Anatomy of a Crisis: Education, Development, and the State in Cambodia, 1953-1998

Introduction

Introduction 1 At the heart of precolonial Cambodia, and at the heart of the country’s modern conscience, are the awe-inspiring towers of Angkor Wat. Built in the twelfth century by the Khmer king, Suryavarman II (r. 1113– 1150), the temple embodies the two underlying tenets of Cambodian traditionalism.1 First, it represents a palpable testament to the glorious pages of Cambodia’s past, when the Khmer kingdom was among the most powerful in Southeast Asia. Second, the cosmology associated with Angkor Wat highlights the essential themes of traditional Cambodian conceptions of power: absolutism and the primacy of hierarchy. The story of Angkor Wat’s penetration of Cambodia’s modern conscience is the story of the enmeshment of Cambodian traditionalism within Cambodian modernity. The temple, like others constructed in the region during what is now referred to as the Angkorean period, is an architectural representation of unity between kingship and cosmology. In its ideal form, the perception of unity provided a framework establishing that the political order was a “microcosm of the cosmic order.”2 Providing legitimacy to absolutist rule and a rigid political hierarchy, the traditional system, which had declined in stature after the fall of Angkor, was bolstered by the French, whose scholarship and restoration of Angkorean history brought its long since forgotten grandeur back to life. The French endeavors to conserve Cambodian kingship, designed to secure the legitimacy of their colonial project, accorded judiciously with the indirect rule implied by Cambodia’s status as a protectorate. By according renewed prominence to kingship, and therefore reinforcing the associated notions of absolutism and hierarchy, the French effectively fused those “modern” institutions they had implanted in defining a geographical space called Cambodge with those that had sustained the precolonial Khmer polity. While the traditional political culture owed its renewal to the demands of the modernity underpinning the colonial enterprise, modernity in turn owed its limited successes to the legitimacy afforded by Cambodian veneration of tradition. Pol Pot, the figure most synonymous with what is now generally regarded as the tragedy of modern Cambodia, declared in 1977: “If we can build Angkor, we can build anything.” His assertion amplifies the extent to which the perception of the eminence of Cambodia’s past has permeated its present. Once a source of pilgrimage for those Cambodian peasants fortunate enough to move beyond their local world, Angkor Wat, depicted on each of the country’s national flags since independence , now stands alone as the paramount symbol of Cambodian nationalism .3 Embodying the hierarchy and absolutism of the traditional world associated with the precolonial Khmer polity, it has provided a reference point for modern political practice. It is within this setting, where the tension between modernity and tradition is played out, that this book considers questions of education, development, and the state. The book is about Cambodia’s education system, its relationship to change and development, the relationship between education and development , and the state. It unravels the “crisis” that has characterized education in Cambodia since the country was reluctantly granted independence by the French in 1953. In so doing, it not only illuminates our understanding of Cambodia’s firmly entrenched and pervasive educational problems but also contributes to a greater understanding of Cambodia ’s tragic modern history and, importantly, a greater understanding of the inextricable link between that tragic history and the conditions of the present. Alongside “tragedy,”4 the idea of timelessness is one of the dominant themes of Cambodia’s history. In one respect, the book amplifies this theme, demonstrating how time-honored notions of power, hierarchy, and leadership—the roots of tradition in Cambodia—have continued to enjoy prominence in the country’s economic, political, and cultural life. In another respect, the oversimplification associated with the idea of an unchanging society is highlighted. With the political extremities that have characterized Cambodia since independence as a backdrop, 2 Introduction the book examines the social institution most readily associated with change and dynamism in a country that continues to genuflect before the weight of tradition and the part-myth, part-reality perception of a glorious past. The focus on education informs both the broader theme of tragedy and the dichotomy between change and changelessness yet also communicates its own complex story. The notion of a crisis in education first emerged in the 1960s, when educational planners, politicians, social scientists, and economists throughout the world realized...