VietNamNet Bridge – Duong Trung Quoc, a well-known Vietnamese historian, after watching the clip “Vietnam, hinh hai mot chu S” (Vietnam – the S-shaped country), has affirmed that Vietnamese students do not keep indifferent to Vietnamese history as previously thought.

National Assembly deputy Duong Trung Quoc.

The clip, after being posted on Internet, had attracted 80,000 watchers just after two days. All the young Internet users, who are at the school age, have expressed their interest in the clip. Some of them said the clip moved them to tears and they take pride of being a Vietnamese citizen, the citizen of a heroic and beautiful country.

Duong To Dao, a graphic design student, the author of the clip, said it took her three months to implement the clip with the assistance of friends.

“You can understand after you watch the clip that though Vietnam is just a small strip of land, but Vietnamese ancestors and the previous generations had to struggle hard to build and protect it,” Dao said.

The original idea and the product of Dao have been warmly welcomed by the youth. A high school student has commented that the 10-minute clip provides a volume of historical knowledge which is as big as the knowledge he has received over the last 12 years at general schools.

On Youtube, a nickname Lieu Nhuoc Phong wrote that it is so wonderful to learn history with the clips like that. Vietnamese students have been criticized for having little knowledge about the nation’s history. However, history would become an interesting subject, if students can follow such an interesting way to approach the history.

Admitting that history has always been a boring learning subject for her, a student said that the clip has made her love the subject. “I feel the pride of my country and I love it more than ever,” she wrote on Facebook.

“Let’s unite one to others to build up the country into a powerful country and protect the fatherland,” she continued.

“I promise that from now on I will spend more time to learn history so as to have more knowledge about Vietnam and Vietnamese people. I love Vietnam,” wrote Vu Duc, a student.

The comments on social networks have lifted the spirit of Vietnamese adult people. They once felt a sorrow when hearing that Vietnamese students do not care about the nation’s history and that Vietnamese students have more knowledge about Chinese history than Vietnamese.

Experts also many times rang the alarm bell over the bad knowledge of Vietnamese students about the nation’s history. A lot of students received zero mark for history from the national university entrance exams, because they did not have the basic necessary knowledge.

However, they may have changed their mind because of the clip. Historian Duong Trung Quoc, a National Assembly’s Deputy, has affirmed that the Vietnamese youth do not turn their backs to the nation’s history.

Quoc believes that the problems lies in the fact that how historical knowledge needs to be transferred to students, so that the students can understand the lessons and love the nation’s history.

“When we provide unattractive and unreliable information, people would turn their back to this,” Quoc said.

However, historians have expressed their doubts about the accuracy of some information provided in the clip, saying that the information remains controversial among the experts.

Hanh Oanh