Human beings are living creatures with an awareness about themselves and their surroundings.
Everyone born at any time, anywhere, under any circumstances wants to survive and, at the same time, improve their lives. They have their own dreams and objectives and are always looking for ways to achieve them.
Depending on their age, gender and background, each individual chooses their own ways of reaching these goals.
People who were born and raised in wealthy families in prosperous societies in temperate climates have dreams, ambitions and ways of achieving their ambitions which are quite different to those less fortunate living in poorer, underprivileged families in less developed countries with more extreme weather conditions.
Distinguished Teacher, Le Cong Co meets with President Truong Tan Sang
In order to make everyone’s basic expectations a reality, good health is the most important requirement and the second is a good education. Everyone should at least have the strength to overcome their difficulties on the path to success.
There are many elements that affect our health, including genetics, personal circumstances, our environment, eating habits, work, exercise and entertainment.
Though we are all very different physically and intellectually, we all have one thing in common, which is LOVE. We all feel love. Without love, we cannot be human. Without love, we become cruel, no matter how strong and intelligent we are.
Health, energy and love ignite our vitality and reasons for living, making our lives useful and meaningful. In the womb, babies are connected to their mothers. Mothers love their children without question at all times and nourish them with love. Children grow up surrounded by love. A mother is always the person who cares for, loves and forgives her children, whether they are good, bad, healthy or unhealthy.
That is the reason why humans identify with love. We love our parents, siblings, relatives, neighbors and our country, our Motherland. Motherland is Mother. Love binds us together, regardless of our color, race or nationality.
Our love for our country and motherland must be built on the foundation of our love for our family and relatives. This requires that we all relate closely to our families from birth, because we all then grow up in the love of the people around. When we talk about people, we always talk about families.
Orphans growing up without the love of their parents may have different emotions from others living with parents and family. There is a feud and loneliness deep in their hearts until the day they die. If we compare these two types of people, there are many differences in their psychologies, emotions and especially their SPIRIT, which is formed by love.
Those of us who feel love have SPIRIT. This spirit helps us to love the good, the truth and reality, and improves our tolerance to identify, overcome and forgive the evil hiding in our souls.
As we mature, our spirits strengthen and eliminate the evil in our souls. If our good spirits can finally overcome the evil ones, then we can always love and forgive. However, if the evil spirits defeat the good spirits, we will never love and forgive.
The circle of life, from birth, to maturity and to death, with families, in hometowns or far away, is connected and shared with others by love and spirit. Throughout history, this has always been the same.
People living in modern times continue to move through time and space, with the same eternal foundations of love and spirit.
Nguyen Du, a famous author, wrote: “Chu tam kia moi bang ba chu tai”. Vietnamese families have a tradition of relating the spirits of parents, siblings, relatives, friends and neighbors with the rise and fall of our country over thousands of years. They maintain ethical, honest and loyal life standards together, which empower them and our national love and spirit as top priorities. Vietnamese families are living in a society with the goal of becoming “affluent citizens living in prosperous, fair, democratic and civilized country”. Originally a poor, underdeveloped country, we were forced to fight foreign invaders for our independence. However, since then, the low educational standards of our people and their low annual incomes have not improved. These issues make the ongoing development process very difficult. War deeply impacted Vietnamese families, especially those in the South. In order to assist these families to recover from war, it is the responsibility of our administration to love them as themselves, to work for their rights, to become public-spirited and selfless and become good examples to follow. This will then provide the direction for our society and younger generations to improve our country further.
The trust of the Vietnamese people on the Party has been built upon the sacrifice of the millions of people who died for our nation’s independence. That is why we have to keep that trust by eliminating some of the selfish, greedy and insular administrators who have caused younger generations to lose sight of their direction and ways of improving themselves and the country. If they receive the proper direction, then Vietnamese family life can be improved and, at the same time, a more intellectual and cooperative environment will evolve.
Vietnamese society is diverse. It is a blend of the many different cultures of many nations. These include good, bad, positive and negative influences that have eroded some of the features of our original culture. Culture is a measurement of the mental health of our society. The more the world is globalized, the more we have to try to save and protect our historic traditions.
Educated families play an important role in conserving and demonstrating the traditional kindness and spirit handed down from grandparents, parents and sibling, as examples to follow. Broken families may distract children in their pursuit of a good education. Families and school teachers provide young people with the knowledge and experience to nurture their spirits and overcome evil temptations. Our society is a reflection of the good and the bad. As a result, if the family and the education system do not focus on the perfection of the human spirit, we may be overcome by the bad things gradually evolving our modern society.
In summary, the SPIRIT should be strengthened and improved continuously to perfection by families and educators. In addition to creating a fair, democratic and civilized society, love is built by the GOOD SPIRIT overcoming EVIL, and is influenced by families, schools and society. The more society develops, the more we are tempted by materialism. Laws should therefore be realistically adapted to help defeat evil and to enhance our SPIRITS. Today, Vietnamese should continue studying to guarantee that they can understand “how to make what we learn from others our own”. Modernization should drive the Vietnamese SPIRIT, which means that the Vietnamese SPIRIT in a globalized society must be pure and must carefully differentiate the bad things from the good, in order to protect our traditions from the negative influences of alien cultures.
In our families, schools and society in general, our priority has always been to provide an education in the humanities for our future generations, which should focus to their career aspirations and ways of setting up their own businesses. With this basic knowledge, students will be able to find interesting jobs to strengthen their spirits. If they only perform manual labor, they are more likely to become complacent. Setting up a business is much more difficult if they only work to merely meet their daily needs. Because of this we are striving to provide them with the academic knowledge and the professional and practical skills to meet the demands of the modern workplace. Their success depends on adapting their major field of study to the current requirements of local business.
Humanitarian education for Vietnamese students in today’s industrialized society requires them to improve their social awareness and to serve the community. We should also encourage them to love themselves and others, live a life in common with others and strive for a fair, democratic and civilized future.
Students are our young intellectuals, our foundation and the motivation for social improvement. We must focus their education through families and schools to improve their SPIRITS and to serve and devote themselves to the public good and the health of our nation.
We must care about the material lives, the jobs and careers, and the mental condition of our students. We must particularly improve their awareness of the tradition of founding and protecting our country over the generations. We must use historical examples, such as the lives of our national heroes, our rich traditional cultural heritage and the importance of preserving our strong family relationships between grandparents, parents, siblings, neighbors, friends and our communities. Most of all, we must teach them how to distinguish between good and bad, to eradicate the dangerous influences from many new and different sources that could seriously harm their human spirits in the future.
A humanitarian education for students in modern times should recount outstanding examples of typical individuals in various positions in families, schools and in society and focus on the objective: “We do all we can for the rights of our citizens and our nation”. We must consistently say and do the same things in order to earn the faith and trust in the hearts of our people, especially those of the younger generation.
(Distinguished Teacher Le Cong Co)