A few posts ago I mentioned how the lack of proper a education system has seriously impacted the people of Cambodia. Many adults, especially in the more rural areas, are functioning illiterates and it is the younger generations that are paving the road to the future, quite literally at times. (source: Chomnan, my regular tuk tuk driver, who is forty-two years old and has witnessed some wild scenes in his life.) When you talk to anyone over thirty years old, it is rare that they speak any English, French, Korean, Thai or Russian at all - they mainly speak in what I have been told is "country" Khmer (
ku-my). As an American, I can confirm that most of my fellow countrymen also only speak one language so I cannot rail Cambodians for speaking only one language. Siem Reap is a major tourist town and most travelers to this exotic location do not speak Khmer. Tourists mainly originate from Australia, France, South Korea, Thailand and Russia. Before moving here, I boldly assumed the people working in the service industry would have some basic communication skills in one or more of these languages. Day in and day out, I see, and hear, the tuk tuk drivers, the waiters and the shop owners with superior language skills working more than those with limited language abilities, reinforcing the need to establish a solid education system throughout the country.
Students at the school where I work tell me that it would be difficult for me to ever have a proper conversation with someone my age no matter how good my Khmer becomes. Each village has a slightly different dialect and I'd always sound like a barang, which is "foreigner" in Khmer slang. The students know that developing proper language skills via a proper education is vital to their progress and the progress of Cambodia. Since they need to rely so heavily on foreign powers, learning English, French, Korean, Thai or Russian is almost necessary. The guards and maintenance men in the building where I live speak Khmer (obviously), some Korean (since a lot of people in the building are Korean) and very little English (my wife and I, along with one guy we work with are the only English speakers in the building) to help them communicate with the residents.
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| An actual student's home with a traditional red roof |
Where I work, all courses are taught in English (PreK-12). This school is modeled after a proven American curriculum from an urban prep school that focuses on educating students from the west-side of Chicago. The goal here in Siem Reap is to help prepare the next generation to properly develop Cambodia into a country reflective of its SE Asian neighbors. The mission states that the school is "dedicated to educating academically talented and motivated students from low income families in Siem Reap, to maximize their potential and their ability to build a better future for themselves, their families and their country." This is no small task. Nearly every student comes from a mono-lingual home and they are generally the first person to receive a formal education. Simply stated, Cambodian state schools are not properly funded to provide an education on par with what we offer as a very well-funded NGO. Many of our students live in houses on stilts and are the children of rural subsistence rice farmers working and living in the same fields constructed by the Khmer Rouge.
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| Another student's house |
These students understand how fortunate they are to receive the education they are provided. At the end of summer school, the middle and high school students participated in a science fair, where they worked in groups. Their projects were amazing, most of them anyway. Students worked on experiments that relate to their lives, it was truly science in application. Projects focused on topics such as building wind turbines to provide electricity to everyone in the village, designing and building a well that will help prevent contamination of the water source during flood times, another focused on a shaman remedy for healing lacerations that they applied to the reduction of bacteria growth on surfaces - these projects were quite impressive. The group that worked on the wind turbine are in the current senior class and they said that their plan is to go to college and study engineering or law so they can come back and build small power stations and fight the legal battles that ensue when you want to develop rural villages. These students obviously understand the power of education and what education can do for people - this is why people want to teach.
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| A senior hamming it up |
The current seniors recently took the ACT, likely for the last time. The class is small, only sixteen students, and, on average, they have been formally studying English for just six years. Subsequently, this is also the first class to graduate from the infant school and head off to a college that can truly develop them into the leaders we, and they, eagerly hope they become. Despite the language barrier, some students have earned respectable enough test scores to gain admittance to colleges in America. If any student in this class is interested in tackling a western college is still uncertain, but knowing that they can head in that direction is wonderful. As the students move through the grades, they are more and more likely to gain admission to some top colleges and they are more open to studying and living abroad.
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| A view of the high school campus |
Now that the school year is well underway, the science, literature, history and math taught to these students and their responses to the material is beyond any of my expectations. Their ability to comprehend a novel like
Heart of Darkness surprised me. When I was hired to work here, I was brought in as the grades 9-12 English Language Arts teacher, the discipline and grade levels I taught for the past twelve years. Now, circumstances at the school have changed, and I am developing a 13th Year Program to help transition the students into western colleges and prepare them for life outside their villages and Cambodia in general. Helping them plan their futures is an incredible, yet daunting, task. The student's desire to develop into global citizens is going to have a major impact on their lives. Breaking out of the stereotype of an uneducated, illiterate Cambodian farmer and providing westerners with a face of the 21st century Cambodian is a very necessary step in changing how the world views the country and the citizens.
It seems that everyone has heard the adage "knowledge is power" and knows that there is a good amount of truth to what is being said. The students here also know this is about as true of a statement as one can make, but do not really understand how much power one can derive from their knowledge. The concept of questioning authority and the idea of living life as an individual are new to the students. They were not raised like Americans where our ability to question and act in our own articular idiom are celebrated with frequency. People like Orson Welles, Elvis Presley, Jack Kerouac and Jackson Pollock would not have emerged in Cambodia. Possessing the desire to break the mold is an almost alien concept to some students. My observations and interactions have led me to the belief that females will blaze the trail forward, not males. The Cambodian females I have come to know are very strong women and will not stop until they are satisfied - they remind me of my grandmother, Elsie, a woman determined beyond belief.
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| A Student Council member helping at admission testing |
With the recent passing of King Sihanouk I do expect some changes to come about in the coming years. It goes without saying that I'd like to see some serious education reform, but time will tell what changes take place. The remaining ties to the Khmer Rouge are fading and new leadership can propel this wonderful country into the 21st century. It is this opportunity to install new leaders that should motivate these students to go off to college and bring back the knowledge they gain to help in this transformation of a developing country.
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| Another reminder of how my student's live |
