboratory, or choose a justification from a menu of options. Constructive behaviours for their part are defined as those in which learners generate or produce additional outputs beyond what was provided in the learning materials. They may, for example, have to articulate what a text sentence means to them. The last category, interactive behaviours, is for activities in which the contributions of the different partners ‘count’ and in which a sufficient degree of ‘turn taking’ does occur. The underlying ICAP hypothesis of Chi and Wylie predicts that, as students become more engaged with the learning materials, from passive to active to constructive and to interactive, their learning will increase. ‘Deeper’ learning is thought to be possible when the role of students in learning is upgraded along this line. As this framework (or some variant thereof) is used by many curriculum and textbook developers, and as a focus on more equality in educational relationships has become more manifest in curriculum theory more generally, it is to be expected that school textbooks nowadays increasingly include tasks and instructions that strive for more demanding levels of engagement with the learning material. As in the previous chapters, we collected data from the EFL textbooks that have been used between the 1980s and the present. We included all tasks which address aspects of Vietnam’s national identity (such as its history, its territory, its realizations

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and ambitions), regardless of whether these tasks are designed for activities inside or outside the classroom. We did not, however, include tasks, which mention the names of certain national symbols in Vietnam, but which are designed for grammatical purposes only, such as, for example, the verb conjugation illustrated in E1990/10, 78: “I live in Hanoi. Mrs. Lien lives in Namdinh. They live in Ho Chi Minh city.” Both visual and textual textbook materials have been included. All relevant learning tasks were assigned to one category. Departing from the ICAP framework, some textbook instructions were, of course, formulated in vague or ambiguous terms and hence interpretable in different ways. Whenever coding decisions had to be made, we proceeded in accordance with the basic thrust of the instructions specified by the textbook developers. Task 5 in E2010/11–2, 52, for example, requires students to “work with a partner” and “make predictions about a future city in Vietnam.” It is imaginable that students independently note down their predictions and then tell their partner about their predictions. If this would be the case, they engage constructively with the learning material. The task, however, suggests that students jointly discuss their ideas and then note down their shared opinions. Here they are thus expected to make a shared product by means of interaction (and thus their engagement can be coded as interactive). We categorized this task as a form of interactive engagement, as “work with a partner” is normally understood as an instruction for joint action and interaction. Quite often, however, we also assigned tasks to the ‘lower’ category. Task 2 in E2010/10–1, 32, reproduced in Excerpt 5.2a below, for example, contains the question: “What do you think about Van Cao?” Possible ways of responding to this question may be linked to two categories of the ICAP framework. The answer to this question can be found in the text of Task 2 (“one of the most important composers of modern Vietnamese music…”). Alternatively, however, students may be stimulated to give their own opinion, which might be different from the viewpoint that can be extracted from the text in Task 2. Although different forms of student engagement are thus possible, we coded this task as one which provides opportunities for active engagement, because the answer to the question can be provided by repeating words from the text provided in the textbook. Of course, we do not know how teachers turn the textbook instructions into practice. In their classrooms, they can specify tasks in ways that elicit more or less engagement from their students. But we expect that the textbook instructions provide good clues for an analysis of the kind of engagement with the learning material that is expected of learners. We have used the same, ‘prudent’ type of coding for all the learning tasks that make use of national symbols in all the EFL textbooks. The distinctions between the categories of the ICAP framework are not always clear cut, but, in accordance with others who have worked with the ICAP framework (see Chi et al., 2018; Morris & Chi, 2020), we believe that the categories of this conceptual framework can reliably and productively be used in empirical textbook research.

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111

5.2 Findings Because English is crucial in our globalizing social world, learning English has become an important objective of school education. EFL textbooks may be seen to occupy an increasingly important position in school education. We hereafter present focus on how students are engaged in learning English and in learning English by means of instructional material that contains constructions or symbols of national identity and national distinctiveness. For textbook developers, a critical point of departure indeed is “the national identity of individuals who perceive themselves as belonging to a national collectivity” (Wodak et al., 2009, 29). In this light, we first present a brief overview of our findings and then specify in more detail how levels of student engagement come into play in the EFL textbooks.

5.2.1 A Brief Overview As already mentioned, we try to unravel the didactical strategies that are used in the different EFL textbook series to stimulate students to engage with ideas and constructions about the identity of the Vietnamese nation-state and its population. Tables 5.1 and 5.2 below provide an overview of our basic findings. These tables show the historical evolution in the number of ‘Vietnamese’ tasks in the textbooks for the levels of student engagement, as distinguished in the ICAP framework. Table 5.1 contains absolute numbers, while Table 5.2 presents the same findings in relative terms. The figures in Tables 5.1 and 5.2 allow us to draw two preliminary conclusions. In line with evolutions in prevailing theories of learning, it is, on the one hand, important to underline that Vietnamese textbook developers have increasingly aimed at ensuring ‘higher’ levels of student engagement and associated forms of ‘deep learning.’ On the other hand, however, it is also important to underline that ‘Vietnamese’ tasks have been characteristic of all EFL textbook series. Despite fluctuations, national narratives are omnipresent in all textbook series. Table 5.1 ‘Vietnamese’ tasks specified at the level of student engagement (absolute numbers) Required mode of engagement

1980s

1990s

Passive

57

25

Active

2000s

2010s

RE

AE

1

0

0

106

175

166

142

99

Constructive

5

28

120

95

67

Interactive

1

4

20

24

23

169

232

307

261

189

Total

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Table 5.2 ‘Vietnamese’ tasks specified at the level of student engagement (percentages) Required mode of engagement

1980s

1990s

2000s RE

2010s AE

Passive

33.7

10.8

0.3

0.0

0.0

Active

62.7

75.4

54.1

54.4

52.4

Constructive

3.0

12.1

39.1

36.4

35.4

Interactive

0.6

1.7

6.5

9.2

12.2

Total

100

100

100

100

100

The lasting and strong presence of national narratives should not come as a surprise, given the belief that English might be an important instrument for international and intercultural communication. Relevant questions, however, are what kind of, and how, national narratives are communicated to Vietnamese EFL students. To compare such instructional tasks across different textbook series and across a relatively long period of time, we hereafter focus less on changes in absolute or relative terms but more on the (distinctions between) the didactical strategies used to convey the normative messages included in these tasks.

5.2.2 Passive Level of Student Engagement In the ICAP framework, the term ‘engagement’ refers to the way students engage with the learning materials in the context of an instructional task. Forms of ‘passive learning,’ in which students are prompted to be oriented or pay attention to an instructional or learning task, stand for the lowest level of engagement in this framework (Chi & Wylie, 2014). As passive level of engagement, we coded all tasks that include references to Vietnamese customs or to traditions as distinct from other national customs or identities, and that confront students with this information, but do not require additional activity from the part of the students. In the E1980 volumes, most tasks that included national symbols prompted students to engage actively with the learning material. However, one out of three these tasks (or 57 out of 169) only demanded for a passive form of student engagement. This share dropped to around one out of ten (or 25 out of 232) in the 1990s, and to (nearly) zero in the different textbook series that have been used in the twenty-first century (RE2000, AE2000 and E2010). Altogether, we thus see a sharp decline in the number of tasks that involve this level of student engagement. What kind of tasks played in the older textbooks and disappeared in the more recent ones? Excerpt 5.1a from E1990/10, 199, for instance, entails a conversation between a customer and a shop assistant at a grocery’s, named K. Brown. The conversation is presented as a comic strip. While it entails, both explicitly and implicitly, information about national customs or traditions, it is not accompanied by an instruction that could students prompt to actively respond to its content.

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Excerpt 5.1 a A conversation in a grocery in E1990/10, 199 b The Yin-Yang pigs in E1980/10, 47 (left) and in the paintings for Tết (right)

Some cultural differences should nevertheless be obvious to Vietnamese students. For example, the word “please” (“làm ơn” in Vietnamese) appears in three of the four utterances of the shop’s customer. In Vietnam, however, words like “làm ơn” (please) or “cám ơn” (thank you) are not often used in daily conversations, because these words establish an emotional distance between the interlocutors. Because the nation is depicted as a large family and compatriots as siblings (đồng bào, which means to come from the same womb), politeness and respect are normally expressed in a different, indirect way. Kinship terms, for example, are not only used for relatives, but also for non-relatives.2 Body language is more important (see the meaning of using two hands 2

The story of Lạc Long Quân and Âu Cơ (“Con rồng cháu tiên”) is often cited as the creation myth of the Kinh, who constitute to largest ethnic group in Vietnam. The story details how two progenitors, the man known as the ‘Dragon Lord of Lạc’ and the woman known as the ‘Lady of Âu,’ gave birth to a hundred eggs, which all hatched into healthy and smart babies. Half of them returned with their father to the ocean, while the other half followed their mother to the highlands. The descendants were thus split, but with the understanding that if either group would encounter misfortune, the other would help. Much may have changed in the past millenniums, but one thing did not. All Vietnamese share the same root, and, for this reason, they must live in harmony and never forget the promise to help one another (Ngo et al., 1993).

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Excerpt 5.2 a Van Cao and the national anthem of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam depicted in E2010/10–1, 31–32 b Different national celebrations in AE2000/11, 91

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to give something to, or receive something from, an older person as illustrated by Excerpt 2.6 above). Social conditions may also determine which Vietnamese words or expressions can be used to express politeness and respect. Indirectly, the students may thus learn ‘something’ about national customs and traditions from this comic strip. Reading this conversation, they may come to the understanding that social respect and politeness are universals in human culture. They may also become aware of the fact that rules of politeness are of foremost importance in cross-cultural and international communication. However, the textbook does not explicitly introduce such cultural differences and peculiarities and does not demand for any active form of student engagement with these differences. These cultural traditions are juxtaposed, but the textbook developers did not feel the need to explicate or discuss the underlying cultural differences between the East (Vietnam) and the West. Excerpt 5.1b presents another example. In this case, there is no direct relation between the task and the national symbols depicted in it, but the use of the symbols is not without underlying relevance. On the left in Excerpt 5.1b is an image from Task 2 in E1980/10, 47, which presents a corpulent pig with suckling piglets. The task itself requires students to use the structures “there is …” and “there are …”. The image is akin to some famous Đông Hồ paintings, reproduced on the right of Excerpt 5.1b. The image of the Yin-Yang pigs is one of the five well-known Tranh Tết, viz. the paintings for Tet or the Lunar New Year celebration. In the 1980s and 1990s, these paintings were widely used to decorate Vietnamese homes around Tet. The image of the pigs in E1980/10, 47 may thus serve to remind students of the tradition and meaning of Tet, as Tet is the time for family and family reunions. This connection remains implicit, however. The instructions do neither stimulate students to actively engage with this content nor with other peculiarities of the cultural traditions within Vietnam. To sum up, there is a significant reduction in the number of learning tasks that are designed in ways that expose learners to constructions of national identity without requiring them to interact with this content to any extent. The way in which the Vietnamese EFL textbooks of the last century are conceived makes clear that learning English is thought of as learning for a different world. The focus upon the presentation of such differences disappears in the early twenty-first century.

5.2.3 Active Level of Student Engagement In terms of the ICAP framework, students become actively engaged with the learning material, when they are required to ‘manipulate’ it as part of the learning process (Chi & Wylie, 2014). Manipulation of learning content refers to actions, such as underlining valuable information, completing sentences, choosing an appropriate title for stories or images, etc. Accordingly, we have attributed textbook tasks, which prompt learners to actively manipulate learning material that entails national symbols or traditions, to this category of the framework.

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Our findings reveal that a substantial number of tasks in all textbooks encourage active forms of engagement. As Table 5.1 above shows, the share of tasks actively engaging students in the learning material increased from 45% in E1980 to 69% in E1990 but decreases in the twenty-first century textbooks. In the three most recent series of EFL textbooks, the figures vary between 54% in RE2000 and 52% in E2010. Excerpt 5.2a, which reproduces tasks from E2010/10–1, 31–32, provides a characteristic example. Students are provided with information and then asked to find the pieces of information that would allow them to complete the requirements. In the task, information is provided about Van Cao, the composer of the national anthem of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and of other Red or Revolutionary Music (Nhạc cách mạng) in Vietnam. For the first part of the task, students need to match the different paragraphs with corresponding headings. For the second part, they need to ask and answer questions about Van Cao in their own words. To accomplish these tasks, they first need to look for the relevant bits of information in the text and mark these bits (for example, by underlining, circling, and numbering them). To practice having a conversation, which is the goal of (the second part of) this task, the students are expected to use the ‘official’ information provided in the text about Van Cao and “modern Vietnamese music.” But it might also be said that the conversation serves as a vehicle to practice (knowledge of) the official value system of Vietnam. Several other official symbols of national identity are also used to inculcate national identity. The tone of other tasks is, however, often less ‘serious’ than in the task about Van Cao above. In AE2000/11, 91, for example, national celebrations in Vietnam are listed, namely Vietnam’s National Day, King Hung’s Death Anniversary, Mid-Autumn Festival, New Year’s Day and Teacher’s Day. Students are asked to “match the pictures with the appropriate celebrations” (Excerpt 5.2b). The image of the gate of the Hung Temple and of worshipping rituals (with people carrying offerings on their head) thus needs to be matched with King Hung’s Death Anniversary. This form of worshipping expresses people’s gratitude to the older generations. Also invoked by this image is the belief that worshipping protects the present generation: what goes around comes around, or how we treat the previous generations today will determine how the next generations will treat us (the Vietnamese saying is “Gieo nhân nào gặt quả nấy”). Similar inferences can be drawn from the other images in this task. Students are thus again prompted to actively engage with various moral precepts, which are deemed characteristic of Vietnam’s national culture. Much is indeed done to communicate the idea that Vietnamese students share a historically distinctive and well-established culture. In this example, the students receive less information about what is thought to be characteristic of Vietnam’s national culture than in the task about Van Cao, but they are challenged by the festive images to bring their own cultural knowledge and experiences into play.

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5.2.4 Constructive Level of Student Engagement Chi and Wylie (2014) define student engagement as constructive, when students generate or construct output (knowledge or skills) beyond what is provided in the learning materials. The nature of tasks, which call for a constructive level of student engagement, is to provide students the space to acquire and practice skills that enhance their cognitive empowerment. The data in Table 5.1 display the increase in the share of such tasks in the past decades. Students are required to respond constructively to national symbols or values in around 20% of the tasks in the E1980 and E1990 textbook series. In the more recent textbooks, this share has increased to 30 to 40%. The instruction to translate an English text into Vietnamese is often used in the textbooks from the 1980s and 1990s, but such tasks disappear in the E2000 and E2010 series. Excerpt 5.3a, which reproduces Task 2 from E1980/10, 121, introduces someone’s Aunt Sally from Branford, USA. Students are asked to translate the description, but different translations are possible, depending on the person(s) they must address. When students address their teachers, for example, the possessive adjective that is equivalent to “my” in English should be “của em” or “của con” in Vietnamese—to show a respective attitude toward someone who is of higher status or of older age. There are many other Vietnamese words that have the meaning of “my” in English, such as “của mình,” “của tớ” and “của tôi,” but these variants are not acceptable when this type of social relation and social hierarchy defines the situation. Thus, the translation task stimulates students to become attentive to sociocultural differences; it prompts them to bridge their understanding of Vietnamese social and linguistic customs with the bits of knowledge about Anglo-Saxon social and linguistic rules provided in the task. More explicit cultural comparisons at times also intend to bring about a constructive level of student engagement. The task in AE2000/11, 34, reproduced in Excerpt 5.3b, contains pictures of two Western parties, but asks students to list Vietnamese table manners that are to be observed at a local party. Two examples are provided, and students have to add two other rules. Students are thus asked to mobilize their knowledge of Vietnamese table manners. At the same time, the pictures prompt them to grasp and make sense of the differences between Vietnamese and Western values. In this sense, we can again conclude that the task stimulates students to construct or reconstruct their socio-cultural knowledge. While being addressed as members of the national community (“as a Vietnamese” who is familiar with “Vietnamese table manners”), students are also stimulated to extend their personal grasp on their national identity. It may also be concluded that, despite the use of more student-centred didactical strategies, many tasks in the EFL textbooks continue to be characterized by high volumes of official images of the Vietnamese nation-state. Even tasks that call for a critical, constructive engagement with the learning material do repeatedly remind the students of their status and position as inheritors of a distinctive Vietnamese tradition and inhabitants of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

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Excerpt 5.3 a Translating from English in E1980/10, 121 b Manners at the party table in AE2000/ 11, 34

5.2.5 Interactive Level of Student Engagement Following the ICAP framework, an interactive level of student engagement is reached when students learn something in common, when they acquire skills and knowledge in and through interactional or transactional processes (Vanderstraeten, 2002). Interactively designed instructional tasks aim at engaging students collaboratively in learning processes in ways in which they jointly become able to gain the “sense of their own learning process by successfully pursuing a project from start to finish” (Kuhlthau et al., 2007, 6). Table 5.1 lists the number of tasks in which EFL students are prompted to interactively (re-)construct their knowledge about Vietnam’s national identity. Such tasks were rare in the 1980s and 1990s, but their incidence increases rapidly afterwards.

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Only 1 of the 169 selected tasks in the E1980 textbook series belonged to this category, but in the latest series of textbooks some 18% of all selected tasks (i.e., 34 out of 189 tasks) were included in this category. Let us again provide a few examples. Task 2 in RE2000/12, 24, reproduced in Excerpt 5.4a, contains a table which lists features of the American culture, including the two-generation family model and the nursing homes for elderly parents. Students must work in pairs and find out corresponding features in their home country. They thus must jointly reflect on basic features of the Vietnamese culture and compare the national habits and cultures of Vietnam and the USA. Although the task is not an open-ended one, students are prompted to mobilize information from various sources to complete the task. To identify the Vietnamese variants of the two-generation model and the nursing homes, for example, they need to inform themselves about family situations in Vietnam. Living with and looking after the parent(s) are traditionally seen as the duty of the (oldest) son and his family, but students may also refer to the changes in family structures that are taking place in present-day Vietnam, especially in the metropolitan areas, such as the increasing numbers of elderly people living in nursing homes. Thus, students may obtain a broader picture of the challenges facing present-day Vietnam and some national traditions of Vietnam in the rapidly changing global societal system. Somewhat similar reflections on the complexity of Vietnam’s national identity are stimulated by other tasks. Task 1 in E2010/12–1, 69, reproduced as Excerpt 5.4b, requires students to work in groups of four or five and look for information about the defining characteristics of different ethnic groups in different parts of Vietnam. Apart from the Kinh or Viet, which constitutes the largest ethnic group in Vietnam, 53 ethnic minority groups are officially recognized. Some of these groups are depicted, albeit it in a quite stereotypical way. Students must choose one group and identify the features, which show “the group’s cultural identity,” including population number, religious traditions and belief systems, and territory. They also must design a poster that introduces the ethnic minority group of their choice and give a presentation of its cultural features to the class. The task thus stimulates an understanding about community values within Vietnam. Issues of diversity and equality are brought into play, but within the unitary framework of the nation-state. Our third example, depicted in Excerpt 5.4c, is taken from a project in E2010/10– 2, 25. Students are asked to present for a group of foreign students some features of Vietnamese culture and a list of “Do’s” and “Don’ts” that can help them “avoid embarrassment during their stay.” Some suggestions are provided. To complete the task, students are again expected to mobilize and use information from various sources. They must work in groups and come up with simple rules, which explicate some of Vietnam’s traditions for foreigners who belong to their own age group. Of course, the underlying message is that respect for Vietnam’s own national culture is required in an intercultural and globalizing social world. As these examples illustrate, the textbook developers in Vietnam made many attempts to design instructional tasks tailored to the lifeworld of students. Our analysis of the didactics of national identity in the EFL textbooks shows that students are

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Excerpt 5.4 a Typical national features in RE2000/12, 24 b Ethnic diversity in Vietnam displayed in E2010/12–1, 69 c Do’s and Don’ts for foreigners in Vietnam in E2010/10–2, 25

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no longer predominantly approached as passive recipients of information but increasingly as active, constructive and interactive learners able to perform demanding tasks. The EFL textbooks evolved to include new expectations about students. At the same time, our analysis reveals that Vietnamese students remain exposed to high volumes of ‘hidden’ curricular material. The textbooks establish proximity to the lifeworld of students, both in the presentation and the content of the instructional tasks, but they retain a strong emphasis on official imageries of Vietnam’s cultural identity and distinctiveness. The student-centred tasks are also used to communicate official normative messages about the nation, its unity and basic values, and its position in the globalizing world. The (not so) hidden curriculum of the recent EFL textbooks clearly intends to enhance social solidarity and cohesion.

5.3 Conclusion On the foregoing pages, we have looked at how the textbooks prompt students to engage with learning material that expresses ideas and values about Vietnam’s national identity. With the help of the ICAP framework, we have, more particularly, analysed historical changes in student engagement with national identity. We have documented the significant rise in the tasks that demand ‘higher’ levels of student engagement. Tasks promoting passive and active forms of student engagement dominate in the textbook series of the 1980s and 1990s, but in the more recent textbook series different emphases emerge. While instructional tasks that demand for an active

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level of engagement continue to be included, tasks that only call for passive participation from the side of students disappear. Instead, students are increasingly prompted to construct and co-construct their own learning output. The EFL textbooks continue to pay much attention to identity issues, but they now increasingly steer towards ‘higher’ or ‘upgraded’ levels of student engagement. Our findings enhance the conclusions from earlier curricular and textbook research. For a broad variety of school curricula and textbooks, similar shifts have been documented. At the end of the twentieth century, passive understandings of learning lost their legitimacy. Students have moved to the centre of the learning process and that the focus of curriculum and textbook developers has shifted from teaching to learning. But our findings also show that the Vietnamese textbooks continue to communicate a variety of normative ideas and values about the nature and distinctiveness of the nation-state. While the textbooks have changed in the direction of encouraging students to understand themselves as active and responsible students/citizens, their hidden curriculum continues to be important. Under the surface of didactical strategies, the EFL textbooks continue to promote messages of national unity, national identity and national cohesion. Many curricular and cultural changes have taken place in Vietnam (and elsewhere in the world) in recent decades. The ways in which textbooks are conceived and in which learning is imagined by textbook developers constitute an expression of norms and ideas that exist at the root of the modern belief in schooling. School curricula and textbooks now foster personal empowerment; they aim at helping students “learn the way to learn” and learn “to live in, respond to and shape the world” (Strasheim, 1981, 14). They adapt to the demands of the ‘knowledge economy’ and its expectations regarding individual agency. Curriculum and textbook developers also respond to other demands. The historical changes in the EFL textbooks reflect changes in the expectations regarding the role of English and of regions from the ‘inner circle’ in the globalizing world. They also express the ways in which schools try to enhance national cohesion and take responsibility for “preserving and promoting national identity” (giữ gìn, phát huy bản sắc dân tôc).

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Chi, M. T., et al. (2018). Translating the ICAP theory of cognitive engagement into practice. Cognitive Science, 42(6), 1777–1832. Chi, M. T., & Wylie, R. (2014). The ICAP framework: Linking cognitive engagement to active learning outcomes. Educational Psychologist, 49(4), 219–243. Delors, J. (1998). Learning: The treasure within. UNESCO. Finn, J. D., & Zimmer, K. S., et al. (2012). Student engagement: What is it? Why does it matter? In S. L. Christenson (Ed.), Handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 97–131). Springer. Fredricks, J. et al. (2011). Measuring student engagement in upper elementary through high school. Department of Education Washington DC. Guibernau, M. (2004). Anthony D. Smith on nations and national identity: A critical assessment. Nations and Nationalism, 10(1–2), 125–141. Järvelä, S., & Renninger, K. A. (2014). Designing for learning: Interest, motivation, and engagement. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences (pp. 668–685). Cambridge University Press. King, A. (1993). From sage on the stage to guide on the side. College Teaching, 41(1), 30–35. Kuhlthau, C. C. et al. (2007). Guided inquiry. Libraries Unlimited. Lamborn, S., et al. (1992). The significance and sources of student engagement. In F. Newman (Ed.), Student engagement and achievement in American secondary schools (pp. 11–39). Teachers College Press. Marks, H. M. (2000). Student engagement in instructional activity: Patterns in the elementary, middle, and high school years. American Educational Research Journal, 37(1), 153–184. McCrone, D., & Bechhofer, F. (2015). Understanding national identity. Cambridge University Press. Morris, J., & Chi, M. T. (2020). Improving teacher questioning in science using ICAP theory. The Journal of Educational Research, 113(1), 1–12. Ngo, S. L. et al. (1993). Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư—Complete annals of Dai Viet. Social Sciences Publishing House Hanoi. Nguyen, T. L. (2013). Integrating culture into Vietnamese university EFL teaching. Auckland University of Technology (doctoral dissertation). Paige, R. M., et al. (2003). Culture learning in language education: A review of the literature. In D. L. Lange & R. M. Paige (Eds.), Culture as the core: Perspectives on culture in Second Language Learning (pp. 173–236). Information Age Publishing. Poole, R. (1999). Nation and identity. Routledge. Shin, J., et al. (2011). Presentation of local and international culture in current international Englishlanguage teaching textbooks. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 24(3), 253–268. Smith, A. D. (1991). National Identity. University of Nevada Press. Strasheim, L. A. (1981). Language is the medium, culture is the message: Globalizing foreign languages. In M. W. Conner (Ed.), A global approach to foreign language education (pp. 1–16). National Textbook Company USA. Trilling, B., & Fadel, C. (2012). 21st century skills: Learning for life in our times. Jossey-Bass & Wiley. UNESCO (2000). The Dakar framework for action. Education for all: Meeting our collective Commitments. Retrieved from https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000121147 Vanderstraeten, R. (2002). Dewey’s transactional constructivism. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 36(2), 233–246. Weninger, C., & Kiss, T. (2013). Culture in English as a foreign language (EFL) textbooks: A semiotic approach. TESOL Quarterly, 47(4), 694–716. Wodak, R. et al. (2009). The discursive construction of national identity. Edinburgh University Press. Wu, J. (2010). A content analysis of the cultural content in the EFL textbooks. Canadian Social Science, 6(5), 137–144.

Chapter 6

Conclusion

Abstract This book analyses the content of the EFL textbooks in relation to nationformation processes in Vietnam. Together, the chapters provide a detailed picture of the ways in which new members of the Vietnamese population are officially prompted to see and position themselves in an increasingly global world. In the final chapter of this book, in the light of Vietnam’s plans for school and curriculum reform, we first summarize and discuss the main findings of the textbook analyses presented in the preceding chapters and then put forward some ideas about and suggestions for textbook reform that can be of use to reflective policymakers and curriculum and textbook developers in Vietnam and perhaps also in other parts of the world. Keywords National identity · Hidden curriculum · Curriculum reform · Vietnam · EFL textbooks

It is important to reiterate that the EFL textbooks used in the public school system in Vietnam are all locally produced textbooks. The use of internationally produced EFL textbooks is not allowed in Vietnam’s public school system. This fact explains the strong visibility of national symbols of Vietnam in these school textbooks. But the perceived need to articulate Vietnam’s imagined community also explains the monopoly of locally produced EFL textbooks. In this light, we have analysed the textbook presentation of the national identity of Vietnam. We also analysed the didactical strategies employed to engage students with the content of these textbooks. Together, these chapters provide a detailed picture of the ways in which new members of the Vietnamese population are officially prompted to see and position themselves in an increasingly global world. In Vietnam, the authorities have recently shown increasing interest in school textbooks as part of planned reforms at all levels of school education. These plans are put forward in a range of official resolutions and documents. The overall aim of the reforms is “to develop new curricula, educational methods and textbooks which improve education quality comprehensively to fulfil the demands for human resource development for national industrialization and modernization and accommodate national conditions and tradition” (National Assembly, 2000, Part 1). Another goal is © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 T. D. Phuong and R. Vanderstraeten, The ‘Hidden Curriculum’ of Vietnam’s English School Textbooks, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-1196-3_6

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to prompt young Vietnamese citizens to develop “toward global citizens” (Government of Vietnam 2015: Article 1, Part 1). Considering this policy, new curricula and textbooks for English as Foreign Language at the level of higher secondary education are expected to be introduced in the near future (MOET, 2018). The foregoing analyses may thus not only provide a contribution to the sociology of school textbooks and the construction of national identity in Vietnam during the past four decades, but also be of interest to reflective policymakers and curriculum and textbook developers. In the last chapter of this book, we first summarize and discuss the main findings of our analyses and then briefly put forward some ideas about and suggestions for textbook reform.

6.1 Main Findings The focus of the foregoing analyses is on a period of about four decades, during which Vietnam had to reposition itself in the world. Vietnam maintained close political and economic relationships with other nations from the Socialist Bloc until the late 1980s, when it started its economic reforms known as Renovation (or Đổi Mới) and when the dissolution of the Soviet Union took place. After that period, it has increasingly tried to broaden its horizons and re-assert itself in the global sphere. Multiple social changes have since taken place in Vietnam (as well as in many other nations from the former Socialist Bloc). The first Vietnamese EFL textbooks, which appeared in the latter part of the 1980s, already reflect some of the geo-political changes that took place during this period. In the 1990s, Vietnam also witnessed a number of significant events, such as the lift of the US trade embargo on Vietnam (1994) and the ensuing reestablishment of economic relationships between both countries, the law on foreign investment that was adopted in 1996, the inclusion in international organizations like ASEAN (1995) and APEC (1998), and the establishment of relationships with many other countries or territories in the world. The E1990 textbooks were developed before or very close to these events and thus could only anticipate, but not yet reflect, this growing openness. But these events certainly influenced the textbook series produced in the 2000s, namely RE2000 and AE2000. In the early twenty-first century, the integration of Vietnam in the international ‘order’ gained more momentum. Vietnam joined the World Trade Organization in 2007 and signed bilateral agreements with the USA (2000), Japan (2008) and the EU (2012). Globalization also had an impact on a broad range of other social domains. The E2010 textbook series, the publication whereof began in 2016, could build upon these developments. This series is presently still in use in Vietnam. Following the economic reforms and the implosion of the Soviet Union, English began to replace Russian as the dominant second language taught at the secondary school level throughout Vietnam. English thus stands for the new global orientation, which ‘modern’ Vietnam actively tries to pursue. The EFL textbook characteristics

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and evolutions, which we have analysed in the preceding chapters, should be understood against this background. We have particularly looked at the ‘reinvention’ of Vietnam’s national history in the context of globalization processes. We have shown how the changes in the broader social context led to an emphasis on the nation’s traditional values and customs, and how Vietnam’s national identity is redefined in reaction to the changed expectations. We have, more particularly, focused on the following four aspects of the EFL textbooks produced and used in Vietnam during the last four decades. (1) First, it did not come as a surprise that representations of territory/land occupy a prominent position in the EFL school textbooks used in Vietnam. It is popularly believed that a stable place to live is crucial for people’s life trajectory (the Vietnamese proverb “An cư lạc nghiệp,” for example, means: Have a stable/ safe shelter, then develop (and enjoy) a good life or career). But the territorial places, which prominently appear in the EFL textbooks, also change over time. Maps or ‘typical’ landscapes were popular in the 1980s and 1990s, whereas popular tourist sites are much more prominent in the 2000s and 2010s. The E1980 and E1990 textbook series were developed in a period in which Vietnam did not yet allow for much international tourism and in which the conflicts with Cambodia and China, which led to the invasion of Chinese forces in northern Vietnam in 1979, still played a role. But in more recent years, foreigners and foreign organizations became much more visible in Vietnam. In the E2000 and E2010 textbook series, tourist attraction sites were used as important symbol of modern Vietnam, representing its natural beauty. Vietnam now is presented as a beautiful destination for foreign visitors. Moreover, these tourist attraction sites also appear as places where locals and foreigners can meet and learn from each other. We have, however, also shown that the territorial representations included in the EFL textbooks are linked with the largest and dominant ethnic group in Vietnam, viz., the Kinh people. The national culture of Vietnam, as represented in the EFL textbooks, is still very much dominated by this ethnic group and its symbols. This also implies that references to the habitat of other ethnic groups are hardly included in the textbooks. Vietnam’s textbooks continue to predominantly serve the dominant ethnic group. For the same reason, the content of these textbooks may speak less to students from the ethnic minority groups who mostly live in peripheral mountain regions. (2) A main goal of including English as Foreign Language in school curricula is to facilitate communication between Vietnamese youngsters and foreigners who speak the world’s new lingua franca. In this light, we have also focused on the ways in which foreigners and foreign cultures are represented in the Vietnamese EFL textbooks. We have looked at how distinctions are drawn, at how insiders are distinguished from outsiders and at how similarities and differences between “us” and “them” are articulated. Our findings indicate that the focus shifted from learning English as a foreign language itself toward learning foreign cultures while learning English.

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Our analyses build, more particularly, upon the distinction between source culture (i.e., the culture of the Vietnamese students and teachers), target culture (i.e., the culture of those nations, where English is the sole official language), international target culture (which includes a broad variety of cultures around the world), and global culture (which encompasses topics explicitly situated at the global level). We observed a remarkable decrease in the visibility of the English target culture and corresponding increases in the visibility of the local source culture, international target cultures and global issues in the middle of the time period under investigation. This shift obviously reflects some globalization processes, which have in recent decades taken place in Vietnam. The way in which other cultures are included in EFL textbooks indicates how Vietnamese students are expected to integrate in the world. These textbooks now increasingly expose the students to a culturally diverse world, while trying to foster a desire “to live together” and “live with others” in our “global village.” The greater exposure to international target and global cultures may help students to develop intercultural communication competences (as suggested by UNESCO, for example). The changes in the EFL textbooks also reflect wider ranging political changes in Vietnam; the Communist Party of Vietnam now actively promotes international cooperation. English is in this light a communication tool that can be used to further intercultural understandings and to reposition Vietnam and its specific cultural identity within the world. The world is imagined as a world of nations, in which Vietnam needs to claim its own place. (3) Thirdly, we have discussed in more detail changes in the gender identities included in the Vietnamese EFL textbooks. The ways in which Vietnam conceives of its national identity has effects on gendered social expectations; gendered identities also constitute a major feature of Vietnam’s national identity. As we have shown, gender equality has long been formally put forward in Vietnam, but gender inequalities and gender ideologies also persist. Implicitly, a wide range of differences between men and women continue to play an important social role. Both women and men appear in different roles in different social spaces in the textbooks, but individuality and autonomy are here more commonly attributed to men. Also, the number of men in leading positions clearly surpasses that of women, while women outweigh men in situations linked with household responsibilities. Additionally, images of women who perform well both privately and professionally may impose a double burden on modern Vietnamese women. The expectation that women should excel at home and at work may indeed hinder women empowerment in Vietnam. Altogether, the textbooks produced in the early twenty-first century are more progressive regarding gender equality than the older textbooks. More equality in gender representations and a de-gendering of household duties ensue from the stronger focus on human rights in both the international community and Vietnam. Gender equality is a central value in globalization scripts, and the

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Vietnamese EFL textbooks clearly intend to come to terms with this global value. (4) Finally, we have looked more closely at the didactical principles which these textbook series put forward. In the scientific literature, it has been argued that new expectations or meanings of ‘student’ have become institutionalized in the period in which participation in secondary and higher education expanded rapidly. New didactical principles have gained acceptance for a broad range of school subjects and in a wide range of national school systems (e.g., Baker et al., 2024; Schaub et al., 2019). Textbooks now portray young students not merely as passive recipients of information but as active learners who should be confronted with cognitively complex and challenging tasks. Building upon these findings, we expected to find a shift from teaching to learning in these textbooks. Our findings show, more particularly, that the ‘student’ is constructed in more active terms in the most recent Vietnamese textbook series. Students are now frequently explicitly challenged to articulate their own attitude or position vis-à-vis the symbols of national identity included in the EFL textbooks. The present-day curricula and textbooks thus focus less on knowledge transmission but instead give more attention to cultural competences. But regardless of the levels of student engagement which the different textbook series aim for, the dominant image of Vietnam upheld in school textbooks is still one that gives priority to the unity of its territory, its political independence and its distinctive cultural traditions. In this sense, the didactical principles and strategies put forward by the textbook developers seek to reconcile pressures at the individual actor level (granting more agency to the students) and at the national level (preserving and promoting national identity, giữ gìn, phát huy bản sắc dân tôc). Considering the eventful history of modern Vietnam, this should also not come as a surprise. The idea of an “imagined community,” as famously elaborated by Benedict Anderson (1983), is that a nation is socially constructed, and that a nation is made up of individuals who see themselves as part of a specific group or unity. To apprehend different variants of nation-building, both theoretically and historically, it has proven worthwhile to look in more detail at some presuppositions underlying this idea, including presuppositions of solidarity between the members of such an imagined community, of relationships between this community and its outside, and of gender identities embedded within this broader narrative. In our view, the foregoing chapters shed new light on the ways in which the imagined community in Vietnam has been constructed in the last four decades.

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6.2 Implications As already mentioned, Vietnam is currently innovating its school curricula and school textbooks. For the secondary education level, the new curricula and textbooks are planned to be introduced in the school year of 2024–2025. Circular 32/2018/TTBGDĐT, titled “Promulgating the New Curricula for General Education Levels,” specifies that the school curricula and textbooks have to be constructed in ways that are “suitable to the characteristics of the Vietnamese people, the Vietnamese culture and traditional values, the shared values of humanity, as well as the initiatives and general orientations of UNESCO in the domain of education” (MOET, 2018).1 While the new curricula will have to be used and implemented throughout the nation as a whole, the accompanying timetable also leaves open a number of slots that local authorities and school leaders can fill in at their discretion. Some space is thus foreseen to adapt the timetable and the curricula to specific local conditions. Seven foreign languages appear in the new plans for the secondary education level. English is one of them; the others are French, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, German and Korean. All students need to include one foreign language course in the compulsory part of their program. No hierarchy between these different foreign languages is imposed, although English has been attracting special attention for quite some years now (Nguyen, 2012). English (or any other first foreign language) is planned to fill 105 out of the total of 1015 slots in which each school year at the higher secondary education level is divided. The time devoted to English (or any other first foreign language) is equal to the time devoted to Vietnamese or mathematics and is much higher than the time that will be foreseen for courses such as history or geography (70 slots per school year). For the new curriculum for English, the aims are formulated at a very general level: “By learning English, students [are expected to] develop a deeper understanding of the territory, people and culture of English-speaking countries and other countries in the world; to understand and respect the diversity of cultures, and at the same time, reflect on and articulate the cultural values of Vietnam in English; [and] to develop the qualities of patriotism, humanity, honesty, kindness and responsibility to the environment and the social community” (MOET, 2018).2 Against this background, we would like to conclude with some recommendations for the construction of the new EFL textbooks. Our recommendations build upon the foregoing analyses and at the same time aim at strengthening the inclusive and global character of the EFL textbooks used in Vietnam. Original Vietnamese: phù hợp với đặc điểm con người, văn hoá Việt Nam, các giá trị truyền thống của dân tộc và những giá trị chung của nhân loại cũng như các sáng kiến và định hướng phát triển chung của UNESCO về giáo dục (in Thông tư 32/2018/TT-BGDĐT Ban Hành Chương Trình Giáo Dục Phổ Thông mới). 2 Original Vietnamese: Thông qua môn Tiếng Anh, học sinh có những hiểu biết sâu rộng hơn về đất nước, con người, nền văn hoá của các nước nói tiếng Anh và của các quốc gia khác trên thế giới; hiểu và tôn trọng sự đa dạng của các nền văn hoá, đồng thời bước đầu phản ánh được giá trị nền văn hoá của Việt Nam bằng tiếng Anh; phát triển các phẩm chất yêu đất nước, con người, trung thực, nhân ái và có trách nhiệm với môi trường, cộng đồng (MOET, 2018, 9). 1

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(1) We have time and again noted that images of national territory play a prominent role in the EFL textbooks produced and used in Vietnam. All the EFL textbook series used during the past four decades put much emphasis on the unity and integrity of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and its national territory. In our view, it is highly unlikely that such an emphasis will disappear soon. However, we would like to recommend that more attention be given to the ethnic diversity within the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The ‘national’ culture presented in the EFL textbooks we reviewed is by and large the culture of the nation’s majority ethnic group, viz. the Kinh people. On the one hand, giving more visibility to the cultural traditions of minority ethnic groups might be seen to challenge the idea of a unitary and well-defined nation-state. On the other hand, however, the inclusion of ‘their’ cultural traditions and symbols might further the integration of the members of these minorities (Delors, 1998). It might, moreover, provide a good starting point to learn about others, to understand and tolerate cultural differences. In this sense, including broader and more inclusive conceptions of the Vietnamese population in the school textbooks might create more opportunities for Vietnamese students to understand ‘their’ national community. (2) As noted before, the Vietnamese EFL textbooks have in recent decades put less emphasis on the English ‘target culture’ (Cortezzi & Jin, 1999; Kachru, 2006). Other cultures or circles are now receiving more attention, including the Vietnamese ‘source culture.’ However, the textbooks continue to build on the differences between these cultures or circles. Little space has hitherto been given to situations or settings in which Vietnamese people and foreigners live and work together. This absence of international cultural spaces may limit Vietnamese students’ views of the world, as it may reaffirm the traditional distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ between ‘our’ land and ‘their’ land (Paasi, 1995). This distinction has lost its relevance, however, as it does not effectively assist students to understand current patterns of globalization. Thus, we suggest that more space be given to tasks or activities, which present situations or settings where people of different cultural background or nationality work and/or live together. Including such ‘global’ spaces in the textbooks may help guide youngsters towards “greater mutual understanding” and “greater solidarity” and foster their “will of living together,” all of which constitute, according to UNESCO, basic components of the forms of social cohesion and national identity that will be required in the twenty-first century in an increasingly interdependent and global world (Delors, 1998, 34). By helping students to make sense of the new global issues and challenges, the EFL textbooks would in our view best be able to contribute to the very broad cultural aims put forward in the official statements. (3) With respect to gender, we recommend that gendered representations in different contexts or activities, and especially in influential positions, become more balanced than they currently are. A balanced gender order may not reflect present-day customs within Vietnam, but it may contribute to changing outdated gendered norms and practices. It would also stimulate students to pay more attention to gender biases in different social domains and motivate girls to

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explore more opportunities to make a career. For this reason, we also recommend removing cultural content that is linked to gender bias of any form from the school textbooks used in Vietnam. It might be added that most gender representations in the existing EFL textbook series are binary-structured in a conventional way and that it might be useful to include more ‘fluid’ views on gender soon. Not only do new family structures, such as single-parent families and same-sex parent families, deserve more attention. But more spaces could also be devoted to discussing issues related to the equality of transgender and gender-variant people. The inclusion of such issues might be highly sensitive in Vietnam, but we believe that by offering students opportunities to openly discuss these issues, schools also encourage students to respect equality and diversity. Given the fact that such issues are becoming increasingly visible at the global scale, it seems particularly useful for the Vietnamese EFL school textbooks to give attention to them. (4) With regard to the didactics of national identity, we recommend that the proportion of tasks or assignments, which stimulate students to make sense of ‘their’ national identity in constructive and/or interactive ways, be increased. As we have observed in Chap. 5, students are nowadays increasingly thought of as active learners. It is worthwhile to further reinforce this point of view. This might not only enable students to engage in a more in-depth and critical manner with the content provided in the textbooks, but it might also have important long-term effects. Students not only have to learn for school, but also need to be challenged to develop skills for lifelong learning outside their school contexts. By actively engaging students in the learning process, the textbooks may maximize the ways in which students engage with and come to an understanding of the cultural content. This didactical strategy may help them to flexibly adapt to new circumstances; processes of interactive co-construction may also improve their sense of diversity and social difference. That said, an important challenge will be to open up the textbook representations of national identity to critical scrutiny. If we understand the nation as an imagined community, however, the new generations should also have the possibility to contribute to the nation’s dominant value system. Let us add a final thought. English has become a new lingua franca; the new communication media also reinforce the rapid development and spread of world Englishes—not just in Vietnam but in nearly every part of the contemporary world. People thus have many occasions to learn and make use of English. In certain ways, the school system and the EFL textbooks might thus become less important than before. For the reasons and the values which we have discussed, however, it might also be argued that they are nowadays becoming increasingly important.

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