A friendly discussion with the participation of Dr. Vu Duc Liem – lecturer at Hanoi National University of Education, and also a researcher on Southeast Asian history in general and Vietnamese history in particular.
The friendly discussion took place in the form of online via fanpage: Quoc Tu Giam Cultural Space.
This is a story about the role of the faculty and the intellectuals in the era of 19th century Vietnam. The nineteenth century was the last period of Vietnamese feudalism under the Nguyen Dynasty. Existing from 1802 to 1919, Confucian education in the Nguyen Dynasty took place in an extremely complicated context with the changes in the world as well as in the country. However, from a historical perspective, we can see some features of the Nguyen dynasty’s academic education system.
Competition-examination took place with the purpose of selecting talents under the feudal dynasty. The strength of a dynasty also depends on its policy of using people. Recognizing the role of the faculty in consolidating the feudal system of centralized authority, the Nguyen Dynasty adopted Confucianism as the state religion, trying to rectify the academic education system.
Although academic education in the nineteenth century (under the Nguyen Dynasty) had many reforms, it was still not suitable for the changes of Vietnamese society at that time. Confucian academic education has become obsolete. Therefore, the wisdom of the people was not gathered, the national unity bloc was still not consolidated and fostered leading to the end of Confucianism with the French colonial period.
However, it cannot be denied that Confucianism has influenced the vast majority of people to this day. This expansion of Confucianism is partly due to the faculty, today, although the New School does not know Confucianism, it still inherits the temperament and virtues left by the previous intellectual class.
The discussion was a conversation about the importance of the academic class in Confucian society; Vietnam’s educational context in the first half of the nineteenth century; and the great contributions of the intelligentsia in the Vietnamese society in the first half of the 19th century.
Ngoc Ha