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Vietnam Sharply Divided on Coronavirus School Closures

VOA News

   Vietnam is sharply divided on how long to close schools because of the
   coronavirus, which has prevented parents from going to work and
   threatens further economic damage. Supporters want to keep students at
   home until April, while opponents say the panic is overblown.

   The biggest population is in Ho Chi Minh City, where government leaders
   have proposed extending the public school closures all through March
   and then continuing the semester into what would usually be a summer
   break. The city leaders also recommended making this a nation-wide
   policy.

   Le Thanh Liem, Vice Chair of the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh
   City, tasked the city education department with keeping the disease
   from reaching the schools.

   The department will "strictly and fully implement measures to prevent
   and treat the new coronavirus, preventing the spread of an epidemic in
   the school environment," he wrote in an official letter.

   Those who agree with the government decision see the coronavirus as a
   collective action problem, requiring people to keep physical contact at
   a minimum. Pham Khanh said it is better to be safe than sorry.

   "I decided on my own to take my children out of school," she said.
   "There is a long incubation period, I will wait two weeks before I do
   anything."

   She was referring to the two weeks when doctors believe that people, if
   they have the coronavirus, would show symptoms.

   While parents are keeping their children at home, another kind of
   school is catching on: online classes. After some initial excitement,
   with foreign governments from the U.S. to Britain promoting e-learning
   in Vietnam, the trend stalled for years, because of regulatory hurdles
   and lack of internet access.

   "E-learning deployment within the academic system in Vietnam has not
   really taken off, mostly due to the over-focus on hardware and
   remaining confusion between digitization of educational contents and
   online education," Alice Pham wrote in a 2018 report for the Consumer
   Unity & Trust Society think tank.

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