Western aid bolsters english in Vietnam HANOI - In another break from the past, Vietnam has chosen English over French and Russian as the favored foreign language for students to learn and has turned to its former ideological enemies in the West to help redesign the educational curriculum. Vietnam is already phasing out English-language textbooks written by Russian advisers in the mid-1980s. They trumpet Sputnik and the World Festival of Youth in Moscow, and are full of such ''misspeak'' as ''I am having a temperature'' and ''My car runs away,'' explaining in part why many of the 35,000 English teachers in Vietnam cannot really speak much English themselves. The new books, to be used in grades six through 12 throughout the country, were developed by U.S. and Vietnamese educators in partnership with Vietnam's Education Ministry and U.S. corporate sponsors. Some of the 24 sponsors, such as Coca-Cola Co., are the same companies whose billboards were painted over in 1996 by Communist officials in an attempt to diminish the growing fascination with the West. ''This is a very courageous decision on the government's part,'' said Adrie van Geldergen, a Hanoi representative of the Business Alliance for Vietnamese Education, the nonprofit U.S. organization overseeing a project that may cost $50 million. ''Can you imagine the reaction in the United States if a bunch of foreigners came in and said, 'We're going to modernize your education system for you?''' But the Education Ministry has not surrendered control. It has approved every comma and kept the texts nonpolitical. The ministry ordered an early batch of books recalled so that a reference to the South China Sea could be changed to the East Sea, reflecting a territorial dispute between China and Vietnam over the Spratly Islands, and it insisted over some early U.S. objections that a mention of General Vo Nguyen Giap, a national hero who fought the French and the Americans, not be deleted. Even before the government's February decision to use the business alliance books and its 1998 edict that all bureaucrats under age 50 would be expected to learn English, young Vietnamese by the tens of thousands had started studying the language, many of them on their own time and at their own expense. Russian, once widely spoken, fell from vogue when Moscow's aid ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and France has had only moderate success in trying to re-establish its tongue as the second language of Vietnam, even though it pays instructors to teach French. Perhaps most significant, the changes in Vietnam's education system - supported by the World Bank, Australia and Britain, in addition to the business alliance - include retraining teachers. Under the new curriculum, Vietnam will move away from its traditional methodology, in which students have been expected, in the words of an educator, to ''sit down, shut up and listen.'' Instead, the new approach encourages student participation, independent thinking and the challenging of academic authority. ''The government is willing to admit the problem is with methodology, not just with English-language teaching,'' said Psyche Kennett, director of Britain's English Language Teacher Training Project, adding that without retraining the teachers, the endeavor will not succeed ''because teachers will subvert the new textbooks and return to traditional methods in which students play a passive role.'' Educators point out that the curriculum overhaul could result in significant long-term changes because its goals of learning to think on one's feet, questioning authority and searching for independent and creative solutions are anathema to the Communist government. Indeed, officials at the Education Ministry will not discuss the business alliance or the new curriculum with foreign correspondents. Such reticence is not surprising in a bureaucracy where civil servants devote great energy to ensuring that they do not make a mistake or say anything to offend superiors. But Western educators say that the ministry is genuinely excited about the pending changes, and that no one questions Vietnam's commitment as a people or as a government to education. Even the poorest families are obsessed with educating their children, though school is compulsory only through fifth grade. It is common for college-age youths to finish their day jobs, head straight for night classes and then study at home until about 1 a.m. The government has raised the literacy rate to 94 percent in 1999 from 88 percent in 1989, and is aiming for zero illiteracy with the introduction of the new curriculum. Western educators consider all this no small accomplishment in a country that can afford to spend only $41 a year per high school student and can pay teachers only $24 to $39 a month. With a million new students a year entering Vietnam's school system, the financial crisis is not likely to abate any time soon. By David Lamb - Los Angeles Times - April 17, 2000.