Freedom is an Empty Room

This week our class was lucky enough to talk to a wonderful educator, Dr. Doan van Dieu, PhD of Ho Chi Minh University in Vietnam. Dr. van Dieu took us through a presentation of research that he conducted at the University concerning the parent-child relationship in modern Vietnam. What I expected was an eye-opening lecture about the cultural differences between our familiar American culture and the Vietnamese way of life. I received so much more than this.

Most of Dr. Van Dieu's lecture centered around a survey that he conducted on a sampling of his students. He asked them what was important to them as sons and daughters of their parents. One set of questions focused on issues dealing with marraige and choice of marraige partner, and the other set of questions dealt with what kind of values concerning their mother and father are important to them. The combined results were astonishing. The result said that most Vietnamese teenagers would not marry a person if they did not have their parent's consent to. The results also said that the values most important to the Vietnamese youth are filial piety and excellence in their studies. The bottom line was that even though this was the new Vietnam, the free Vietnam, the youth of the country was still strictly obedient and subservient to their elders, especially their parents.

Dr. van Dieu went on to talk about what freedom was in the modern Vietnam. Previously, every marraige was arranged. Children were expected to be obedient at all times. Now, children are allowed to be as independant as they want to be, and make their own decisions about love and marraige. The question that was so puzzling to me was this: What prevented these teenagers from wanting to exercise every freedom that was handed to them by the new and free Vietnam? The answer was simple. As, Dr. van Dieu explained, Vietnam is not free, and neither is anyplace else.

The purest form of freedom, Dr. van Dieu said, was an empty room. In an empty room, when noone is watching, you are free to do whatever you want whenever you please. However, when somebody else is in the room with you, you have to share your freedom. You are no longer free. You are a slave to the collective freedom that rules over both people in the room. When one really thinks about it, love and responsibilities are not freedom, even though a person is free to fall in love and accept responsibility as he pleases. Obedience is not freedom, and neither is gratitude. Freedom is anarchy and lawlessness, and we humans live in a lawful society. We are not free, we are bound by the context of the law, our families and loved ones, and even our very emotions.

So, what does this mean for education and society? To us educators, the answer is clear. We are preparing every child in that classroom for lives of constant law. However, our American culture highly values the creativity in every child. The real question is this: Where is the line between creative deviance and the law? In our bill of rights, it clearly states that we are free to speak freely, yet, to use a classic example, it is unlawful to yell "Fire" in a movie theatre. Do we teach children to challenge authority to let their true creativity come alive, or do we teach them that the rules are there for a reason, and that they must be followed. From what I gathered from our wonderful presentation, the Vietnamese don't think of this issue as pertaining to law, but more concerning ethics. Why does one obey their parents? Because it is right to. On the very same train of thought, who teaches the child what is right and what is wrong? The parents do. Therefore, parents teach their children that obeying them is the right thing to do, and from that point on, expect them to do it, not because the law governs them, but because they do.

As we educators go out into the world, we must think about how we use our freedom. Do we choose to follow the law, or are we constrained by it? Do we push the envelope of our freedom or do we play by the strict rules already in place. This can only be decided on an individual basis. As for this editorial source, I choose to act based on whether or not my actions are right, and not on whether or not my actions are lawful. I choose not to live in a place that makes me follow a law that I do not believe in. That is a freedom that no law can take away.