Most of the students and teachers in the Vietnamese schools opened by the French were not following the given syllabus. They chose to openly oppose or silently resist what the French were trying to impose on the Vietnamese young minds. At the lower level of classes the French could not control the teachers at all because they taught in Vietnamese. This helped them to criticise and modify what the French textbooks put forward. The incident in 1926 at Saigon Native Girls’ School was an eye-opener. A Vietnamese girl had refused to give up her front seat for a local French student. She and her supporters were expelled. When the situation turned serious, the principal was made to admit the students back.In other places students were up against the government because they were not letting the Vietnamese people qualify for white collar jobs. These students deemed it the duty of educated Vietnamese to fight for their rights. So the students came to be disliked both by the French and the Vietnamese elite. By the 1920s, the students were creating political groups and publishing nationalist journals. Soon schools were like political and cultural battlegrounds in which the French tried to control education. They aimed at changing the values, norms and perceptions of the people so that they viewed French culture and civilisation with awe and the Vietnamese civilisation as inferior.Many Vietnamese thinkers mourned the loss of territory, culture and customs.