MAGAZINE - Poly Prep Country Day School

students, in two
shifts of four hours
each, 600 in the
morning and 300 in
the afternoon, and
only forty teachers.
In the afternoon
session, there were
two kids to a desk,
but obviously in the
morning it must be
three. One classroom
block is made
of concrete, meager
but tolerable. The
older section of the
school is wooden,
with rickety wooden
desks, and a lone
blackboard. The students
get a paperback
textbook/workbook
of about 100
pages for the whole year’s work in any subject. I looked
at the history text for the high school, and it’s pretty
paltry. They have history only one hour a week in any
case, geography another hour, so it’s hard to imagine
how much they can actually cover. And it explains why
the teachers keep saying, “Well, what you present is
interesting, but we can’t do it.”
issues. That was
reasonably good.
Then we discussed
education issues,
and they worked in
five groups to prepare
the persuasive
essay on that topic.
After they had done
a first draft, they
did peer editing,
which I think was
a very successful
technique that they
hadn’t been familiar
with yet, and
then we went to the
teacher training
institute library to
do research, with
Forsyth (right) speaks with author, lecturer, and human-rights activist Loung Ung, two students going
who spoke at Poly in September to kick off the Cambodia Project.
off by moto to an
Internet café.
The library has meager resources and is quite disorganized—obviously
it’s not used much for research.
Hong, my excellent interpreter, told me that they don’t
do research in any case—it’s a foreign idea, and of course
I can see why, as their resources are so few. But the
teachers seemed engaged with what they did in the
library for an hour or so. When each group had finished
their final essays, they read them before the class, which
then voted for which ones had the best arguments. I
have no idea if they were any good at all, as time was
short so I didn’t have Hong translate. I was pleased that
the teams managed to finish their essays, which were
then translated and put into the teachers’ notebook that
is prepared at every TAB program for dissemination.
Quite a few of my group told me they would use what they
learned in my workshop in their classes, but who
knows? If one or two people really got something out of
it, then it was worthwhile. Next year, however, I’ll do
real history stuff—a trial, a simulation, a debate. They
were very sweet on the last day. Several gave me gifts,
and one woman was nominated to make a farewell
address. I actually got rather emotional and teary.
Teaching in Battambang
I had a nice class of 20, almost all of whom were there
every day. Only one absence! Fourteen men, six women,
about two-thirds history teachers and one-third Khmer
literature (by which they mean, I think, any writing in
Khmer), and a few miscellaneous others. I was presenting
the five-paragraph persuasive essay that just about
every American kid learns to do. They were quite resistant
at first, saying that students could then argue for
anything, but I think they understood that it wouldn’t
necessarily lead to a defense of corruption or murder. I
had them identify the chief issues facing Cambodia and
then work in groups to prepare speeches on those
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