In a nation where students are known for their discipline and persistence, Vietnam's 2025 PISA results reveal a quieter crisis: nearly six in ten fifteen-year-olds cannot yet use what they read to navigate the demands of modern life. Measured against a global cohort of 765,000 students across 91 countries, Vietnamese readers fall nearly 30 percentage points below the international baseline for functional literacy. The numbers invite a deeper question — not merely about test scores, but about what it means to equip a generation to think, reason, and participate fully in the world they are inher