Transporte de pequeños solutos y agua a medio-largo plazo

To what extent did those charged with the development of education in post-UNTAC Cambodia succeed in orchestrating successful reforms? At one level, the detailed and intricate educational policies formulated fol-lowing the international community’s renewed involvement with Cam-bodia indicated that the mistakes and problems of the past had guided educational policy formulation. The educational policies prepared in Cambodia following the 1993 elections represented a laudable program of reform that offered possible solutions to several of the country’s firmly entrenched educational problems. Although criticized on many fronts, especially in respect to its negative effects on the countries of the developing world, a NWO-oriented development program, eagerly

embraced by the government, underscored Cambodia’s education pol-icy framework. Primarily, the program of educational reform was con-cerned with qualitative revitalization, demonstrating both an awareness of long-standing problems with Cambodia’s teaching corps, educational materials, and curriculum and an understanding that efforts to rectify these problems could only be facilitated with access to scarce resources.

In addition, the program demonstrated a concern with questions of eq-uity, addressing the needs of female students, students from ethnic mi-norities and, importantly, students from rural Cambodia. Given that the policy program appeared to address Cambodia’s educational problems, why was it not fully realized in practice? Why was the crisis in Cambodian education augmented following the 1993 elections?

The answer lies in understanding the totality of the policy formula-tion and implementaformula-tion arena. In simple terms, the educaformula-tional policy formulation process is not restricted to a single arena, where educa-tional decisions are made in accordance with the Westernized planning process synonymous with notions of modernity. The planning processes congruent with NWO-oriented development, and therefore with ideas about global modernity, were continually subverted by conditions tied firmly to Cambodia’s local sociopolitical milieu. It is quite evident that educational policies in post-UNTAC Cambodia were subjected to the whims of the nation’s political leaders. Educational policies developed by the Ministry of Education, in consultation with international advisers and in congruence with international practice, were implemented only where they did not conflict with the immediate political imperatives of those in control of the apparatuses of the state. The cases of the prime pédagogique, the commitment to a 15 percent budgetary allocation to ed-ucation, the public service agreement with the IMF, and the implemen-tation of a 6 ⫹ 3 ⫹ 3 school structure all highlight the capacity of Cam-bodia’s national leaders to subvert planning processes, dispensing with or overturning stated and official educational policies and replacing them with cosmetic contingencies and reforms designed to augment their power.

In this respect, formal education, rather than the key to realizing the government’s stated commitment to human resources development, was a tool utilized, and often abused, in the interests of building a Cam-bodian nation-state geared to the entrenched positions of those in power. In the context of the coalition government formed following the United Nations-sponsored elections, it was a situation exacerbated by a

divided coalition government whose prime ministers (Hun Sen in par-ticular) used the education system in their attempts to outdo each other.

The NWO-oriented framework that dominated educational policies in Cambodia may have eventually failed. The simple reality, though, is that it was never given a chance to succeed. While critics may have balked at its overtly Western and modernist tone, the policy framework offered, at the very least, a costed, coherent, and arguably relevant sense of direction. The rejection of this framework, in favor of an ad hoc pol-icy framework based solely on political criteria, was a manifestation of the conditions that sustained the educational crisis in Cambodia over an extended period. While the quality of education at all levels of the sys-tem remained deplorably low throughout the country, the government, in light of directions from its leaders, failed to provide the system with the funds necessary to effect sustainable improvement. Further, it con-tinued to force on the Ministry of Education policy directions that un-dermined the capacity of educational officials, and their advisers, to work toward the realization of the system’s stated goals and, therefore, the alignment of the education system with the country’s development agenda.

Underlying the continued convolution and subversion of educa-tional policies was an enmeshment of tradition with modernity. Sup-ported by the presence of those state institutions commonly associated with modernity, Cambodia’s commitment to development was enacted with an eye to securing the country’s position in the global community.

Central to the commitment were the key tenets of the NWO: the pre-eminence of pluralism and democracy, a small and noninterventionist state apparatus, and the dominance of the free market. Enmeshed with these institutions of modernity were Cambodia’s hierarchical political traditions, in which democracy represents a hindrance to those exercis-ing power and in which all authority rests with those who control the ob-trusive and inob-trusive apparatuses of the state. These traditions, in sharp contrast to those underlying the Westernized development ideology embraced by the government, were at the core of the construction of the Cambodian nation-state, which informed the country’s process of educational policy formulation and implementation and which eventu-ally accounted for the nature of Cambodia’s educational crisis.

Conclusion

At twilight, the modern world recedes from Angkor Wat as the last stragglers leave with memories of sunset over the western entrances. Reclaimed by the twelfth century again, the temple slowly disappears from view during the encroaching darkness. . . . Silence descends, and in the soundless night, time seems to stand still.

E. Mannika, Angkor Wat:

Time, Space, and Kingship

184

Like Angkor Wat, where the traditional and modern worlds are en-meshed by the rise and the fall of the sun, the modern Cambodian na-tion-state embodies both tradition and modernity. Shrouded by the dark cloak of twilight, the temple’s disappearance from the horizon is followed at dawn by the slow ascent of the sun from behind its central towers, where it again joins the modern world. The Cambodian nation-state, with Angkor Wat at its core, oscillates between these two worlds, at-tempting to reconcile the demands of each. The education system, cen-tral to state-making, is caught in the middle of the reconciliation process.

It is tempting to conclude that the crisis in Cambodian education began with the consecration of a unified Khmer state, under King Jayavarman II, in the ninth century. Just how Jayavarman ruled the Khmer polity we do not know. In fact, we know very little about him or about the lands and people he ruled. We do know, courtesy of an eleventh-century inscription, that in the year 802 he participated in a ritual whereby he became a chakravartin (universal monarch) and where the cult of the devaraja (God-King) was celebrated. In the same way that Cambodian villagers would pay homage to local neak ta (ancestor spirits), Jayavarman’s Angkorean successors would honor his spirit at

Roluos, where he eventually settled. While the ideas of a universal mon-arch or a God-King have never been fully explained, they have provided the cultural core for the Cambodian beliefs about power, hierarchy, and leadership that are at the core of the educational crisis.

Focusing on the legacy of Jayavarman II provides us with a poignant image of a timeless society. But history is not so simple. When the French arrived in Cambodia in the nineteenth century, much of the country’s early history was unknown to the local population. No one had bothered to decipher the eleventh-century Sdok Kak Thom inscription.

No one even knew the names of the kings who had reigned over Angkor.

In fact, kingship was in decline and had been so for several centuries.

It was French scholars and archaeologists who told Cambodia of its for-mer greatness. The French deciphered the many inscriptions scattered throughout the country, listed the great Angkorean kings and their many victories on the battlefields, and described the massive irrigation works that had once sustained a mighty kingdom. In doing so, as David Chandler suggests, the French “bequeathed to the Khmer the unman-ageable notion that their ancestors had been for a time the most pow-erful and most gifted people of mainland Southeast Asia.”¹The French drew on this former greatness in boosting the prestige of the monarchy, thereby fusing Cambodia’s long forgotten past with the modernizing mission civilisatrice.

It might be appropriate then, that we exonerate Jayavarman II and attribute the educational crisis to the failings of French colonialism. The case is a compelling one. France provided Cambodia’s contemporary leaders with not only aspirations to reclaim the grandeur of the past but also a path to the future. It was the French who turned Phnom Penh into a “capital city.” They introduced electricity, constructed public build-ings, turned canals into drains, established a post and telecommunica-tions system, and linked the capital to other parts of the country through an elaborate system of highways and a railway line. Importantly, it was the French who undermined the traditional system of temple ed-ucation, replacing it with a modern counterpart, and introduced ideas about social change and social mobility that were almost as unmanage-able as those about former greatness. The capital city, public works, and modern education system were all evidence of the mission civilisatrice.

This path to the future hardly extended beyond Cambodia’s capital.

In the countryside, where the majority of the population lived, the French did very little. While they were intent on ridding Cambodia of its traditional education system, the development of a modern counterpart

was pursued only to the extent that it was not a drain on colonial re-sources. The legacy of French colonialism on Cambodia and Cambo-dian education was the creation of a social contradiction. With one hand, through the development of Phnom Penh and the promise of secular education, the French offered Cambodia modernity. With the other hand, they took it away. While Phnom Penh was developed, much of the remainder of the country was ignored. Instead, through aligning themselves with the prestige of the monarchy, the French reinforced the country’s hierarchical social order and its associated concepts of power, authority, and patronage. Their half-hearted attempt to provide educa-tion, which offered the prospect of upward social mobility, was never fully realized. The fundamental contradiction between a social environ-ment that offered modernity yet celebrated tradition, and an education system that promised change but was never fully implemented, sowed the seeds of educational disparity.

On the basis of the evidence presented here, however, the educa-tional crisis was not a French construction. While it was the French who introduced modern education to Cambodia, they were never particu-larly serious about it. It is appropriate that we condemn them for their ambivalence and their inertia. But it is not appropriate that we condemn them for Cambodia’s long-standing educational problems. Rather, as we have seen, the crisis has been almost a distinctly Cambodian out-come. In particular, it is an outcome that stems from Cambodia’s lead-ers, whose attempts to promote their visions of modernity within a framework of absolute power have had disastrous and sometimes tragic consequences.

State-making has been a priority of the leaders of each of Cambodia’s ruling regimes since independence. Each has sought to reshape local worlds by promoting radically different ideas about what constitutes a

“good Cambodian citizen.” Prince Norodom Sihanouk intended to mold Cambodians into good “Buddhist socialists,” committed to the monarchy and to the struggle against underdevelopment. His successor, Lon Nol, sought to transform the people into “neo-Khmer” Republi-cans, while Pol Pot endeavored to destroy their individuality in favor of collectivization. Burdened by the legacies of the Khmer Rouge, Heng Samrin and Hun Sen, through the 1980s, attempted to rescue the Com-munist cause in Cambodia. They believed that Cambodians, like their new-found allies in neighboring Vietnam, could become “new Socialist workmen.” Finally, Cambodia’s contemporary leaders have consigned

themselves to transforming the people into pluralist democrats, com-mitted to securing Cambodia’s place on the global stage and, impor-tantly, in the regional and global economies. Central to each of these at-tempts at state-making, with their alternative visions of development and modernity, have been the traditional political behaviors that evolved in precolonial times and that were later reinforced by the French. It is as a result of this traditional political culture that state-making in Cambo-dia, since independence, has been associated with asserting and re-inforcing the power and legitimacy of national political leaders.

The education system has been caught in the middle of these state-making aspirations: one hand is used to promote development, change, and modernity, yet the other is used to sustain the key tenets of the pre-colonial polity. These contradictory expectations for education have produced the educational crisis, a disparity between education and Cambodia’s economic, political, and cultural environments.

The economic disparity in many respects is a product of the colonial heritage of the education system. All of Cambodia’s postindependence regimes have acknowledged the importance of agricultural develop-ment to the economy. None, however, has used education to address this sector and its needs. Periods of educational expansion in Cambodia have been characterized by the proliferation of the Westernized educa-tion system the country inherited from the French. Originally intended to socialize selected members of the elite into the colonial civil service, the system has remained inappropriate in an environment where few students progress beyond primary school and where there exist few em-ployment opportunities in the nonagricultural “modern sector” associ-ated with the civil service. The rapid expansion of this Western educa-tional model has not been pursued in accordance with expert advice or even with ministerial policies. Both have almost universally argued that education should address rural needs and that “modernist” educational expansion should be tempered. The rapid expansion of Westernized education in Cambodia has been a function of the weight of the past: a desire by Cambodian leaders to secure legitimacy among the populace and an unwillingness by those charged with developing educational policies to contradict the wishes of those with more power (national leaders, for example) in the traditional hierarchy.

The political dimension of the disparity between Cambodian educa-tion and the country’s social environment also stems from the enmesh-ment of tradition and modernity. In one respect, the education system