The Australian National Archives has a lot of pictures from the 1950s-1970s of students from Southeast Asia. This was a time when the Australian government provided a lot of scholarships to students from that region as part of the Colombo Plan.
Malaysian student Mr. Yoong Phoo Pin was undoubtedly one of the many recipients of these scholarships. Here he is in 1959 showing his magazine to students Olga Anskey and Rosemary Chain.
Then there was “outstanding Vietnamese student Mr. Hung” who we see here seated with a colleague studying an engineering textbook in 1965.
These images all show people who are successful. “Tao Hai Sin, 20, from Singapore, topped his class in all subjects in his mechanical engineering course examinations at the Footscray Technical College in Melbourne. Mr Tao, who is in the fourth and final year of his course is one of 100 students from South and South-East Asia at the college” (1962).
And pursuing cutting-edge knowledge: “Joseph Yong Kung Fatt from Sandakan, a third year student at the University of Sydney, is one of the few South or South-East Asian students studying Chemical Engineering in Australia. The comparatively new, four year course, deals with among other things the methods of utilizing by-products and waste materials and includes practical work in the third and final years – Joseph Yong Kung Fatt in the Chemical Engineering laboratory in the University of Sydney” (1963).
They can balance all aspects of their lives. “Albert Chong from Singapore, who is doing a five-year course for the fellowship Diploma in electrical Engineering at the Royal Melbourne Technical College, shares a Melbourne house with three other students from South-East Asia. They do their own housework and cook their own meals. In addition to his studies Albert has found the time to become captain of two tennis clubs and treasurer of three Asian Students’ Association” (1957).
They live in comfortable homes with “lounge rooms.” “Albert Chong (seated) discusses his studies with a friend, Alex Young, in the lounge room of their home in Melbourne.
Adapting to a new environment is also easy. “Students arriving in Melbourne from South and South-East Asia and West Africa, to study at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, first attend a 2½ week transition course which aims at acquainting the students with Australian customs and ways of living which might at first be confusing” (1963).
Indeed, how could adapting be difficult when one has the assistance of an “Australian Mum”? “Students from South and South East Asia, especially nursing students, who study in Melbourne have an ‘Australian Mum’ whose office is a kind of home away from home where there is always a friendly cup of tea and sympathetic ear. ‘Australian Mum’ is the name students have given to Miss Jane Muntz, Nursing Adviser to the Minister of Health in the Australian State of Victoria and President of the Royal Victorian College of Nursing. In a ladies’ hairdressing salon in Melbourne, Miss Muntz advises Thai and Singapore nurses on hair styles. The girls are doing a 12 month post graduate course under the Colombo Plan” (1956).
They live the life of the mind. “Thai student P Chattalada in his study at International House, Melbourne” (1957).
And fulfill their creativity. “Top honors for Thai art student in Australia – working on a poster for a new car” (1966).
And they make it look oh so easy. “Vietnamese student Phan Luong Quang at home, Brisbane” (1958).
And finally, they always look so damn good! “The Colombo Plan Students Association [CPSA] of Western Australia held its last formal function for 1963 at the Refectory at the University of Western Australia. A dinner dance, organized by the CPSA President, Lim Teong Poh, was attended by more than 80 couples, among whom were students from many parts of South-East Asia, India, Pakistan and Africa – Mary Chew eating supper with Ung Tea Kruy, from Cambodia.
I realize that these pictures all represent a form of propaganda, but looking at them made me realize that this is really the only way that the experience of studying abroad is represented. And yet the actual experiences of many students has not been like this.
We know that Jose Rizal and his fellow Filipinos did other things in Spain. They got involved in politics, they drank, and they experienced racism.
And I wonder what Pol Pot’s experience studying in France was like. As far as I know, he failed in his official studies, but he certainly learned other things at the time.
How would we represent that experience of studying abroad?
And on a personal level I can remember witnessing the total diversity of academic abilities in Moscow in the 1980s. There were some foreigners with impeccable Russian and others who struggled to say simple expressions like “oчень хорошо” (and countless rumors about who wrote the dissertations of the people who had bad language skills).
There was a Vietnamese mafia that sent bicycles, refrigerators and cookery back to Vietnam.
There were Cubans who had parties every night. And then there was my beloved North Korean nuclear-physicist roommate who was drunk out of his mind 24 hours a day.
Their experiences don’t fit what is represented in the pictures above, and yet such experiences have probably always been a big part of the experience of studying overseas. The experience is imagined in a monolithic way, but the reality is extremely diverse, and not always as easy or pleasant or serious as the images above suggest.
However, it always seems to be transformative in one way or another.
This Post Has 4 Comments
Lê Minh Khai,
An interesting piece to say the least! It reminds me of a presentation that was recently at the Khmer Studies Conference at NIU last year noting the role of “de-colonial” photography in Cambodia in the 1960s-1970s as many of the upper echelons were returning from Paris, including a picture of Pol Pot with several leading figures from the time that he was supposed to have been murdered.
JaKei
Sounds interesting. Could you explain a bit more. What exactly was “de-colonial” about the photography? (somehow this rights a bell, maybe I saw the program for that conference online)
Love this post!!!!!
And below is another aspect to add to the picture of studying abroad that I’ve collected for my research work over the years. Of course these experiences are just one part of the bigger picture.
I keep thinking about how loneliness and the sense of not belonging to the host country among many international students and new immigrants could cause so much tragedy to themselves and those around. For example, in 2002 a Chinese international student (or with permanent residency status) in an Australian university killed his classmates and injured others because of his own sense of loss and his perceived low level of English language proficiency that had made him suffer badly in his course. The fact that he could not participate in group work with other students appeared to frustrate him the most and made him hate other classmates.
And in 2006 a newly arrived international student from Japan committed suicide leaving a letter to his friends in which he expressed how depressed he had become since his arrival in Australia. In particular, he talked about how his parents and friends had continued to expect him to be a high achiever in the new context and how he had been going through a strong sense of failure realising that his English language and his approaches to learning were seen as inadequate and inferior in the Australian classroom.
And a very bright Vietnamese student in an US university a few years ago almost went crazy because of loneliness and isolation. He hardly had any social interactions and became so depressed that he started to behave strangely in class. He was then sent back home for treatment.
And an American international student in Australia for almost 3 years struggled to find her way to appreciate her experience in the new environment, and in the end decided to leave in the middle of her course. She talked about the absence of access to peers and professors and her disappointment about the superficiality of the academic culture of her particular institution, which she had thought to be the number one university in the country. She felt fine with the social aspect of her living in Australia but depressed about the academic side of it. She felt almost totally isolated intellectually and gradually developed a very negative attitude towards Australian education.
And now comes the case of the two Chechnya brothers in Boston who have been suspected for the bombing of the Boston Marathon recently. The elder brother is seen as feeling that he didn’t belong and that he couldn’t integrate well with the new society.
International students well-being is so important but often gets overlooked by glamourous pictures, images, words and terms when one looks for opportunities to study abroad.
Just some thoughts to share and would love to get some feedback. I don’t mean to say that these issues only happen among international students or among international students in transition to permanent residents/immigrants, but just want to narrow down the topic so that we can have a more focused discussion if anyone is interested.
“I keep thinking about how loneliness and the sense of not belonging to the host country among many international students and new immigrants could cause so much tragedy to themselves and those around.”
Yea, I wonder if one problem is the fact that people think the experience is supposed to be a certain way, and then when it turns out to not be that way, it becomes stressful.
In the US, there was a novel/movie/TV series in the 1970s called “The Paper Chase” that was about some students at Harvard Law School. The way that the professors and students and the classroom experience was represented in that novel/movie/TV series has (I think) set a model that virtually all subsequent representations have followed. Even though the academic culture has changed dramatically over the years, when a university environment is shown in movies, it still follows that same model that “The Paper Chase” made famous.
That is the way that college life is represented, but for most people, it’s not that way (and I remember being somewhat disillusioned when I went to college to find out that it was not that way).
So it would be interesting to know if Chinese/Japanese/Vietnamese (I think those were all people mentioned in your post) have similar monolithic representations of the experience of studying abroad.