In February 1956, they numbered only 15, administrative personnel and cooks included. To them the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Vietnam Workers Party had entrusted the task of founding the Hanoi Polytechnic College.
On October 15, 1956, the Hanoi Polytechnic opened its door to 875 students. In October 1964, the College took in 5,600 day- time students, gave evening and correspondence courses to 1,800 others, with a teaching staff totaling more than 700. Between these two dates lies a long history.
Accelerated growth
In February 1956, they numbered only 15, administrative personnel and cooks included. To them the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Vietnam Workers Party had entrusted the task of founding the Hanoi Polytechnic College. To train engineers, those sorcerers of modern times who make trains roll and planes fly, and tap hitherto unexploited riches from the depths of the soil, what a magnificent work!
But with whom, with what, and how was it to be done?
Fifteen years of war (1939-1954) had left the country almost completely devastated and sucked dry. With the destruction of war, the few which remained of its industrial establishments had practically stopped functioning (Modern Industry accounted for 1. 5% of total output in 1954-1955: North Vietnams electricity output in that year was 55 million kWh (Building of an Independent National Economy In the D.R.V. - Foreign Languages Publishing House, Hanoi). The colonialists had taken care to take away all essential pieces of machinery and repatriate all French technicians. Then they left with a grin: “You have got it, your independence, but this wont set the machines running!” The challenge must be met not only the few remaining machines must be set going again but a new industry had to be created and engineers trained.
Who was to do it? They were fifteen of whom four only had completed their higher education and none had ever attended an engineering school. In the colonial days, technique was strictly kept secret. If a Vietnamese youth presented himself at the University of Indochina, eager to learn science and technique, they would tell him: "Good, if you love science and technique, take up medicine." (Those who loved literature were advised to study law).
With what? They were allotted the buildings of the old "Cite universitaire". But dont let yourselves be impressed by those high-sounding words! This "city" had been in reality a mere boarding house, because the University which the colonial regime had set up for the three countries of Indochina had counted only 600 students. About half of this number was housed in the city", in four buildings erected on a waste ground on the fringe of the town. Moreover, this "city" did not keep its academic destination for long. When the war came, it was transformed into barracks. One can easily imagine in what state the soldiers of the French Expeditionary Corps left the buildings when they pulled out. The founders of the Hanoi Polytechnic College found the premises strewn with empty bottles, barbed wire, instruments of torture, in short everything except what to teach science and technique with. All around was a girdle of swamps swarming with leeches and snakes where the townsfolk never ventured.
How to train engineers? The fifteen pioneers did not know exactly, but long educated by the Workers Party they knew that one should never "wait for the berries to fall straight into ones mouth" (Vietnamese proverb) but should rely first of all on ones own efforts. To jump into the water has always been the best way to learn how to swim. They had all taken part in the war without, at the beginning, knowing how to handle guns and command whole divisions. None had graduated from Saint Cyr or West Point, yet they had done quite well and won at Dien Bien Phu. The same compass which had helped them find their way and win battles would show them how to build a school for engineers. Thus they set out, practically without any means but confident in the leadership of their Party. They knew that they would have to work hard and to grope their way but also that they would succeed.
At first they did the jobs of Robinson Crusoes, washing the barracks, repairing the alleys, and filling up the swamps. The old buildings did not provide enough space for holding classes and housing students and teaching staff. Pending the building of brick and concrete houses, wood and especially bamboo were largely used. Indeed, for classrooms and living quarters, there was no need of palaces. This building work went on for years because each year thousands of new students and many teachers came, who must be housed and fed. More roads were built, more swamps filled and soon, beside the thatched houses emerged brick-and-tile buildings, where not long before there were only frogs and duck weeds. Teachers and students planned their projects themselves, and with their own hands built the access roads and a stadium and at the same time planted sweet potatoes, vegetables and banana trees which added extra food to their daily meals.
The school has been and remains an immense construction site where teachers and students daily learn the trade of builders, handling picks and shovels as well as compasses and slide rules, beside architects and workers. The methods were rapidly modernized as time went by. From the thatched huts with wattle-and-daub walls set in rows like match boxes close to the entrance gates to the stately multi-storeyed buildings with large glazed windows and provided with the most up-to-date installations constructed with Soviet aid, the progress is visible just as the contrast is striking. Here they did not wait for the completion of buildings to begin teaching; instead classes took place while construction was underway.
Neither did they wait until the equipment bought from abroad had all come too undertake tests and experiments. In a country in full construction the needs in machines and goods are immense and foreign currency is rare. What is to be done if the machines, and instruments could not he bought or are late in coming? Teachers and students made a search in the city, visited construction sites and factories and even storehouses of ministries. They brought back to the school old machines, spare parts and discarded apparatuses which after repair and mending were used as teaching materials. The French Expeditionary Corps unwittingly rendered great services to the Polytechnic College: in its defeat it had let fall into the hands of the Vietnam People". Army large quantities of materials and apparatuses, mostly made in the United States, and the V.P.A. later offered them to the College.
Gradually, workshops were erected where teachers and students made themselves teaching equipment. The national industry step by step turned out machines or parts which previously had to be imported. Take for example the equipment of the laboratories of radio-electricity, which includes the most delicate and complex instruments. The breakdown was as follows for 1964:
57% was foreign made;
20% had been bought from the national industry;
23% had been made by the school itself.
It would take a great number of pages to record the feats of the teachers and students of the Polytechnic College in their efforts to make or acquire laboratory equipment. At times, teachers offered to work for whale weeks as demonstrators at exhibition organized by other socialist countries in Hanoi in order to study there the functioning of machines or instruments which were lacking at the College.
One needs more buildings and equipment to hold classes and initiate the students in the secrets of science and technique. Where to find learned academicians and experienced professors — the pride of advanced countries? Should one invite them from abroad? But then teaching would be done in foreign languages and would be accessible only to a small minority. Moreover, this would prevent it from having a national character. An intangible principle must be adopted: education at all degrees must be given in the national language by nationals of the country. Soviet specialists have been invited. They advise Vietnamese teachers, help them improve their knowledge and draw up curricula but they do not give lectures to the students, nor are they in charge of any examination.
The programme for the first year (1956—1957) was essentially composed of courses on the basic sciences: mathematics, physics, chemistry and mechanical drawing. The teaching staff was recruited from among the first batch of graduates of the Teachers Training College. Experienced technicians from factories came to initiate the students in mechanical drawing.
In the first year, there were only four engineers back from abroad to help the young graduates of the Teachers College in preparing their teaching programmes while they themselves prepared lessons in technology for the following year. Reinforcements came during the year, from the Soviet Union and China. There came back a certain number of graduates of various engineering schools. They shared among themselves the different courses of lectures, some taking charge of several courses. Most of them had just got their degrees and had as yet no practical experience. Moreover they had studied in a foreign language, and had therefore to make tremendous efforts to compile lessons in their mother tongue. In compiling such materials, they have contributed together with teachers of other schools, technicians and researchers to creating a technical and scientific terminology in Vietnamese which has become quite familiar in the country at present.
At the beginning of the school-year 1957-1958 the College numbered 1,455 students including 984 boarders, and 108 teachers of whom 50 were receiving advice and assistance from 17 Soviet specialists. Altogether 13 courses were taught and the College was provided with 21 lecture halls and 17 laboratory rooms. However, the study programmes were not yet definite. They were inspired from Soviet curricula but there had to be a great deal of groping before it was possible to adapt them to the realities and possibilities of the country.
By the end of 1959, the students of the first batch had made three years of study. They already possessed fundamental knowledge about certain techniques but the teaching staff was not fully prepared to take the classes to a higher level.
What is more, the national industry which was building up rapidly urgently needed technical cadres (for example the Nam Dinh Textile Combinat which employed nearly 10,000 workers had no engineer at the time). It was therefore decided to send students who had passes their examinations to factories and construction sites. Whether diplomas would be conferred on them or not depended on the results obtained after two years of practical work in production.
100 students of this first batch were retained at the school to become teachers. 100 others were sent to the Soviet Union to attend perfection courses and serve later as teachers in their turn. The College then counted nearly 3,000 students and 150 teachers assisted by 17 Soviet specialists. The close of 1959 marked a turning point in the direction and organization of studies. The managing board of the school and the teachers, drawing lessons from three years experience and inspired by Soviet and Chinese programmes came to define more concretely the goals and methods of education as follows:
The school must accomplish three principal tasks: to give a good education to make the students take part in production work and to promote scientific and technical research. Of those three tasks, education is the foremost.
- It is necessary to work out a stable programme of study and endeavour to fulfill it just as a factory has to achieve the objectives of its plan. The programme of study was thus fixed at four years, with 3,000 hours of study.
In 1959, a department for scientific and technical research and another for production work were set up.
At the end of 1960, the Polytechnic College already assumed the dimensions of a big school with 4,000 students and 370 teaching cadres. A fourth year of study was opened and an evening course began to function with 330 students. In addition, the College helped the Hanoi Engineering Plant to open evening courses for its own personnel and the population in the town district where it was located, with 70 students; 4,000 persons (students, teachers, other personnel and their families) received accommodation in the College. In the course of that year, the students and personnel, including the teachers, devoted 30,000 workdays to embellishing the school and planting 6,600 trees.
In co-operation with other organs, the teachers of the College compiled a glossary of technical and scientific terms of 50,000 words, and the national language was used in teaching. Scientific and technical research affected in the laboratories of the College began to yield some results: thermal treatment of anthracite, making of low-frequency copper oxide rectifiers. Teachers and students took part in the study of certain projects, the equipping of certain factories and the tropicalization of electrical appliances.
By 1961, a stage had been competed: everybody was now convinced that it was fully possible to train engineers in the country itself with Vietnamese teachers and with the national language as teaching medium. Of course the studies have not yet attained a high level but the students graduated from the College proved capable of fulfilling their tasks in various factories and construction sites in the country.
In 1962, it was thought that the College could from now on do without Soviet specialists; however cadres continued to be sent to the Soviet Union for complementary training, so as to become more and more competent teachers. That year, the College numbered 4,832 daytime students, 934 in the evening courses and 412 teachers. It now possessed 9,400 square metres of floor space for classrooms and another 16,000 square metres for housing. It was now housing 5,700 people. A great deal of equipment had come to strengthen the laboratories and workshops which were now able to turn out machine tools, electric motors, and apparatuses used in teaching. The sales of products and equipment made by the laboratories and workshops provided appreciable financial returns which allowed the College to buy more and more improved equipment. The College took part in the building of roads, bridges, residential quarters, hydraulic works, etc. and conducted researches for the production of tractors, the building of the Hanoi river port and small-sized steel foundries. The scientific and technical research now dealt with new topics: improvement of the quality of the tin processed at Tinh Tuc, study of magnetic ferrites, designing of a washing machine for coal extracted at the Mao Khe mine, working out new methods of drilling for the Deo Nai coal mine, etc. The economy achieved as a result of the use of the new apparatuses and methods was estimated at two million dong.
The College helped in numerous regional projects, for example it designed a cassava drier, farm implements and various other tools for the State farms.
By 1961, a new period had begun: the point now was to strive to raise gradually the standard of the studies in order to attain international norms. A five-year programme was thus introduced comprising 3,900 hours of study distributed as follows:
22-25% for fundamental theoretical studies (mathematics, physics, chemistry, theoretical mechanics, resistance of materials);
28-32% for basic technology;
20-22% for special techniques;
9% for foreign languages;
12% for political studies;
3% for physical training.
The student took 30-32 weeks of probation in factories; four other were devoted to farm work. Each student must present at his graduation exams a specific project: this marked the technical maturity of the College which was now capable of the supplying the necessary conditions for the elaboration by each student of a project of technical study. Conferences dealing with specialized techniques were held periodically by teachers and students of each branch. It was decided to form a great number of professors and researchers of high level, and to this end, cadres were sent to the Soviet Union where they would work towards a doctors degree. There are one hundred of them at present. The College has published 687 roneo-typed courses of lectures and 70 text-books, all of them in the national language. The library of the College has been considerably enlarged and now has 170,000 books. Scientific and technical researches cover numerous fields. The value of the products of the mechanical and radio engineering workshops of the College amounts to half a million dongs. The number of day-time students and those of the evening and correspondence courses is nearly 7,000.
By 1963, the Polytechnic College had, so to speak, taken definite shape, at least in size and in the number of students. However, the construction of new buildings continues and will only be completed towards the end of 1965. The fundamental problem on which the College Party organization has been concentrating spite of continuous progress, still remains below the standard required by socialist production”.
From its foundation to the summer of 1964, the Polytechnic College supplied nearly 4,000 graduates to the construction sites and factories and various branches and services in the country.
Those who was in 1956 the old “Cite Universitaire” of Hanoi, its tumbledown buildings and the swamps that surrounded it will be greatly astonished if they now enter the Polytechnic College of Hanoi. On an area of 47 hectares, they will find a real town with more than 8,000 inhabitants, tree-lined alleys, multi-storeyed houses and sports-grounds. If they climb on the roofs of the new buildings, they will see all around new residential quarters built on the former swamps: the Reunification Park with its lake, flower-beds and shady alleys, brand-new schools and dwelling quarters. The sports grounds, and the classrooms and laboratories are crowded with active and zealous youth. Young men in white or blue shirts and khakhi trousers with beardless faces, young girls dressed in white jackets and black “trousers; all breathe youthful ardour. A stranger could hardly distinguish in this animated crowd the students from their teachers because their difference in age is only a few years. The profession of an engineer is so new in the country that those who were students only yesterday are teachers today. In its training programme the Hanoi Polytechnic College has encountered all kinds of difficulties inherent in youth but it has also benefited from the mettle which is proper to youth. The people are young, but so is the regime.
At present the school comprises 6 faculties:
- Mechaniecs-Metallurgy
- Electricity and radio
- Bulding, Civil Engineering, Hydraulics
- Mining-Geology
- Techno-chemistry, and
- Evening and correspondence courses, with 45 branches and 250 specialties.
Courses for economic engineers include mechanics, metallurgy, building, electricity, chemical industry.
Evening and correspondence course aim at training cadres for the following specialties: production and distribution of electricity, radio, mechanical engineering, motor-vehicles and tractors, metallurgy, civil engineering, chemical engineering, economic engineering.
The school is led by a director assisted by several deputy-directors and the following departments and services:
- Education department: helps the directorate to manage teaching and study, libraries and publication.
- Staff and cadres department: takes up the administration of the staff and students
- Finance department
- Equipment and supplies department
- Health department
- Administrative department
- Ideological education and propaganda department
Besides, there is a capital construction department which directs and controls chiefly the construction of new buildings. Numerous problems are confronting the leaders:
- organisation of education and study;
- co-ordination between education and productive work;
-co-ordination between education and research;
- ideological education of students and cadres, mamagement of these students and cadres in all fields: intellectual, moral and physical;
- management of the boarders and the material basis of the school (equipment).
They have matured with the growth of their school
It is quite difficult to tell who among those teaching or admisistrative cadres have contributed most to this rapid growth of the school. All of them have for years now spent many sleepless nights, Sundays and holidays studying documents, learning foreign languages, visiting factories and construction sites to seek materials for their lectures, improve their teaching methods, help the students understand the most difficult parts of the lessons, and write their graduation theses. What is most important is that it is less a question of individual progress peculiar to some picked teachers, than a collective effort that stimulates every team to surpass itself so as to be able to meet the requirements.
Indeed, as the teaching staff increases in number, each subject is taught by a body of teachers who share the work among themselves and help each other in improving their knowledge. Each of them can thus center his efforts during a given peirod on a definite question the choice of which is made with the advice and help of all teachers of the same subject. If one of them has to stay away from school for some months or even a longer period to work at a construction site or in a factory, or to improve his knowledge abroad, the other members of the collective immediately take over his task.
Let us follow the progress of the civil engineering branch. Set up at the end of 1958, its teaching staff was made of 4 graduates from Chinese railway schools. In the following years other graduates from Soviet or Chinese schools and also from the Polytechnic College itself joined the collective, bringing the total number of teachers to 22, among them a young woman graduate form a middle technical school, who did experimentation work. Thus, there are now the collective 21 university graduates: 8 came from the Teachers College and 13 returned from abroad. The average age is 26.
The teaching deals mainly with the study and building of bridges, tunnels, roads and railways and has to train engineers chiefly for these branches and accessorily for hydraulics and geology.
The collective has to:
- teach theoretical knowledge at school,
- assist students doing probation work at constructionists,
- assist students writing their graduation theses,
- carry out researches and experiments on certain scientific and technical subjects, and
- participate in certain works in the country, which enables the teaching staff on the one hand to enrich their theoretical teaching, and on the other to bring the schools contribution to national construction.
Those are immense tasks for freshly-graduated young men and women, with little theoretical knowledge and no practical experiences. But a common feeling strengthens them right from the beginning: they all came from poor families and had clearly realized that without the Revolution, they could never have become college teachers. They decided to devote themselves body and soul to the tasks entrusted to them by the Party. They set for themselves the following main aims: quickly to raise their technical standard, quickly gain practical experience and quickly improve their pedagogical methods, to create a minimum documentation for the students and unconditionally serve them.
First of all, they strove to learn foreign languages quickly so as to be able to complete their theoretical knowledge. Soon they knew enough Russian and Chinese to read technical publications. Then they learnt German, English and French. Each of the drew up a detailed plan for learning foreign languages, with well defined targets for every six months.
Then, each of them specialized in a given technique (for instance in the building of roadway or bridge foundations, etc.). Everyone chose his specialty according to his own desire but also according to the needs of the collective, which ensure to every member the necessary conditions rapidly to master the subject: books, documents, practical work...The whole collective helped each of its members to become a specialist.
As the collective maintained close relations with building services and construction sites in the country, it often happened that one of its members was requested to serve at these basic units of production. Such requests had to be answered as quickly as possible and the member had to be replaced during his absence. To this end, a certain number of the collective members were obliged to study several subject so as to be able to replace, if need be, those who had to leave unexpectedly for the construction sites or factories. To acquaint themselves with all innovations, the members of the collective shared among themselves the world of collecting information from some 28 Vietnamese foreign technical reviews. A technical wall-bulletin gave a sketch of the subjects dealt with in these reviews; after six months, this bulletin was hung in the lecture hall at the request of the students, who wanted to acquaint themselves with technical novelties. At the end of 1962, the collective received a number of books newly published in the Soviet Union. They were glad to see that innovations recorded in those Soviet books had been disseminated in time to the students of the College thanks to the collecting of information from foreign technical reviews. Needless to say, the time required for the learning of foreign languages had been solely taken from their rest hours and holidays.
One of the fundamental factors for progress has been the participation in production work. One should to think that construction sites and factories at first heartily welcomed the integration of teachers and students into their work teams. The managers had no confidence in their abilities and did not give them fixed jobs. They often forgot to convence them to important meetings where technicians discussed the work done, which could have been very useful for the students. Besides, certain members of the collective did not realize the necessity to take part in production work.
All these reticence, chiefly those of the construction sites and factories, had to be overcome. The first step to take was to render them concrete services. In 1961 for instance the collective did not hesitate to send two of its members for four straight months to lick into shape a bridge-building project. Both of them succeeded in winning the confidence of the Ministry of Communications and also gained valuable experiences for themselves.
Today, the teachers and students of the Bridges and Roads Section of the Polytechnic are found at all construction sites of the country. Every teacher plays the role of the guide to his students and at the same time a technician of the construction site. Teachers and students endeavour to improve work tools and methods of production so as to increase productivity. They also give lectures to the technicians and workers on the construction site where they work. At present the School is in close touch with production units, which often call for its help and regularly supply it with useful technical documents.
No blesse oblige. The Ministry of Communications and the construction sites often place pressing orders with the group at times when the latter i busy with other jobs.
But their requests must be satisfied, in accordance with the motto "Strive to serve production at all costs".
To link teaching with production often requires the solving of concrete technical problems and a concrete direction for scientific and technical research. In the first years, the group set for itself subjects of research which were far from national realities, thence their work often yielded little result.
In 1962, the group carefully studied the resolutions of the Party on the development of agriculture and industry under the first five-year plant (1961-1965). The discussions which followed the study meetings brought about a readjustment of the programmes of teaching and research. Thus the former subjects of research were replaced by two others which met better the needs of production: how to use pre-strained concrete in the building of bridges and to build cheap roadways for the rural areas where stone is scanty.
The use of pre-strained concrete would help save a considerable amount of steel in a country where this metal was not yet produced. But the technicians of the Ministry of Communications still doubted the possibility of applying this technique to the conditions of our country. The group proposed that a series of lectures on the application of this method should be held for the technicians. A teacher of the Polytechnic came to the Ministry to give a total of 60 hours of lecture on the subject.
Thus, the first bridge made of pre-strained concrete in North Vietnam (the Phu Lo bridge) was designed and built.
The development of communications and transport in the countryside, along with agricultural co-operation and the development of agriculture, requires new and bigger roads where the vehicles will no get stuck in the rainy season. But they must also be cheaper than macadamized roads. It must be said that when the matter was entrusted to a member of the group for study he did not show much enthusiasm. A trifling subject, he thought at first.
He only set to work enthusiastically when convinced of its economic importance in a country of which the rural areas cover nine-tenths of the whole territory.
To improve the method of teaching also calls for patient and strenuous efforts. Each teacher strives to get the opinions of his students and also of his colleagues, who are invited to attend his classes to give their opinions and advice. Drawings and lectures are constantly modified so as to make them clearer and more intelligible. Once a week, the teachers join the students study groups to help them solve difficulties and encourage them. The teachers are also on the look-out for any documents from enterprises and construction sites that may illustrate the lessons and give the students concrete example drawn from national realities. Thus, to help the students prepare their graduation projects, the teachers group has recopied by hand 2,000 pages of documents gathered from various factories and construction sites.
In 1962, visiting Soviet specialist, after studying the students graduation projects, made this comment: “These projects have in the main attained the level of Soviet higher technical schools”.
But the greatest reward for teachers and students is to be able to contribute by their studies and projects to the development of the national economy. As we have said above, in 1961, for the first time the students had to submit a graduation project; the subjects studied that year by the students covered a wide range of problems:
- Mechanics-Metallurgy Section:
Study of an automatic lathe, equipment of a medical appliances workshop, of a milling workshop and an electrical motor works, improvement of the lath 1616 made by the Hanoi Engineering Plant, study of a small rolling mill for a regional plant. (In the D.R.V. there are central enterprises run by the State and regional enterprises of lesser importance run by the local administration).
- Electricity-Radio Section:
Study of instruments for radio-electric measurements, projects to enlarge the Vinh and Viet Tri power stations, projects to build hyper frequency transmitters, oscillographs, measuring apparatus for parameters of semi-conductors.
- Mining-Geology:
Five-year project to exploit the Tinh Tuc tin mine, supply of compressed air to the Thong Nhat coal mine, a decanting basin and water pipe network for the Co Dinh chrome mine, geological structure and mine prospecting of Son Duong region.
- Construction:
Plans to build a new Medical College, a meeting hall for the Hanoi Engineering Plant, the Dance and Drama School, a medical appliances plant, housing projects and parks in Hanoi.
- Techno-Chemistry:
Project to buid a cement oven for the local industry in Ha Nam, a turpentine distillery, enrichment of the Na Duong coal with a view to processing it into coke, extraction of tannin from the cu nau - a dye-tuber commonly found in the country - manufacture of titanium oxide.
_000200000A2B00007F1A_A25,On completion of their studies, the students are sent to factories, construction sites and State farms for a long probation period before receiving their diplomas.
Here are some appreciations of these “poly-technicians” by the services concerned:
From the hydraulic services of Nam Dinh province:
“Comrades Due and Tuan possess the necessary technical ability. We trust them and assign tasks to them with the conviction that they will fulfilll them in accordance with the technical norms required by the plan”.
From the manager of the Hong Gai (small-sized) blast furnace:
“Comrade Tan has made a valuable technical contribution to our furnace. Excellent conduct, close contact with the workers”.
The newspapers of Nghe An province paid high tribute to the knowledge and devotion of Luc, a student in smelting technique, for his contribution to the building of the (small sized) blast furnace of Vinh and his efforts in construction work in Vinh city. The construction site of the Thai Nguyen Iron and Steel Complex highly praised Tran for his innovation in the operation of cranes. Linh, a student of the electricity department, was highly appreciated by the builders of the Ham Rong Bridge. Van, a girl student of chemistry, won the following appreciation from the fruit cannery of Tuong Mai: “She boldly applies her knowledge, and knows how to put into practice the workers suggestions”. The textile services highly appreciated the work of Dan, another girl student: “Animated by a high sense of responsibility she has overcome the difficulties encountered during her research on the cu nau, a tuber used as a dyestuff, thus realizing and annual economy of 750 tons of tubers worth 225,000 dong”.
On the construction site of the Thac Ba Dam (100,000 kw), we met a whole team of young graduates from the Polytechnic working under the guidance of Soviet specialists. They told us that once this dam was completed they would have gathered enough experience to become full-fledged engineers. it is certain that these graduates still have much more to learn, as their teachers are quite young and the national industry only provides them with restricted possibilities for practice. Yet they have rendered notable services to the enterprises where they work, because they make up for insufficient knowledge by their unfaltering will, extraordinary devotion to their work and their readiness to listen to the technicians and workers suggestions and learn from them in order to solve the multiple practical problems of a developing country embarking on the difficult and long path of industrialization.
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam can now be proud of having a sizable contingent of engineers, quite young indeed but eager to build. One of the most important successes achieved by the College is to have instilled this eagerness into the students.
Science and conscience
Often the lamps of the study rooms shine late at night showing couples of friends discussing their lessons, completely absorbed by their conversation. In reality, these are teachers who after their classes are giving tutorial help to students who are working either in groups or individually. Because many students, particularly those coming from among the workers and peasants, encounter a great many difficulties in their studies. Therefore, the teachers deem it their duty to help them fill gaps in their knowledge of basic notions or understand difficult lessons, or complete graduation projects. If one knows that some professors live dozens of kilometers from the college, come to work on bicycle, and sometimes spend a whole evening helping a single student, one realizes to what extent they are devoted to their teaching task. In response to this devotion of the teachers, the students pledge themselves to win success in their study.
Here is Dang Duc Song who has just graduated as a radio engineer. The son of a poor peasant family, he lost his parents when eleven years old, and became boy-servant to a rich man of his village. It was in 1945: the struggle for national independence was in full swing, but the agrarian reform had not yet been carried out. Little Song experienced the harsh life of a servant under the feudal regime. Moreover, his village was then in the zone temporarily occupied by the French Expeditionary Corps. In 1947, unable to bear it all he had a fight with his masters son and fled to his elder brothers in a nearby village. In 1950, he was a liaison agent for the guerillas in his village, guiding the cadres from one village to another and gathering information about the enemy. In 1952, he joined the regular army and fought first in the Northwest (the mountain region between the Red River and the Laotian border), then in the Dien Bien Phu campaign. His brilliant records won for him the well-deserved title of “Army Hero”. When peace was restored in 1954, he had just learnt to read and do the four simple arithmetical operations, still having difficulties with divisions. He followed the complementary courses in the army. In 1960, his unit sent him to school. He finished in three years the 10-year general education programme. Then he entered the College. As he had served in the signal corps in the army, he enrolled in the radio department. “It was truly hard”, he said to us, “especially in the first year. Sometimes my head swam and I had to plunge it in cold water. It was all the harder since in 1960 I was elected to the National Assembly. I grew thin visibly, and my wife sometimes asked me what I was dreaming of. No I was not dreaming but only trying to remember lessons of mathematics and physics even when I was taking a walk with my wife. I had also to learn a foreign language. I chose Russian and it was not easy. Some advised me to give up. But how could I give up a task assigned to me by the Party and the army? Decidedly, I could not. Thus I made up my mind to continue my study. At last I worked out ways to fully grasp the lessons. First of all, I reviewed at night all I had learnt in the daytime. On my bed and in darkness I recollected every detail of the lessons I had learnt and so remained awake very late at night. Another method consisted in preparing painstakingly questions which I would ask my professors or more advanced friends. At the beginning, I relied entirely on them and benefited little from their explanations. I then decided to study the lessons by myself, to analyze them and then to classify the questions I would ask my teachers or comrades. This method helped me greatly in my study. After two years, I reached the average level of my class. The last two years I worked as hard but the tension was less. Then I was ranked among the best”.
Do Trieu Cuong was a former cadre of the Sanziu minority. Before the revolution, nobody in his district could read and no one, even among rich families, could say what “to become an engineer” meant.
In 1959, Cuong had just finished the first (primary) level of general education. At the complementary school for workers and peasants he finished in three years (instead of five) the programme of general education. He afterwards passed the entrance exams to the Polytechnic College. His first year was a particularly hard one but dint of painstaking efforts he succeeded in passing his end-of-year exams. In the second year, he was ranked among the best, got the grade 5 (excellent) in 4 subjects and 4 (good) in two other subjects at the control exams. He was then entrusted with the task of helping others who met with difficulties in their study, especially during the period of preparation for the exams. He was responsible for a group of youth. Under his impulsion his study group broke the Colleges record in the yearly production of vegetables, growing as much as 30 kilograms per head. Cuong himself produced 90kg. He shirked no task assigned by the College. In 1964, he was admitted to the Party.
Ho Thi Cam, a girl native of South Vietnam, came to Hanoi in 1955. Her schooling had been frequently interrupted by the war and she had serious troubles following the courses at the College. The gap in her basic education caused her great difficulties in grasping many subjects. Discouraged, she often thought of giving up her studies. But reports from the South each time gave her new ardor. She thought of her parents and relatives in the South. In face of the U.S. aggressors and their lackeys, they never lost courage or relaxed their fight. How could she, who was brought up and educated by the government, think of giving up her studies? She said to herself: “When the South is liberated, who else will build the factories, bridges, and railways if not the South Vietnamese youth who, now regrouped in the North, have the good luck to continue their studies while others of their age are fighting arms in hands for the freedom of all?” She rapidly, overcame her discouragement and set to study in earnest. In the second year, she ranked among the best of her class and was elected a responsible member of the youth organization. The same year she had the honour to be admitted to the Party.
It would take volumes to cite all such examples of industriousness - it would be more accurate to say heroism - in study and teaching among teachers and students of the Polytechnic College. Even the most sluggish finally move along, supported and stimulated by a closely-knit community which urges them to make tenacious effort and helps them overcome all obstacles. The path is difficult not only for those who had to create from scratch a Polytechnic College in a country which had neither engineers or industry, i.e. for teachers and students, but also for the young graduates who go to work in factories or construction sites where everything is lacking, from machines to skilled personnel. To be a teacher at the Polytechnic College, to be an engineer of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam is indeed an honour but not a sinecure. College teachers and engineers are senior cadres, honoured and entrusted with the highest responsibilities. But the D.R.V. is a poor country now engaged in building socialism; while requiring much of it cadres, it cannot yet afford to pay them generously. Senior cadres share weal and woe with the people in the long work of material and cultural construction which is to transform an under-developed country into one with a modern socialist culture and economy. The engineer must share the hard life at the construction sites and factories under construction. He must at all times be an innovator, think of details which would be no problem at all in a highly industrialised country. He must on the one hand grasp the most up-to-date techniques and know how to solve practical problem that crop up unexpectedly. To this end, he must no only develop his own efforts, but also know how to associate himself completely with working collectives and learn from the masses of workers. The Polytechnic College has assigned to itself right at the beginning the task of training not mere engineers but socialist engineers, the aim being not to train pure technicians but men who.
- Possess advanced scientific and technical knowledge and who know how to apply it to solve the practical problems of the national economy.
- Have a high political consciousness and an excellent moral standard and are resolved to struggle for the building of socialism and for the peoples welfare.
- Have a good health, are capable of assiduous work and ready to defend the country when necessary.
It must be pointed out that the Polytechnic College sometimes refuses to grant degrees to students who have made good studies but lack certain indispensable moral qualities. The engineer is considered a responsible senior cadre, not a technician selling his services for a salary.
The Polytechnic College is a socialist school because it pays great attention to ideological problems, to selecting cadres and students and to teaching and studying on the basis of Marxism-Leninism.
The selection of students and cadres is undertaken along a well-defined class line. The College always admits an adequate number of workers and peasants capable of undertaking study and organizes for their benefit special refresher courses to help them fill the gaps in their education. With regard to graduates from general schools, priority is given to the best, both from the intellectual and moral points of view. Large numbers of them are already members of the Labour Youth Union before their admission to the College. The teaching staff (as well as laboratory administrative personnel) must serve as examples for the students. That is why the moral and ideological criterion is as important for the choice as the scientific standard. A professor, consciously or unconsciously, always teaches certain moral principles to his students.
The general line and the principles of socialist education are reflected in teaching by close connection between theory and practice, between study and production work, and between study and scientific research. Probationary terms at factories and construction sites enable the students to acquaint themselves with practical problems in production. Each student must acquire the technical capacity of a worker of the first or second grade in a given trade.
Each section of the College tries to establish close relations with factories, construction sites, services or ministries where the teaching cadres offer to take various practical responsibilities. Research and graduation projects are directly drawn from the practice of national production. Thus the section of resistance of materials for instance has studied the problem of the wearing out of railway tracks raised by the railway service which has seen intensive traffic these last few years. Cadres and students of the section of operations research in the mathematics department followed during many nights the route of rubbish-removing lorries in Hanoi to determine the most economical itinerary. During the 1963-1964 school year, the College contributed to the successful study of 20 problems posed by production (see appendix to this article).
Cadres and students are educated in such a way as to guard them against despising elementary manual work. They practice at the College workship every possible useful work. They clean buildings and sweep alleys and lawns within the campus. Great attention is paid to the growing of food crops inside the College enclosure. Sweet potato fields and vegetable gardens are seen everywhere and there is even more than one hectare of rice. Besides, cadres and students periodically work at State farms in accordance with the general policy which requires that every cadre should produce yearly asset percentage of his own consumption of foodstuffs.
Thus in 1964 the College produced
342 tons of cassava roots
1.5 tons of rice
9 tons of sweet potatoes
4.6 tons of groundnuts, and
65 tons of vegetables;
Raised 518 pigs, and planted 1,500 fruit trees.
Political studies constitute an integral part of the programme. Each student must have a grounding of Marxism-Leninism and the history of the Vietnamese revolution so that he may view his own task against the background of the situation in the country and the general evolution of the world. He is kept informed of major national and international events of the day and directly participates in the great political movements in the country. Thus, during the summer holidays of 1964, the Vietnam Labour Youth Union branch of the Hanoi Polytechnic organised tours of the country during which the students launched an active movement of explanation on the situation in South Vietnam through the commented reading of Letters from South Vietnam (Letters from South Vietnam has been published in English and other languages by the Foreign languages Publishing House, Hanoi). They also took part in meetings to “recollect past misery and humiliations” in which cadres and students, in particular those coming from poor families, recalled all the sufferings they and their families had had to endure during the colonial and feudal period.
Political education is also aimed at opposing tendencies and habits inherited from the past. If a student loses sight of the common interests and thinks too much of his own future or asks for too much comfort and remuneration or shrinks before difficulties and hardships, or shows lack of the sense of responsibility, the teaching cadres and members of the Students Union and the Labour Youth Union immediately seek to redress these erroneous tendencies and help him rectify his viewpoint.
Every big event that shakes the country has a deep repercussion on the College and often gives rise to an emulation movement among the teachers and students. In 1962, in South Vietnam, the Americans and their Saigon stooges sentenced to death the young teacher Le Quang Vinh who displayed admirable heroism and patriotism before the court. Immediately, the teachers of the Road and Bridge Department whose history was related above, admitted Le Quang Vinh as an honorary member of their group. They began doing voluntary supplementary work as if a new member had been added to their group. Their department was recognized as a “Socialist Labour” team. Other departments followed suit and endeavoured to improve their work in order to win this title, participating in a general movement which involved all categories of workers in the country. The execution by the Saigon puppets of the young patriot Nguyen Van Troi on orders from the Americans aroused strong emotion at the College. All teachers and students vowed to do their best to hasten the liberation of the South and the reunification of the country.
This year, the Labour Youth Union branch of the College has launched a “three any” movement:
- To go anywhere they are needed for national construction work;
- To accept any task to serve the people.
- To accept any regime of treatment and salary.
The engineer must be a technician and at the same time a militant. It is only natural that along with the organization of studies mass organizations play most important role: The Student Union, the Vietnam Labour Youth Union and the Trade Union of the school personnel. The Workers Party branch leads (distinction should be made between leading and administration work) all the manifold activities of the College so as to orientate them along the general line and the socialist principles.
All this has not been accomplished overnight. The first years were particularly difficult ones, not only from the material point of view or as far as the technical aspect of the teaching is concerned, but also from the ideological point of view. Besides those who has been trained during the war of national liberation, a sizable part of the students sprang from bourgeois families and has been educated in schools operating in former enemy-occupied areas in a spirit completely opposed to the revolutionary socialist conception. Many were particularly proud of the French baccalaureate (senior secondary school degree) they had passed, openly manifested their opposition to learning together with workers and peasants in the same classes, showed indignation at having to do manual work and worried about the modest pay which the new regime accorded to engineers. They entered the College with the thought of becoming pure and privileged technicians, staying aloof from all political problems. As to the teaching cadres, their only major concern was how to teach well in order to impart a given amount of knowledge to the students. They had no idea at all about how to give a comprehensive and socialist education. Some of them still imbued with out-dated ideas, could hardly imagine that a “university professor” should live in straw huts and take part in cleaning school buildings.
However, the college was in good hands. Its directorate was composed of cadres having taken part in the resistance and among the students there were many cadres, workers, peasants and demobilized anymen who through their own examples, gradually succeeded in helping the students of bourgeois formation and origin to change their conception. In 1958, two years after the setting up of the College, cadres and students worked side by side at the Bac Hung Hai construction site, one of the most important irrigation projects of the country. This project was to bring a radical change in the living conditions of several million peasants in an area particularly threatened by drought and floods. A good part of the work had to be done by hand. For nearly two months, professors and students did active pick-and-showed work, carried clods of earth on their shoulders and floundered in the mud together with tens of thousands of peasants, workers, and armymen. Ministers, deputies to the National Assembly, ambassadors, artists and writers also came from time to time to participate in the work. Bac Hung Hai marked a real turning point in the life of the Hanoi Polytechnic: the long contact with the workers and peasants and the direct participation in a great national undertaking instilled a new vigour into the teaching cadres what an engineer must be in a poor country having to build a modern, independent and national economy, under a peoples socialist regime where everything must serve the peoples interests. Since the Bac Hung Hai drive, to quote the leaders of the College, “we have succeeded in planting the flag of the Party atop the College”, that is to say in implanting the Marxist-Leninist conception of education in the daily practice of the College.
_000200000DAF0000D38B_DA9,But this does not mean that all has been setted for the best. Far from that. Acute problems of growth have cropped up. The great concern at present remains how to raise the scientific standard of the studies to that in advanced countries. To this end, we must raise the scientific - theoretical and practical - level of the teachers, improve the content of the teaching, and continue extending the material basis of the College.
But at the basis of all progress there should be a raising of the ideological standard of cadres and students. Man is not a machine. To advance quickly and in difficult conditions, he must know the reasons for his acts. Without these motives, namely national independence and socialism, the Polytechnic College would be only a soulless body, a flabby rachitic faculty.
October 20, 1964. At the stadium of the Polytechnic College over 7,000 people listened to the director of the school reading the records of last year. It was a “festival of emulation”. The rostrum was brightly illuminated, but the projectors only threw of feeble light on the stadium where 7,000 persons sat on the grass listening attentively; in the dim light their bodies hardly stirred, but their eyes shone with youthful ardour. Public praise was given to those who during the year had done exemplary work, to front-rank groups and teachers who had shown self-devotion worthy of admiration, and to students who had made strenuous efforts and obtained outstanding results.
Suddenly, I pricked my ears in surprise. The director no longer mentioned the names of exemplary teachers or students, but spoke about someone who raised pigs. What was the she doing here, this woman pig-breeder, among picked professors and students? “Comrade Tran Thi Luc”, said the director, “was a cook in 1962. In 1963, she was entrusted with raising pigs, a hard work to which she devoted herself body and soul, and during two consecutive years, she was elected a model worker in the emulation movement. She had been a Party member since 1939, and has taken part in various revolutionary struggles ever since, carrying out her activities in extremely hard conditions, risking her life at every moment as a responsible cadre of a district. In spite of her bright record of services she has never asked for a particular post; instead she has readily accepted any task assigned to her. She is now earning one of the lowest wages”.
A long ovation and repeated applause greeted a tiny woman in a peasant costume who stood up from the rostrum to return the cheers. All this intelligentsia warmly welcomed this pig breeder into the ranks of its elite elements. Let us add that she has been elected a member of the Party Committee of the College.
I thought for a long time of Comrade Luc. All the time I was at the Polytechnic College to gather materials for my article, I only gathered them from the professors and students. The applause welcoming Comrade Luc reminded me that I was in a socialist college. Here, the students and their teachers are closely associated not only among themselves but also with all staff members of the College — administrative personnel as well as manual workers. That a pig-breeder should also contribute to the training of engineers, this fact in itself is enough to show us that we are entering a new era.
The Hanoi Polytechnic College is the product of a new period, a new society, and the engineers trained there will contribute to make it still richer and more beautiful.
Nguyen Khac Vien
According to Medical Doctor Nguyen Khac Vien
Vietnams foreign language publishing house in 1981