Effect of teachers is long lasting

A. Gaffar Peang-Meth

via CAAI

By A. Gaffar Peang-Meth • September 22, 2010

I was born and raised more than half century ago in the poor Southeast Asian kingdom of Cambodia.

When my parents' financial fortunes took a sharp dive and the family had to split up temporarily to survive, I lived on my own in an empty house, owned a pair of shorts and two shirts -- the second sewn by my older sister. I walked to school barefoot. I cooked rice on a three-legged, baked-mud stove using firewood, and I was scared of the dark. My circumstances had greatly changed from the days when I was driven to a private kindergarten in a black Citroen, attended by some helpers.

'Teacher affects eternity'

I grew up at a time of national insecurity fomented by the Khmer Issarak, the Vietminh, and increasing anti-French colonialist activities. I have written about my elementary school teacher at Russeykeo, a young "progressive" chap whose words greatly affected me. In a leaky, thatched-roof classroom, he untiringly pounded into kids' heads that we are humans, and each of us has "one kilo of brain" that is as good as any other brain, and that "we" are responsible for our future and the country's fate. It was us -- kids in the classroom -- who will or will not make future change happen.

"Bah!" I remember the thought I had then, as I looked around at some of my classmates: clowns, bullies, pants-wetters ... an assembly of the future?

Fast forward. At one time it was unthinkable that I would study abroad. Thanks to a high school exchange program, I graduated from Chagrin Falls High School in Ohio in 1962, returned to Cambodia as required by the exchange program, and came back to Ohio to begin my freshman year at Hiram College in 1963.

My father wanted me to be an engineer or a medical doctor. I didn't care for calculus, I hated dissecting animals and could not stand blood, so I majored in political science after my academic adviser loaned me some books on the making of the United States.

I was a political activist, even in college. In 1970, as a graduate student, I supported the group of Cambodians who opposed the Vietnamese occupation of Khmer soil as base of operations against the Americans and their allies.

In 1980, I received my Ph.D. degree from the University of Michigan, the same year I was naturalized a U.S. citizen. The Cambodian republic experiment failed miserably, and with the U.S. pullout from the region, the Khmer Republic crumbled. Pol Pot took over and more than 2 million died as a result. That regime was ousted by a Soviet-backed Vietnamese military invasion that decapitated the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge in 1979.

In 1980, I joined the nationalist resistance Khmer People's National Liberation Front at the Cambodian-Thai border. The Front opposed Vietnam's invasion and occupation of Cambodia.

I read somewhere that "a teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops."

'Living antiquity'

When I stood before a very attentive introduction to political science class of Asians, Pacific islanders and students from the U.S. mainland in 1991 at the University of Guam to introduce myself with a short background as their teacher for the term, an islander rubbed his face and blurted, "Oh, a living antiquity!"

For the next 13 years, I taught political science at UOG, using my comparative analysis training acquired in Ann Arbor, an approach I was fortunate to have tested when I taught a graduate-undergraduate comparative politics course at Johns Hopkins in 1990. I used Western and Eastern political philosophies and theories; I backed them up with my practical experience and real stories from my service at the United Nations as a delegate, in diplomacy, in the resistance, as I sought to bring philosophies and theories alive. We described, analyzed and attempted to forecast what may lie ahead.

As some UOG students wrote in their evaluation of me, one said, "He did not teach to pass tests, but to think in order to live a life worth living."

Continue the traditions.

Once one has established oneself as an educator, the act of educating has become ingrained in the person, and I don't know if there's a stopping point.

Though I have retired from formal classroom teaching -- the Guam sunsets, the three-times-a-day swim at Ypao's salt waters that washed away stresses, anxieties and built physical strength; the plumerias that brought unforgettable fragrance, among others, are a thing of the past. The Pacific Daily News continues to provide me with an opportunity to write and share.

And so I write to share. I do have my own political and ideological preferences, which I propound from time to time. Otherwise I keep them to myself. Humility is my value: I respect others' views and ways and I seek to learn from them.

I have disagreed with others, privately or openly, but I do my best to refrain from being disagreeable -- some relationships have been hurt, some others have continued. Some cannot accept disagreement.

I judge from the number of e-mails I receive, and especially a few with strong reactions to my writings from people of both sides of the bench, that my purpose in writing to challenge thoughts has borne fruit.

I am grateful there are faithful readers, and those who anticipate my weekly column. It is freedom that ensures my opportunity to write, and I thank all media outlets that facilitate my exercise of free expression.

A. Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D., is retired from the University of Guam, where he taught political science for 13 years. Write him at peangmeth@yhaoo.com .