The Students

I imagine it would very hard to be a student in Angkor Chum. It is not difficult to speculate why. Pretend for a moment that you come from a family who has only known the backbreaking work of farming rice. You share a wooden house with your mother, father, and siblings, sleeping on a straw mat every night. The clothes on your back are the ones you wear almost every day. Perhaps you own a few cows, enough to raise and sell in the market when the time is right. Your parents have never been to school, and no adult around you understands the value of an education. They believe in what people call “old ideas.” They think you would be better off working in the fields and helping them make a living instead of going to school. However, everyone goes to school because the village chief says you must. You feel you ought to go because all of your friends are there, but like your parents you do not understand why it is you have to go. The teachers come from far away places with names like Phnom Penh, Kampong Cham, and Sviey Reing. They give lectures, but you want to talk to your friends instead of actively listening and taking notes. You chat with the other students in the class, and doodle in your notebook. The teacher seems bored, and does not seem to mind that no one is paying attention. There is no punishment for not doing what you are supposed to. Sometimes the teacher does not show up for days, and time is spent playing games with the other students. The future is unknown to you. You do not worry about what is going to happen to you when you leave school because it is not important. So when the American teacher asks you about post-graduation plans, you do not have an answer for him.

Of course, there is an exception to every rule. There are a few students who seem to recognize the value of education and work hard in their studies. These are the students who I mostly work with and help me in other projects such as the Guppy Farm and other things. But they are rare. Part of the problem is that they have very little to aspire to. If you take a look at the town, there are very few job opportunities for a person with an education. The professional jobs are taken by people who come from far away, which itself is a statement about the Cambodian economy. Think about it. If highly qualified people are willing to move from places like Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, or Sisophon to take posts in a remote outpost such as Angkor Chum, what chance does a student coming from a rural area have in getting such positions? Very little.

From conversations I have had with some of the students, it seems that many of them want to leave to find opportunities elsewhere. I cannot say I blame them. If I came from this town, there would not be a day that went by where I did not dream of escaping to other places. I often thought of trying to help them do this in some other capacity than improving their English abilities, which to be completely honest has never really taken with them. This sounds very disappointing, but I have learned to accept it. Considering the history of the town and its isolation from the outside world, it is no wonder that most students are reluctant to learn. I think I would have a very similar experience if I tried to teach Chinese to students in rural Idaho, and constantly trying to sell them on the idea that it was useful language to know. (The real triumph has been my counterpart, who has learned to imitate the creativity I bring to lesson planning. That's the real success of the TEFL mission here) Since English is not something that I can sell them on, the most I can do is say, “Take your education and do something with it.”

It is going to take a very long time for this part of Cambodia to develop. While other volunteers tell me how they are reading advanced English books with their students, or conducting career workshops, I am happy simply at the fact that my students are even going to school. Soon it will be 2010, and still it will only have been thirteen years since the war ended in this part of the country. Students are going to school, instead of fleeing the shells that came from the sky or the soldiers who burned their villages down.

Things could be a lot worse here, but they also could be a lot better. I recently received a shipment of books from a company in America named Darien Books. I wrote them a nice letter asking for books for my library, and they just arrived. I will use them as much as I can, but I am hoping that when the town develops a little more and education becomes more accepted in the community that the students will come to use them more.

Maybe someday.