While countries all over the world have different cultures, education, traditions, and unique ways of living, we are fortunate to live in a multi-racial country like the United States.
Wyoming High School is based on many different cultures, races, religions, and traditions. But when we dive deep into specific racial groups, we come to find out how different and similar they are to one another. Mexico and Vietnam are two completely different countries separated by the mile-long Pacific Ocean, but both are considered to be high producers in the agricultural field. Vietnam and Mexico have many similarities, a main similarity is that they both grow rice. Although miles apart, we come to have the same comfort foods with meat, rice, and soup.
When I went to Mexico for the first time I had a world wind of culture shocks. Not only was I a spoiled 8-year-old Mexican-American, but I was also a dramatic child. When I saw the bathrooms and the beds we were going to sleep in, I was not happy. In fact, the worst part of it all was that we were in my grandparents' rancho (ranch / countryside). I was shocked by the fact that they ate outside even if it smelled like manure and the way they had to use a water bucket to flush the toilet. Over the course of the years, I have gone to Mexico three more times.. Even now, I am still surprised by the way they live their lives differently.
Anthony Vo, a senior at Wyoming High School, also expressed the same, “I went there when I was younger so I really didn’t have ‘culture shock,” said Vo. “By the second time I went I was eating snails, driving motorcycles and going to the bathroom where we did not have toilet paper and we had to use water”.
My parents also told me how their childhood was as children; they both went to school in their little ranches which they both had to walk almost an hour to get there. They explained to me that they both went to primary school, which for us will be about kindergarten through sixth grade. My mom never got a higher education after that. Only when she came to the U.S did she try pursuing more of her education, but because of the language barrier, she had a hard time.
My dad, on the other hand, made it to the eighth grade but also stopped going to school. When he arrived in California, he pursued a higher education and got his GED. The main reason why they stopped going back when they lived in Mexico wasn't because they were lazy, but because they had a family farm to take care of.
That was a priority back then, and education was considered second. In 2022, there was research done in Mexico, and they found out that the “enrollment rate of students age 17, generally upper secondary programs in Mexico, is the lowest with 32% enrolled”. With this data, we can come to a conclusion that even though times are different from when my parents were in school, there is still a gap in the education system. My parents, although they did not complete school in Mexico and got very little education in the States, want us now to make sure we at least graduate high school and do things that they were not able to do because of the lack of education.
On the other hand, Vietnam has a 97.25% secondary school enrollment rate across their whole country. We could conclude that although Mexico and Vietnam are both agricultural leaders, one does a better job at giving children higher education than the other.
Anthony Vo, Tina Vo, and myself have parents that are from the countryside. “My parents lived in the countryside!” said Tina Vo. “The landscape is really beautiful with lots of terraces and street food everywhere”.
Tina and Anthony imagined if they would have gone to school in Vietnam: “I would push myself harder because the school over there would push me harder, so I would have to follow along even more,” Anthony Vo said.
Tina had similar thoughts. “The school system in Vietnam is definitely so much different than over here,” said Tina. “They are extremely academically-focused, and a lot stricter when it comes to having fun, I think. I know my parents were teachers, and they had a lot of physical punishment back then if kids were misbehaving.”
If I had gone to school in Mexico, I am not sure if I would have finished school and would have tried harder than I am right now. The school system is a lot more lenient, especially with farm kids. They have night school and day school for the people who truly want to keep on going with their education.
Although we are now in a place where we can have higher education and we can go to school that is closer to us, we see just how much our parents sacrificed for us to get to where we are now.