Dip Village’s School is located in Ia Kreng commune, a remote commune, which is more than 60 kilometres far from Pleiku City. The special thing of the school is that a lot of students still go to school every day, but they do not know why they should do that, and though they learn every day, their parents fear that they would never be able to read and handle figures.

Ro Cham Tham is considered the child with the highest education level in Siu Hoch’s family

Ro Cham Toan, a parent of Dip village said sadly: “My daughter goes to school. She is now a second grader, but she still cannot read and do sums. Surprisingly, she still can be moved up”.

“Sitting in wrong classes”

Toan’s daughter is not alone. This is the same situation of many other J’rai minority students in the commune.

Ro Cham Uoc, a seventh grader returned home in a school uniform with school bag on her hands, like many other students. However, Uoc surprised everyone, who visited his home on that morning when he showed that he could not read fluently a short text paragraph. With the support of some friends, Uoc read the paragraph very slowly, and sometimes, he had to skip some words to read the words familiar to him.

Uoc admitted that he could not do addition, subtraction, multiplication and division - the four basic operations, even though Uoc is now in the seventh grade. Of course, English, chemistry, history are also the “strange objects” to him, and he even does not know why he has to learn these subjects.

Ro Cham Tham is considered the child with the highest education level in Siu Hoch’s family. However, the fifth grader now only can read and write, while she still cannot do sums. After a lot of exertion, she could fulfill some exercises with the results as follows: 5 x 5= 10; 15 + 25 = 30; 15 – 5= 1 and 30 – 15 =…?

Tham said that there are 13 classmates in her class, and the knowledge of the classmates is the same with Tham’s. Su, the teacher, said that Rich, Hung and Thi are the three best students in the class, but they can only read and write, while they still need more time to practice doing mathematics questions.

Ro Cham Kao, a second grader, still cannot read. Especially, the boy said he still does not know the name of the teacher. Luckily, Kao now can use the pen to “draw” his name.

The guests to the Dip village felt lucky when they met Ro Cham Nghi, who has graduated from the secondary education level. Nghi told the visitors that he could do sums, he could read and write, and he knew everything better than anyone in the same village.

In order to show his ability, Nghi sat down and do some mathematics questions given by visitors. He finished doing the exercises after 20 minutes, but the results he showed were really “difficult to understand”: 19 x 27 = 143; 115 / 5= 25; 6 x 73 = 329 and 119 + 3.680 = 4870.

After finishing the work, Nghi signed his name beneath the results of the mathematics questions to affirm his “intellectual property” for his works.

Going to school – what’s it for?

The stories about the students who still can be moved up even though they cannot read and write really surprised many people, but not a strange thing at all to local residents. The parents here also cannot understand why their children go to school every day, but they know nothing and they still can be moved up a class.

The parent of Ro Cham Nghet, a seventh grader, admitted that his son still cannot read. When asked why the boy still goes to school, though he does not get any knowledge at school, the man said that he hopes the son can get something in knowledge next year, or the year after the next year.

“However, I myself do not know what we should bring him to school,” he admitted, adding that if his son does not go to school, people would criticize him for not encouraging children to learn for better knowledge.