Holly Pham
The Phnom Penh Post
Thursday, 02 July 2009 22:02
A new official history textbook which outlines atrocities committed under
the Khmer Rouge is designed to help open up conversations and critical
thinking.
Students peruse their first copies of the school textbook A History of
Democratic Kampuchea.
Decades after the fall of the belligerent Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian
government is still dragging its feet in educating people about the
genocide.
The knowledge gap in education about the genocide drove author Khamboly Dy to
write A History of Democratic Kampuchea, Cambodia's latest official history
textbook, recently approved by the Ministry of Education.
Understanding the past, however horrendous, is the first step towards
restoring humanity and identity of a nation, said Youk Chhang, director of
Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam).
Sharing this belief, 48 Cambodian and international experts have committed
to the Genocide Education Project, in collaboration with the Ministry of
Education, to teach children in Cambodia the history of Democratic
Kampuchea.
"We want Cambodia to get out of the ‘survivor' identity and become
educators," Youk Chhang told the Post.
A national conference to train teachers across Cambodia how to teach about
the genocide, based on the new history book, is taking place at the Senate
Library from Monday to July 7.
The endeavour is a first, yet a crucial one for the nation to move on.
"Only through understanding the past sufferings could we as a nation begin
to heal and reconcile," Kamboly Dy said.
The new history book serves to trigger conversations about teachers' and
students' own experiences with the genocide. This approach aims to
develop students' critical thinking while accommodating personal perceptions
and unintended traumas.
"It's so difficult to find a ground that we can all agree on," said Youk
Chhang.
"Some of the teachers are survivors, some born after the Khmer Rouge. They
perceive this differently. The teachers who lived under the Khmer Rouge tend
to be more emotional while the ones born after KR might lack historical
understandings.
"We're concerned that that could lead to emotional teaching and perhaps
could provoke anger among students who could be children of former Khmer
Rouge," he said.
Setting itself apart from the usual chronological approach, the 200-page
textbook contextualises Cambodian history through comparative studies with
other massacres in modern times: Rwanda, Iraq and the former Yugoslavia.
"We want to help students connect what happened in the past with what's
happening in the present," Kamboly Dy said.
The new book also incorporates activities to put its content in perspective,
such as active reading, group discussions, guest lectures, theatre arts and
field trips. Kamboly Dy said such action-based teaching generates open
conversations and develops valuable thinkers.
Compared with 15 years ago, young people tended to come forward more visibly
nowadays, according to Youk Chhang.
He said he believed the genocide tribunal plays the key role in facilitating
this dynamic.
"The tribunal set a very important foundation to lift this off the ground
and it's up to Cambodians to use it," he said. "This project would have been
difficult without the tribunal being established in Cambodia."
The international attention cultivated by the Extraordinary Chambers in the
Courts of Cambodia has also contributed to a more open society in Cambodia,
he said. "Media coverage and open discussions in the past 15 years have
warmed up everybody and made people want to be in charge of their own
history," he added.
Youk Chhang said the project should become self-sufficient within the next
three years.
In the meantime, DC-Cam will maintain its support by providing resources,
trainings, monitoring and evaluations.
DC-Cam has published and distributed 1 million copies of A History of
Democratic Kampuchea to students from grades 9 to 12 across Cambodia.
A pdf copy is also available online for international readers.
The book has been translated into English, and versions in Chinese, French,
Japanese, Thai and Vietnamese are coming up December this year, Kamboly Dy
said.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
About Me
- Duong Dara
- Dara Duong was born in 1971 in Battambang province, Cambodia. His life changed forever at age four, when the Khmer Rouge took over the country in 1975. During the regime that controlled Cambodia from 1975-1979, Dara’s father, grandparents, uncle and aunt were executed, along with almost 3 million other Cambodians. Dara’s mother managed to keep him and his brothers and sisters together and survive the years of the Khmer Rouge regime. However, when the Vietnamese liberated Cambodia, she did not want to live under Communist rule. She fled with her family to a refugee camp on the Cambodian-Thai border, where they lived for more than ten years. Since arriving in the United States, Dara’s goal has been to educate people about the rich Cambodian culture that the Khmer Rouge tried to destroy and about the genocide, so that the world will not stand by and allow such atrocities to occur again. Toward that end, he has created the Cambodian Cultural Museum and Killing Fields Memorial, which began in his garage and is now in White Center, Washington. Dara’s story is one of survival against enormous odds, one of perseverance, one of courage and hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment