In a variation of “l’état c’est moi,” a French author titled a chapter about Sihanouk “l’état c’est lui.”25The title of the chapter adequately captures the milieu of a period when Sihanouk’s rule was largely “unopposed.”26 While UNESCO had called for educational expansion only in line with Cambodia’s financial capacity, the prince had other ideas. Ignoring the recommendation that Cambodia attempt to achieve universal primary education, Sihanouk was driving for compulsory secondary education.
The unregulated expansion of educational facilities, encouraged by the prince, was a critical theme of these early years after independence. An-other, more in accordance with UNESCO’s proposals, was the emer-gence of the idea of “Cambodianization” and the development of edu-cational curricula suited to Cambodian needs and the building of the Cambodian nation. A final theme was the return from France of many of the students who had associated themselves with the international Communist movement. Many of these former students gravitated to the teaching profession.
Cambodianization
The enthusiastic embrace of educational expansion following the elections of 1955 was reflected in the statistics. The number of modern-ized temple schools between the years 1955/1956 and 1957/1958 in-creased by only 47. During the same period, the number of Khmer pub-lic schools (formerly Franco-Khmer pubpub-lic schools) increased from 1,352 to 1,653. In the field of secondary education, not yet a priority, the increases were proportionately even greater: from 11 establishments in 1955/1956 to 18 by 1957/1958, and 29 by the following year.27Despite the expansion, the system was poorly suited to the needs of Cambodia.
It continued to reflect the centralized, rigid, and competitive French school system. Like the French system, the fine details of curriculum content were prescribed by regulation, including the number of hours
teachers were to spend on each subject per week. The history and ge-ography syllabi failed to provide students with an understanding of Cambodia or the Southeast Asian region, while French was the domi-nant language of instruction in all but the formative school years.
The education system had originally been designed to impart the knowledge needed by administrative assistants to French colonial civil servants. Two consequences of such a model were apparent. The first was that while the system assumed students would progress beyond pri-mary and even secondary school, by 1955 less than 1 in 3,000 students was enrolled in upper secondary school and less than 1 in 60 in lower secondary.28A second consequence was that graduates of the system as-sumed they would find employment in the civil service. In February 1956, Prince Sihanouk declared that “students must adapt themselves to various professions. Unfortunately everybody wants to become a red tape artist.” In the same speech, Sihanouk noted that in order for the school system to achieve its functions, priority must be given to the reform of both primary and secondary education.29 A natural con-sequence of an education system that trains students to fulfill roles as fonctionnaires is that its graduates will expect to be employed in the area in which they received their training. Sihanouk, probably made aware of the relationship between students’ aspirations and the school cur-riculum, lent guarded support to those officials who were advocating reform.30
The first attempts at Cambodianization, embracing UNESCO’s pro-posals, were pursued within the boundaries of a limited charter. The cen-tral concerns of the reforms were the language of instruction, the struc-ture of the primary education course, and school textbooks. The reforms adopted by the ministry included relegating French to the status of a sec-ond language in primary education, adjusting the number of teaching hours in the Khmer and French languages, and providing textbooks and teaching materials in Khmer. Importantly, while the reforms involved re-vising syllabi to take account of Cambodia’s independence, they did not address the heavy bias in the curriculum against rural Cambodian needs, nor did they address the relevance of the curriculum to the country’s economic and social circumstances. In fact, the system continued to train students to be “red tape artists.”
The implementation of the reforms proved difficult. Notwithstand-ing the burden of educational expenditure stemmNotwithstand-ing from the program of rapid expansion, the Cambodianization reforms placed further strain on the education budget. Resources remaining from the French
pro-tectorate were increasingly obsolete, while the ministry’s capacity to pur-chase new resources, even with French and American assistance, was be-yond its financial means. Further compounding the problem was the ministry’s capacity to produce new textbooks, with complications result-ing from poor quality paper, imperfect and costly printresult-ing methods, and difficulties in printing the Cambodian script.31
Although the effectiveness of Cambodianization was undermined by educational expansion, the expansion did serve to benefit the task of building a Cambodian national consciousness. For the first time in Cam-bodian history, the state assumed a genuine presence in the localized world of the country’s rural villages through the erection of schools and, in turn, the appointment of state representatives: teachers. Textbooks served to promote, in the words of Hobsbawm, a “suitable historical past.”32Secular time replaced the traditional calendar, serving as a sec-ondary conduit of modernization, while national “symbols” were ac-tively promoted.
In precolonial times, the wat had served as a cultural, religious, and educational focal point of the village. Among the peasantry, the French had done very little to alter this scenario. As in precolonial times, the wat continued to serve as a spiritual link between the king, and therefore the state, and the mass of the population. Physically, the link had been practically nonexistent, reinforcing the localized sociocultural milieu.
With the wave of educational expansion ushered in by the modus vivendi of 1946, the dynamics of this traditional context irrevocably altered. In many villages, for the first time, the presence of the state was obvious.
While the wat remained the religious and cultural center of the village, the school became an alternative repository of knowledge, with its teachers alternative authority figures in village life.
Cambodia’s modern school teachers were to benefit from the status accorded to monks, who traditionally imparted knowledge in the edu-cation process. The teachers, known in Khmer as kru, a derivative of the Sanskrit guru, adopted an authoritarian approach, similar to that of their monastic predecessors. While continuing to serve an important role in the transmission of moral values, teachers no longer drew their authority from the institutions of religion. Rather, Cambodia’s secular teachers were invested with the authority of the state and were in a pow-erful position to impart the new values of the modern nation.33
A central element in establishing these values was the promotion of a certain “version” of Cambodian history. For students of postindepen-dence Cambodia, Cambodianization resulted in the promotion of a
“suitable historical past,” which acclaimed Sihanouk as the father of Cambodian nationalism and emphasized heavily his Royal Crusade for Independence. Former students recall learning about all of the dates of the Royal Crusade but could not recall ever examining the role of the Democrat Party, the Nagara Vatta newspaper, or the Issarak movement in directing the country toward independence. For secondary school students, Sihanouk’s own La monarchie cambodgienne et la croisade pour l’indépendence became a required history text. The themes of slavery, pa-tronage and clientship, central to pre-independent Cambodian society, were glossed over in favor of an appreciation of the glories of Angkor.34 The “suitable historical past” led to an understanding of the present, the modern institutions created by Sihanouk in light of his crusade, the Sangkum and Buddhist socialism. Students would learn how these insti-tutions, embodying the future in the glories of the past, were embracing modernization and, as Sihanouk claimed in 1962, a level of “democrati-zation . . . never attained by any other country.”35
Sihanouk’s “suitable historical past,” and the modern values that stemmed from it, were reinforced through the hidden school curricu-lum.36Time, previously measured with the passing of the seasons, yearly flooding from the Tonlé Sap, the rise and fall of the sun, and the cele-bration of important village and religious festivals, became associated with a modern secular chronology and a regular, state-oriented routine.
Like the productive economic labor units the government hoped they would become, students attended school according to a routine that in-volved set working days followed by a brief period of rest. The tenets of
“nation” were promoted through important historical dates, which were emphasized by their celebration as public holidays. On other occasions, classes would be suspended while students prepared for or participated in events of “national” importance. Extending beyond the world of tra-ditional village life, these national events often served to highlight in-dependent Cambodia’s place in the global political sphere.
French Returnees
A Cambodian student, studying in France in 1952, wrote an article in a Khmer student magazine, Khmer Niset, entitled “Monarchy or Democ-racy?” In the article, the author criticized the Cambodian monarchy:
“The king is absolute. He attempts to destroy the people’s interest when the people are in a position of weakness. . . . The absolute king uses nice words, but his heart remains wicked.”37The article’s criticisms were in conflict with many of the key elements of statehood promoted through
the education system. It was many years later that scholars revealed that the author of the article was in fact Saloth Sar (Pol Pot). In terms of ed-ucation, the revelation would be quite unremarkable, except that only a few years after writing these criticisms, Saloth Sar would return to Cam-bodia and embark on a teaching career, his antimonarchic tendencies still intact.
Saloth Sar was not the only Cambodian radical to return from France and enter the teaching profession.38Many others, who would later be-come important officials in the Communist movement, also drifted into the teaching ranks after returning from France. Saloth Sar’s then close friend, Ieng Sary, became a teacher at the Lycée Sisowath and, later, at the private school, Kambuboth Collège. He was joined at the Lycée Sisowath by their wives, the sisters Khieu Ponnary and Khieu Thirith.
Son Sen, later the director of the Ecole Normale, also taught at the Lycée Sisowath, while Chau Seng, Uch Ven, and Ros Chet Thor would all join the Ecole Normale’s teaching faculty.39
These students, later teachers, impeded the Cambodianization pro-gram through their opposition to the cultural system on which it was based. As teachers in Prince Sihanouk’s Cambodia, their freedom of speech was limited. Consequently, they were not able to criticize the prince directly nor the institutions he patronized. As Communists, their political leanings were rarely, if ever, revealed, and definitely never within the walls of a classroom. Instead, they conveyed their message by highlighting government corruption and inequality and, through their actions, presented to their students an alternative model of behavior. As more students came in contact with Cambodia’s growing band of radi-cal teachers, their influence was to increasingly permeate the education system.