The atmosphere of the Art class at Nam Thanh Primary School, Mường Thanh ward, becomes bustling and colorful. On small tables, students are engrossed in cutting, pasting, and molding clay to create vivid models reenacting stories of national heroes. One group meticulously recreates the image of the Tay Son peasant hero, while another group skillfully depicts the Điện Biên Phủ victory scene using colored paper and cardboard.

This activity not only brings excitement to the students but also instills in them a sense of pride, love for their homeland, and an awareness of appreciating and preserving traditional cultural values. These values include the spirit of unity, compassion, filial piety, and a sense of responsibility to the community. These seemingly simple lessons in the Art class have become a bridge to forming beautiful life ideals, helping the students understand that culture is not just found in books or festivals, but is present in every daily action, word, and behavior.

Hoàng Bá Anh Khôi, a student at Nam Thanh Primary School, Mường Thanh ward, shared: “I really like lessons like this because I get to draw, make models, and also listen to the teacher tell more stories about national heroes. Through each lesson, understanding more about the traditions and culture of our homeland helps us learn to love, unite, and live better with everyone.”

In recent times, Nam Thanh Primary School has organized many extracurricular activities and creative experiences to educate students about traditional culture. Typical activities include an ethnic costume fashion show, which helps students better understand the beauty of the costumes of the ethnic groups in the province, forming an awareness of preserving and being proud of their homeland’s cultural identity. There are also folk art exchanges, local history storytelling competitions, and visits to historical relics and the Điện Biên provincial museum. These give students the opportunity to “learn through play, play through learning,” approaching traditional culture through practical experience.

Meanwhile, at Pom Lót Secondary School, Sam Mứn commune, content about the costumes, festivals, musical instruments, cuisine, and customs of the Thái, Mông, and Khơ Mú peoples has been skillfully integrated into subjects like Music, History, and Literature. This helps students see the richness, diversity, and unity of Vietnamese culture. In particular, integrating cultural elements into subjects also contributes to nurturing aesthetic capacity and educating students on morals and character. This is also an effective direction in building a “friendly school, active students,” where culture is not just studied but is also lived and spread through every action, word, and emotion of the students.

Trần Thị Bích Nga, Principal of Pom Lót Secondary School, Sam Mứn commune, said: “Bringing ethnic cultural traditions into school teaching holds great significance; it helps form character, develop and foster love for the homeland, awakens national pride, and instills a sense of responsibility in the young generation to preserve ethnic cultural identity and patriotic traditions. It contributes to preserving and promoting traditional cultural values and community cohesion. It helps students understand and appreciate the cultural identity of their own ethnic group as well as other ethnic groups in the province.”

At Lê Quý Đôn Gifted High School, the preservation and spread of traditional cultural values are actively organized and maintained by the students themselves. Every Sunday, the school’s Traditional Culture Club holds a meeting. Through traditional costumes and historical stories, the members explore the traditional cultural beauties of the Vietnamese nation in general and of Điện Biên province in particular. From this shared passion, the club has participated in many musical performances, fashion shows, and sketches at the school and in cultural competitions both inside and outside the province. This helps bring the traditional culture of ethnic groups closer to friends, teachers, and the community, inspiring love and an awareness of preserving and promoting the nation’s good values in today’s young generation.

From these lessons and extracurricular activities steeped in traditional ethnic culture, the love for the homeland and national pride are nurtured daily in each student. This gradually builds an awareness of preserving and promoting the nation’s good traditional cultural values in the student generations of Điện Biên.