New initatives seek to change the way the history of the Khmer Rouge regime is taught in Cambodian classrooms

[Mr Lovejuice]

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/post-weeke ... -dark-past

Injecting something new into the study of Cambodia’s dark past
Fri, 8 July 2016
Audrey Wilson
Cambodia’s grade-12 students currently have their sights set on the future: August 8, the date of the national high school exit exam. But if history is any indicator, a few of the questions should be rooted in the past. It’s just unclear which part.

“I think [the history] of the Khmer Rouge regime will be on the exam,” said Naw Chanthy, a student at Sisowath High School. “But last year, the exam paper didn’t even include it.”

Such an omission would be a poor reflection of longstanding efforts to bring the Khmer Rouge into the classroom. The Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) first published a guidebook for teachers nearly a decade ago, and – after years of pushing – the government made A History of Democratic Kampuchea a mandatory text for grades 7 and up in 2009.

DC-Cam continues to train teachers, though there’s a growing gap between those who lived through the regime and those who did not.

In practice, implementation varies. Sao Putheavy, one of Chanthy’s classmates, said she had had little exposure to the text.

The standard government textbook covers the Kingdom’s history from the fourth century to the present in fewer than 100 pages. “We’ve learned [history] only two hours per week this year,” Putheavy said. “I think this is not enough.”

Both Chanthy and Putheavy were participants in a six-month pilot initiative designed by DC-Cam’s genocide education program that wraps today, after travelling to 14 public schools and reaching 952 students – roughly half of those in grade 12 in Phnom Penh – in special three-hour sessions. cont...

Additional reporting by Vandy Muong

[Stagger Lee]

@ OP

Do you have any thoughts on the matter or insights to offer in relation to the article you've posted ??

[Mr Lovejuice]

@ OP

Do you have any thoughts on the matter or insights to offer in relation to the article you've posted ??

Only that it is hopefully of interest to those that were wondering. There was another thread discussing such things a while ago, I would have updated that thread if I could have remembered what it was called.

Your living in Cambodia, why not take an interest in such things?

[Lucky Lucan]

I read the DCCam textbook (Khamboly Dy, A History of Democratic Kampuchea (1975-1979) when it came out. Their books are normally excellent, but this one was very vague about a lot of the less palatable aspects. The problem is, how do you teach students about such a complicated time, when there is no real good side/bad side - winner/victor way to do it? I know how they did it before, by blaming on the "Ieng Sary/ Pol Pot clique", but that doesn't help much.




http://www.genocidewatch.org/images/Cam ... 5-1979.pdf

[Stagger Lee]

@ OP

Do you have any thoughts on the matter or insights to offer in relation to the article you've posted ??

Only that it is hopefully of interest to those that were wondering. There was another thread discussing such things a while ago, I would have updated that thread if I could have remembered what it was called.

Your living in Cambodia, why not take an interest in such things?

It seems thisis perhaps you're / your style, i.e. to post things like this without any discussion points.

anyway,....

Chapeau !