Why Go On?

Last week, the 12th grade students undertook their final year national exams. The subjects included a variety of ones that they have studied over the past four years: Chemistry, Physics, Khmer, Geography, English, Morals, and maybe one or two others that I forget at the moment. The testing period lasted three days from Monday to Wednesday. On Thursday the teachers graded the exams, and by Friday the results were posted on the announcement board. Out of the 81 students that took the exams, only one student did well enough to pass completely. Statistically speaking, the results indicated a 99% failure rate. The one student who passed is in one of my English classes, and I offered my congratulations to her when I learned who it was that had actually passed. Surprisingly enough, she did not seem in least affected by her success when I spoke to her. She and Mr. Vannak carried on their usual banter when I saw the two of them in the office that morning. Passing the exam meant as little to her as failing it.

Was I surprised at these results? Not really. I am actually impressed by how badly they did. I knew that education was something that the students did not value very much, but this shows a naked, adamant rejection of it all together. How different they are from any other students I have ever known or met, how they contrast wildly with my own experiences in education. While I have obsessed over exams during my entire life from 4th grade math tests to the recent GRE bonanza in Singapore, most of the students I teach will never know this at all. And yet, why should they? They will go on in their life, planting rice, raising cattle, getting married, having babies, and giving offerings to the monks before they die. Why should they ever know the anxiety of taking important test after important test when they can live a life that is simple and uniform in its identity to others?

However, you have to realize what this means to the people who stay and work here. When Mr. Nou and I taught our classes during that morning when the exam results were posted, the students in the classrooms were few and far between. They were also showing their usual reluctance to participate at all. As usual, the two of us resorted to peer pressure and intense coaching in order to get any of them to do anything. It was exhausting, and the two of us walked out of the classroom feeling tired and a little disheartened. Mr. Nou spoke up "Why do we do this? Why do we teach and work hard if the students are going to not pay attention and fail when they take their exams?"

It is always a difficult question to ask, but before I said my usual answer of "We teach because that's our job and responsibility," I realized that Mr. Nou's entire life's work is most likely going to be teaching these students. He will have to go on and teach class after class of lifeless students who do not want to be there, while I will go off to America and pursue other things. A lifetime of teaching English in Angkor Chum. I felt terrible at the thought of this, and I said nothing.

I am not sure if Mr. Nou or any of the other teachers think about that, but if they do I can understand the wanting to numb themselves from reality. If I were in their position, I would constantly be thinking of escape. But then again, I do not posses a powerful sense of fatalism as they do.

But I really do hope some of them escape.