Duong Quang Ham (1898-1946)

Duong Quang Ham’s pseudonym was Hai Luong, a native of Phu Thi village, Me So commune, Van Giang district. He was born on July 14^th, 1898 in a Confucian family. His paternal grandfather was Duong Duy Thanh (1804-1861), a provincial education officer in Hanoi. His father was Duong Trong Pho; his eldest brother was Duong Ba Trac, one of the founders of Dong Kinh nghia thuc (the first school founded by a group of Vietnamese revolutionaries in Hanoi). His younger brother was Duong Tu Quan, also a famous scholar of his time.

Duong Quang Ham showed his intelligence at his early age. Although he studied the western education very early, he had acquired Confucianist knowledge from his father and brother, which was a base that helped him become a scholar of sinology. In 1920, he achieved the first position in the graduation examination in a teachers’ college with his thesis titled “Confucius and Khong Manh theory in the old educational system.” After his graduation, he became a teacher at the famous Buoi high school (now Chu Van An High School) and remained there until the start of the resistance war by the whole country (1946).

During the first years of his teaching job, he taught history, geography, Vietnamese and French. When the August Revolution came to success, he was appointed to be the high school education inspector and then the headmaster of Chu Van An High School. Together with other teachers and professors, Professor Duong Quang Ham devoted all his enthusiasm, talent and efforts to set up a new style of education. He was one of the first professors attending the systematic training and one of the first people approaching to French scientific education with new ways of teaching. Therefore, apart from the study time; he applied his knowledge of Confucianism and new education to research Vietnam literature treasure according to the scientific method.

When studying literature, he was interested in issues of culture, history and learning. He had worked tirelessly in both teaching and writing textbooks for schools from elementary to high school for more than 20 years (from 1920 to 1945). He also made a lot of writing works in both French and Vietnamese, including: Leccons d’ histoire d’ An Nam (1927), Elementary test book (1926 in conjunction with Duong Tu Quan), Selected excerpts of national literature (1927), Vietnamese literature textbook (1940), Essential history of Vietnamese literature (1941), Collection of Vietnamese prose and verse (1942) and other articles printed on journals such as Huu Thanh, Nam Phong, Tri Tan, Literature Journal under his pen names of Hai Luong and Uyen Toan. However, his Essential history of Vietnamese literature and Collection of Vietnamese prose and verse have the most value in terms of research.

It was the first of this kind in the national language with 48 chapters and 11 sections. It was a significant scientific works and used for three years of high school education. It was valuable in many aspects, in both the academic and ideological aspects, in both documentation and research methodology ones. It was both an opening and evidence of the value of a literature style that had been little known before. It also created foundations for the establishment of the literature's history subject in Vietnam. He was one of the first people to divide the literature development into different stages and made a relatively comprehensive coverage of basics and effects of the France and China’s development of language, letters, learning systems and examinations.

Thanks to that, many generations of pupils can understand the diversity and plentifullness of the national literature. Researchers consider it as a manual in researching literature's history. So far, it has been reprinted more than ten times.

To memorize his contributions, on July 14^th, 1993, the Ministry of Education and Training, the National Centre for Social Science and Humanity, The Institute of Education Science and Literature Institute held an anniversary and a scientific seminar about him on the occasion of his 95^th birthday anniversary.