School or Selling Postcards.

Growing up in the UK education is an expectation and there is a legal requirement to attend a certain amount of school. There are parameters set for teachers as to what students should be taught and national benchmarks that you are expected to reach. I recognise that education is still a privelege for many across the globe and this was really highlighted to me by a teen I met last a couple of weeks ago.

Recently we were traveling in Cambodia and as I teach in an international school I seem to look out for other such establishments. I was very surpirsed by the number of internationl schools that I saw in Cambodia and some what I considered to be very odd locations. Having some awareness of the social structure and salary expectations in Cambodia I was unsure as to who would be attending these schools. I also noticed as we traveled around students early in the morning clearing leaves on local school grounds and other such chores which reminded me of the Japanese system where students and teachers clean their own environment.

In Siem Reap we spent a couple of days tourning the various temples with a driver and a guide. We don't normally like guides, but we met so many people who told us that you could not appreciate much of what you were seeing without and so we caved and got a guide. On the second day the man who ran the company apologised and told us he didn't have a guide, but would like to send us with his younger brother who wanted to go to tourism school to become a guide. Obviously the guide fee was waived and as we don't particularly like guides we weren't too bothered. As we started driving our "guide" for the day pointed out his school. We laughed and said that we felt very guilty about him skipping school to look after us for the day. This led to a conversation about education in Cambodia and we certainly learnt a few things:

• School is not compulsory
• The school day is 4 hours long
• Teachers often don't show up or refuse to teach as they don't believe they are paid enough
• To get the best from the teachers you need to pay $7 a month and go to the evening classes where they actually teach
• Many teachers save their teaching for the evening classes and don't really teach during the day
• Cambodia wants to collaborative with other asian countries and be recognised as an equal, yet they know that their education is preventing them 

Our "guide" for the day also told us that when he was younger he didn't go to school often as his family had not been so well off. Instead of attending school he would be at the temples selling postcards to tourists. There are many children doing this and with school finishing at 11:00 - 12:00 on a daily basis many still attemd school and then go after. These children have fantastic sales patter in English, "If you buy a postcard I can go to school". It's hard for any foreigner to say no to that line. Amazingly though I heard some children use fantastic sales patter in Chinese too. They may not be attending school but they can speak Khmer and sell postcards in English and Chinese. The children of Cambodia may not all be getting the same education as children elsewhere but they are resourceful and show an aptitude for languages.

Photograph by Mr. Orangedog Photography - all rights reserved.