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Eleventh-graders at O'Tapouk High School in Pailin, Cambodia. (Brendan Brady / For The Times) |
Cambodia's new national curriculum requires students to learn about the brutal regime. Former cadres who are now parents would rather not talk about it.
December 9, 2010
By Brendan Brady
Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Pailin, Cambodia — Twelfth-grade teacher Sam Borath recently asked her students in Svay, a town in northwestern Cambodia, to write down the names of five leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime that killed an estimated 1.7 million people during its reign in the late 1970s.
Simply identifying top figures, however, can be an awkward exercise. Many communities would rather not stir up memories of the war-torn past, particularly in this region. Svay is part of a thin belt along the northwestern border that remained under the control of ultra-communist Khmer Rouge leaders and their militias for two decades after 1979, when the regime was ousted from power in Phnom Penh. Many residents still defend the regime's legacy, contending that it had rural interests at heart.
But a new national curriculum requires schools to tackle the controversial topic as a way to confront and reconcile the past.
"Some did it," Sam Borath said of the writing exercise. "But some just wrote down one name. Others didn't even hand it in because their parents told them not to."
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Simply identifying top figures, however, can be an awkward exercise. Many communities would rather not stir up memories of the war-torn past, particularly in this region. Svay is part of a thin belt along the northwestern border that remained under the control of ultra-communist Khmer Rouge leaders and their militias for two decades after 1979, when the regime was ousted from power in Phnom Penh. Many residents still defend the regime's legacy, contending that it had rural interests at heart.
But a new national curriculum requires schools to tackle the controversial topic as a way to confront and reconcile the past.
"Some did it," Sam Borath said of the writing exercise. "But some just wrote down one name. Others didn't even hand it in because their parents told them not to."
Please click here to read more...
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