Lao Voices

Now and then we receive some information with substance from Laos and its educational system through different media. However, I find it very difficult to get reliable quality news about Laos.

In my view, quality news means news with a “sufficient” amount of objectivity, something that is not written with a clear or hidden agenda from a particular interest group. I need more objectivity, neutrality, and detachment.

The news I find in regular media about Laos never seems fair and balanced. These lopsided items are always brought from a clear or hidden agenda, be it the endless stream of - documented and especially undocumented - news about Hmong oppression (including FUD fabricators) or a never ending stream of case based “success” stories.

Between these positive and negative extremes, little substantial news is found. It is either black or white, good or bad. Shades of grey do not exist when it comes to Lao news, so it seems.

One source consisting of only positive news about Laos and its government is vientianetimes.org.la. Getting biased news from Vientiane Times (the real dot-La one, not the Hmong-led copy and paste com-magazine) should come as no surprise to you because that newspaper is part of a specialized agency of the Ministry of Information and Culture of Lao PDR.

According to Vientiane Times, simply nothing goes wrong in Laos. Everyday Lao sunshine over the Mekong. Its 50+ sized staff is committed to portray Laos as one big happy family. A pretty pictures, yes, but just as biased as the continuous stream of Hmong oppression news items that were spin doctored by subversive sources.

Yet, when you read between the lines you might get your real information about the present situation in Laos.

Take, e.g., a Vientiane Times article about parents complaining about the school application process. The school application process in Laos does not really interest me. Intriguing is the following paragraph in the article:

This year, 44,000 students graduated from secondary schools, 4,000 more than last year. However, only 30,000 of them will have a place in a vocational school or university in the 2007-2008 academic year.

Aha, 4000 more graduated than last year. Applause? Not really. Let’s put these figures into context.

According to Wikipedia, Laos got a total population of about 6,521,998 people in 2007. From that total population, 43% is in the 0-14 year range, which adds up to 2,804,459 youngsters. Let’s assume that every year group is evenly distributed, so 0-1 year group is 43/14 = 3.07 percent, and so is the 1-2 year group, and so on. Assuming a student leaves secondary school around age 14, this implies 200,225 young people would be eligible to get their secondary school degree this year.

However, only 44,000 (an optimistic figure) do. Conclusion: Less than 22% (200,225/44,000 *100) of all eligible secondary school children actually got their secondary school education. I calculated this in a very crude and simplistic way but I assure you it’s not far from the truth.

So less than a quarter of young people in Laos get their secondary education. An education that most likely already is sub-standard by nature. Within this context, these optimistic figures do not sound that fabulous anymore.

A lot needs to be done in Laos. The continuous stream of too optimistic (and too pessimistic) news items does not bring Laos to a higher plan. The truth will come out eventually. Please report what is really going on. Being too cheerful about negative issues does not make them really positive. It is sheer propaganda and adds to nothing, really.