In case you need more convincing that Vietnamese students are among the highest-achieving in the world, here’s further proof: an 18-year-old Hanoi student recently won the coveted top prize of an international writing contest.
Nguyen Tien Thanh, a recent graduate from the capital’s Hanoi-Amsterdam High School, was announced the winner of Writing Prize last May, reports Tuoi Tre. However, the teen only made headlines recently after The Atlantic published his winning essay, Reading Raphael in Hanoi, in its September issue.
Writing Prize is a writing competition jointly held by The Atlantic and College Board, the company behind the SAT test. This was just the second time the competition had been held. It challenged students worldwide to undertake a close reading of an artwork that inspires them. Thanh’s essay beat out 2,000 other entries from 44 countries to snatch the US$5,000 prize and a chance to be featured in The Atlantic.
In his essay, Thanh discussed The School of Athens by Italian Renaissance painter Raphael, using the artwork as a foil for modern-day Vietnamese education. The essay touched on the contrast between local schools’ limited emphasis on critical inquiry and a new trend among Vietnamese youths of seeking out alternative viewpoints on the world.
Raphael's The School of Athens. Image via Wikipedia.
“For me, [The School of Athens] is powerful ultimately because it reminds me that even under my country’s circumstances, individuals who love learning can work toward the ideal it depicts,” Thanh wrote in his prize-winning essay.
You can find the full version of Thanh’s essay, Reading Raphael in Hanoi, here, courtesy of The Atlantic.
The Hanoi native will be attending Duke University in North Carolina this fall under a US$300,000 scholarship. He scored 2380/2400 on his SAT test, according to Tuoi Tre.
[Photo via Asia Media International]
