There is something about walking into a school that makes you think about the future.
Children running between classrooms.
Teachers trying to keep everyone under control.
Books stacked on desks.
Pictures on walls.
Kids laughing far louder than they’re supposed to.
Schools are places built around the idea that tomorrow can be better than today.
That’s what made visiting schools in parts of Central Vietnam particularly powerful.
Because while every classroom was full of children looking toward the future, some of the communities surrounding them were still dealing with consequences from a war that ended long before those children were born.
I’d spent the previous week learning about unexploded ordnance and the work being done to keep rural communities safe.
Now I was seeing what some of that work ultimately protected.
Kids.
A Generation With No Memory of the War
The children I met knew the Vietnam War only as history.
Their parents might not even remember it.
For many of them, it belonged to their grandparents’ generation.
And yet geography doesn’t always allow history to disappear.
In areas of Central Vietnam that experienced intense bombing, unexploded ordnance can still occasionally be discovered when people farm land, construct buildings or disturb soil.
That means safety education has remained important in some communities.
It felt strange watching young children learn about dangers created decades before they were born.
But the way the teachers approached it was sensible.
There was no attempt to frighten the kids.
They were simply given information.
If you find an unfamiliar object in the ground, don’t touch it.
Move away.
Tell an adult.
Let trained professionals handle it.
The lesson was treated in much the same way we would teach a child about crossing a road safely.
Walking Into a Rural Vietnamese Classroom
The schools I visited weren’t enormous institutions.
Some were modest buildings serving relatively small rural communities.
Classrooms were basic compared with many Australian schools, but they were full of life.
As soon as I walked in, every pair of eyes seemed to turn toward me.
A tall Australian suddenly appearing in a Vietnamese classroom apparently creates immediate curiosity.
Some children smiled.
Others hid behind their friends.
A few were brave enough to immediately start firing English words at me.
“Hello!”
“What is your name?”
“Where are you from?”
Then the entire room would laugh when I tried answering them in Vietnamese.
Once again, my terrible pronunciation was providing international entertainment.
Education Means Opportunity
Travelling through poorer rural communities made me appreciate just how important a school can be.
Education isn’t simply about learning maths or memorising vocabulary.
For children growing up in areas with fewer economic opportunities, education can open doors far beyond their village.
English in particular was something many students were excited about.
They understood that speaking another language could one day help them work in tourism, business, technology or countless other industries connected to an increasingly international Vietnam.
Some were incredibly determined.
They wanted to practise every English word they knew.
Sometimes the conversation wasn’t exactly sophisticated.
“What is your favourite animal?”
“Dog.”
“What is your favourite food?”
“Pizza.”
“Do you have girlfriend?”
That question usually produced an explosion of laughter.
Apparently kids are the same everywhere.
Schools Carry the History of Their Communities
What interested me was how much you could learn about an area simply by talking to teachers and families.
A school isn’t isolated from the community around it.
If families struggle financially, the school feels it.
If flooding damages roads and homes, students are affected.
If farmland cannot be safely used until it has been surveyed or cleared, that affects family incomes.
If parents have disabilities or other challenges, children can carry additional responsibilities at home.
The effects ripple outward.
That’s something statistics never communicate particularly well.
You might read about thousands of hectares of contaminated land or hundreds of thousands of people affected by some historical event.
But statistics become different when you’re sitting at a small desk talking to a child whose family actually lives in one of those communities.
Children Living With Disabilities
Another part of the experience involved seeing the challenges faced by children with disabilities.
Vietnam has been making progress toward more inclusive education, but providing specialist resources, accessible facilities and appropriately trained staff can be particularly difficult in poorer or remote communities.
I met children who required more assistance than others and teachers doing their best with the resources available.
What struck me wasn’t their disability.
It was everything else about them.
They wanted to joke around.
They wanted friends.
They wanted to learn.
They wanted to be included.
They wanted to do exactly what every other kid was doing.
It’s easy to reduce people to labels.
“Disabled child.”
“Poor family.”
“War-affected community.”
But once you’ve actually met someone, those labels suddenly seem ridiculously inadequate.
They’re people first.
The Shadow of Agent Orange
You can’t spend much time learning about the legacy of the Vietnam War without hearing about Agent Orange.
During the war, huge quantities of herbicides were sprayed across parts of Vietnam to remove vegetation.
The subject remains deeply emotional because Vietnamese families and communities have associated serious health problems and disabilities with exposure to those chemicals and their contamination.
It’s also an area where I learned to be careful about assumptions.
You can’t look at an individual child with a disability and simply decide what caused it.
Medicine doesn’t work that way, and neither should travellers.
But there was no avoiding the broader reality that many Vietnamese families continue to live with health, environmental and social burdens associated with the legacy of the war.
Seeing organisations and teachers supporting children with disabilities made the issue feel far more human than anything I’d previously watched on television.
The Teachers Impressed Me
I developed enormous respect for the teachers.
Teaching anywhere isn’t easy.
Try doing it with limited equipment, crowded classrooms or students coming from families facing significant challenges.
Yet the teachers kept turning up.
They taught lessons.
They encouraged students.
They dealt with the child who wouldn’t stop talking.
They dealt with the child who wouldn’t talk at all.
They found ways to communicate with different abilities and personalities.
And somehow they maintained the patience required to do it again the following day.
There’s nothing dramatic about that kind of work.
It’s just consistent effort over years.
But that’s how communities change.
The Children Didn’t Want Sympathy
One thing became very clear.
These kids didn’t need some foreigner arriving and feeling sorry for them.
They wanted interaction.
They wanted questions.
They wanted games.
They wanted to practise English.
They wanted to know what Australia was like.
They wanted to laugh when I said something stupid.
And they were extremely interested in kangaroos.
I discovered that kangaroos are apparently one of Australia’s greatest diplomatic assets.
Whenever conversation became difficult, kangaroos saved the day.
I’d show them how big one could get and explain that you definitely shouldn’t try to pat a large wild male kangaroo.
They loved it.
Someone would inevitably start jumping around the classroom pretending to be one.
Five minutes later I’d somehow be responsible for complete classroom chaos.
The teachers probably regretted inviting me.
History Versus Everyday Life
Something else became obvious during those visits.
Vietnamese people weren’t walking around constantly thinking about the war.
They’re living their lives.
They’re running businesses.
They’re getting married.
They’re raising children.
They’re buying motorbikes.
They’re building houses.
They’re studying.
They’re planning futures that have absolutely nothing to do with a conflict that ended decades ago.
That’s important to understand.
Vietnam shouldn’t be defined solely by its war.
At the same time, pretending the consequences completely vanished would be equally dishonest.
Both things can be true.
A country can move forward while still cleaning up parts of its past.
What Really Stayed With Me
There wasn’t one dramatic moment that defined these school visits.
It was a collection of smaller ones.
A child carefully sounding out an English sentence.
A teacher helping a student who was struggling.
A faded classroom wall covered with colourful drawings.
Kids crowding around to look at photographs of Australia.
A safety poster reminding children not to touch suspicious objects.
A football being kicked around outside.
Normal childhood happening in a place carrying an extraordinary history.
That contrast stayed with me.
The Best Answer to War Is a Classroom Full of Kids
After everything I’d learned about the conflict and its aftermath, standing inside those schools gave me a completely different feeling.
Wars destroy.
Education builds.
Wars close possibilities.
Education creates them.
Wars leave people trapped by decisions made by others.
Education gives the next generation more choices of its own.
Maybe that’s why those classrooms affected me as much as they did.
The children weren’t responsible for what happened in Vietnam decades earlier.
They shouldn’t be defined by it either.
They deserved exactly what children everywhere deserve: safety, education, opportunity and the freedom to imagine a future bigger than the circumstances they were born into.
I walked out of one school and looked back at kids standing in the doorway waving goodbye.
Behind them was a building that wasn’t particularly impressive.
There were no expensive facilities.
No massive sports complex.
No rows of brand-new computers.
But inside that building were children learning how to build a future.
And after spending days learning about the destruction left behind by war, that felt enormously important.
Vietnam was continuing to teach me something.
A country’s history matters.
But its children matter more.
Because eventually, they become the people who decide what comes next.
– Adam Troy Adams
