Recently a video made it through the social networks about two nursemaids who were beating and torturing their young students, at an unregistered preschool in the Thu Duc District. When I heard about the story a couple days ago, I was shocked but not surprised. With the large number of newborns here in Vietnam in recent years, you just knew many people here would use it as an opportunity to make money from it. Hence, scores of unregistered, and registered, preschools have opened up across Saigon. Many, if not most preschools, just do not have the properly trained people to run it. The result, you will get staff members who just do not know how to handle young children. Frustration turns to anger which then turns to violence. This what happened at the Thu Duc Preschool.
Everybody should watch the video. It will infuriate you. These two were just the ones that we caught. Many more will eventually be caught but a large number will go unnoticed especially in smaller towns or cities.
In HCMC, the local People’s Committees are now visiting and reviewing all registered preschools. There was no mention about illegal preschools but I hope they get a lot of scrutiny as well. In the short run this should stop some of the abuses against the children. In the long run, sadly, with the large number of Dragon and Little Dragon babies needing daycare in the upcoming years, more and more preschools will open to accommodate them. Many may be unlicensed. The problems will just continue until a similar incident happens again.
This needs to be tackled now and parents need to accept responsibility here, for once…
Here are some links to the stories about what happened in Thu Duc: