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Cambodian educators in Lowell to learn how to teach about the Khmer Rouge
By David Perry, dperry@lowellsun.com
Updated: 02/15/2010
For years, Cambodia's schools ignored the country's deepest scar: the genocide that Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge troops imprinted from 1975 to 1979.
In the classrooms and in textbooks, the forced labor, torture, starvation, imprisonment and death of as many as 2 million Cambodians never happened.
But for the first time, Cambodian students are learning about the brutal period. And Lowell teachers are helping to tell the story.
"Before, in textbooks," says Phala Chea, community outreach specialist for Lowell's public schools, "if anything, there was a sentence about the Khmer Rouge. And that was the end of the story."
Chea survived the genocide, fleeing the country with her family in 1979. She was 7. She didn't return until 2003.
By helping write and edit a teacher's guide and working with teachers in Cambodia, Chea and Lowell High School teacher Miriam Morgenstern have had a hand in helping teachers in Cambodia teach a broader historic truth to students.
The first Cambodian textbook to explain the genocide, A History of Democratic Kampuchea (1975-1979), is being distributed to high schools by The Genocide Education Project school by school, town by town. So far, says Chea, about 300,000 copies have been given out to students. The book's author, Khamboly Dy, was to visit Lowell over the weekend.
On Friday, Sokchamroeun Ly, a 30-year-old student teacher, and Pong-Racy Pheng, 39, a part-time college instructor at Phnom Penh's University of Panhasastra, sat in Morgenstern's classroom, nearly halfway into a 10-week visit to Lowell. They work for the Documentation Center of Cambodia in Phnom Penh, which is sponsoring their trip.
Here, they are learning how to teach their own history, thanks to Morgenstern, who has been teaching for two years the details of the genocide as part of her popular LHS course, "Cambodia: Culture and Conflict."
The Cambodians are visiting other classes as well, and visiting within Lowell's Cambodian-American community, the second-largest in the U.S.
"Until the past five years, nothing was taught of the genocide in schools," Pheng says. "And we are starting now to talk, to tell parents to tell their children as well about what happened to them. Teachers now can tell about the Khmer Rouge to students."
As has been the case within some homes in Lowell, Cambodian parents did not want to tell their children of the nation's grim past.
"Many say, no, I don't tell my children," says Pheng, who collects oral histories. They say it is too painful.
Born three years before Pol Pot took control of the country, Pheng, his parents and older brother were herded by Khmer Rouge troops from Phnom Penh into the countryside to work and live communally. His brother died of malnutrition along the way. They returned to the city when Vietnamese troops liberated the country.
Pheng says he and Ly are here to explore American education methods, talk to students and teachers and explore the local Khmer community. They have already given a couple of presentations to local groups.
"I wanted to be a teacher who teaches to younger generations about the genocide," Pheng says. "I want all students to know what happened to find a way to avoid it happening again."
Ly doesn't remember the period herself, but, "I know a lot of stories and it is very important for the young generation to know them, too. There are 9 million children after the Khmer Rouge who need to know. It is important if parents don't talk about it and the schools don't teach it -- the Khmer Rouge could come back."
Most classrooms in Cambodia have "at least 45, maybe 50 or 60 students," Pheng says. "Here, students move from class to class. There, teachers do."
For Chea, who came to American after 18 months in a Thai refugee camp, the education of Cambodians about their history is a lifelong dream. If the Khmer Rouge sought to vanquish Cambodia of its history, culture and education, this is sweet revenge for survivors.
She met Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, on her first trip back in 2003 and was heartened to learn of his plans for a Genocide Education Project. When the textbook was published, she spent months developing a teacher's guide to using it in the classroom.
Morgenstern, who has a long history of teaching about the Holocaust, helped edit the guide. Both women were back in Cambodia last summer to work with 24 teachers. Eventually, the curriculum will spread to 3,000 teachers.
"I always wanted to help give back somehow, and this is a great opportunity for me to do something that is important to the whole country," Morgenstern says. "With the tribunals going on, the country is ready to talk about it.
"They certainly bring a broader context to the class," she adds, referring to Pheng and Ly. "It's very exciting that they're here."
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