Out of ‘Giám thị’ ‘heroic teachers’ will rise: pain, performance and pride while doing primary school ‘tests’ in Vietnam

In Vietnam, one of the main duties teachers must do is ‘Giám thị’ (pron. ‘zum ti’) or ‘Test duty’. Based on ethnographic fieldwork over one school year in primary state schools in Vietnam, this paper aims to illustrate this little-known mundane world of ‘Giám thị’. Drawing on micro-sociology, most notably Randall Collins work on ‘interaction ritual chains’, I attempt to describe these practices as a series of micro-situations which emotionally build up on one another. A finding from the study was that despite the ‘stress’ and ‘bad press’ tests can bring, English Teachers put any ambivalent feelings aside to focus on the ‘here and now’ and ‘doing a good job’, as they band together with their school to ensure a symbolic quest for success. English Teachers can be held up as ‘heroes’ as a result of achieving such success, validated through a collective and mutual feeling of relief and happiness.