Vietnam, a Land of Paradoxes: Happiness in an Educational Outlier

This chapter begins by providing critically historical and cultural context for understanding contemporary Vietnam and its educational progress and challenges. While Vietnam geographically and politically is in Southeast Asia, its/her culture and education is more appropriately considered as part of the Confucian world, which includes countries such as Japan and Korea. A major theme of this chapter is paradox. Vietnam, despite being a rapidly advancing lower middle-income country, in terms of happiness and education, it has fared well in both areas. So it truly is an “outlier.” Vietnam seems to be one of the few countries with students who are both relatively successful academically and also happy. But again, in terms of paradoxes, Vietnam is a “tale of two cities.” It certainly does suffer from what is termed the “academic disease” and a neglect of “soft skills” related to the pursuit of lifelong happiness. But it is a country with strong social and familial relationships contributing to both intergenerational and general well-being. Also strong traditional respect and love for teachers and education, bonding social capital, and work-life balance, an important theme of this volume, are all found to contribute to happiness in Vietnam.