In September 1979, the Heng Samrin regime was denied the Cambo-dian seat at the UN. Instead, the right to represent the CamboCambo-dian people was granted to the government of DK, despite universal horror at the tragedy it had inflicted over the previous four years. The decision was not born out of a desire to represent the needs of the country.
Rather, it was the result of several regional and international geopoliti-cal imperatives. The ASEAN states had wanted to punish the Viet-namese for their December 1978 invasion; China was hoping to “bleed”
Vietnamese resources by promoting a continuation of the Cambodian conflict; the United States was concerned about an increasing Soviet presence in Southeast Asia; while Vietnam was reluctant to negotiate while ever they considered the Chinese were attempting to secure greater influence in the region.
On the Cambodian stage, the geopolitical drama was played out in two ways. First, the United States, China, and the ASEAN states, espe-cially Thailand, financed, supported, and sponsored the Cambodian re-sistance forces: the Khmer Rouge; FUNCINPEC, a royalist rere-sistance movement led by the indefatigable Norodom Sihanouk; and a republi-can resistance movement, the KPNLF, led by the former Sangkum-era prime minister, Son Sann.50Second, the international community pun-ished both Cambodia and Vietnam by denying them development assis-tance. The drama reached its peak in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in June 1982, when the Khmer Rouge, FUNCINPEC, and the KPNLF came to-gether in a shotgun alliance to form the Coalition Government of Dem-ocratic Kampuchea (CGDK). The aim of the alliance was to liberate Cambodia from Vietnamese occupation. The CGDK would hold the Cambodian seat at the UN General Assembly for the remainder of the decade.51
In Phnom Penh, meanwhile, the PRK regime continued the task of rehabilitating social, economic, and political life in Cambodia. By 1981, the regime considered its legitimacy and control strong enough to pro-mulgate a national constitution, hold national elections, and announce the formation of a Communist government under the control of the
Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party (KPRP). The story of education following the initial crisis of 1979 –1980 was one of consolidation in the face of the considerable difficulties imposed by the international em-bargo and the less significant impediment engendered by the resistance forces. It was also the story of the PRK regime’s continued attempts to create good socialist citizens in Cambodia.
Education: Quantity, Quality, and Good Citizens
The PRK’s initial educational problems persisted through 1981. In a follow-up to his report of February 1980, UNICEF’s consultant returned to Cambodia in October 1981. He remarked that the progress made in education, “if measured in quantitative terms, has been exceptional.”52 The crisis of quality was, however, no less severe than it had been twenty months before. The concerns raised by the balancing act between im-proving educational quality and expanding educational services were to remain a critical theme for the next several years. A second theme was the revival, with Vietnamese and Soviet support, of the higher education system, and the continued development of a national system of adult lit-eracy education. Central to these themes was the regime’s attempts to build a socialist state through the development of education.
The growth of the education system during the first two years of the PRK, although not surprising, was more accelerated than at any other time since independence in 1953 (see Table 2). Given the state of the nation in January 1979, the statistics were a credit to the dedicated ad-ministrators who sought to rebuild the Cambodian education system.
The impressive picture is significantly distorted, however. As was the case in Cambodia and its developing world counterparts throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the educational expansion pursued by the PRK regime was achieved at the crucial expense of educational quality.
Following visits to schools in Phnom Penh and Kandal and Kompong Speu provinces, the UNICEF consultant’s observations of educational quality in 1981 mirrored those of his first visit. At the Lycée Phnom Daun Penh (formerly the Lycée Sisowath), Cambodia’s premier educa-tional institution, there were “no textbooks available to students” and there was a lack of “basic pedagogical materials.” Throughout Phnom Penh, there was a lack of classrooms, textbooks, and workshop and lab-oratory facilities and an insufficient supply of basic stationery materials.
The situation in the provinces of Kandal and Kompong Speu was no better, with a lack of classrooms and teaching materials, especially text-books, representing the most critical problems. Overwhelmed by the
number of students enrolling in both primary and secondary schools, the regime was unable to divert resources to the training and retraining of school teachers, leaving the caliber of classroom instruction at a de-plorably low standard.53
The crisis of quality was aggravated as the administration turned its attention toward the development of higher education and adult liter-acy education. Both were promoted with the significant support and assistance of Vietnamese advisers and staff. In the case of higher educa-tion, Soviet support was also influential. As with primary and secondary education, the haste with which the new regime attempted to develop higher and adult education was a function of its desire to create a new socialist society.
The rehabilitation of higher education began in early 1979, when plans were set in motion for the reopening of the Faculty of Medicine.
This was eventually celebrated on December 12, 1979. In July 1980, the Teachers’ Training College was opened, followed by the Institute of Languages and Tuok Thla Professional Training Center in February
Table 2. Quantitative Growth in Education, by Level, 1979 –1980 to 1980 –1981.
School Year School Year Growth Level of Education 1979 –1980 1980 –1981 Rate (%) Primary (Grades 1– 4)
Schools 5,290 4,334 ⫺18
Classes 17,761 27,217 53
Pupils 947,317 1,328,053 40
Staff 21,605 30,316 40
Colleges (Grades 5–7)
Schools 14 62 343
Classes 101 394 290
Pupils 5,104 17,331 240
Staff 206 671 226
Lycée (Grades 8 –10)
Schools 1 2 100
Classes 7 15 100
Pupils 301 555 84
Staff 20 28 40
Source: H. Reiff (1981), Annex V, p. 10.
1981, the Khmer-Soviet Friendship Higher Technical Institute in Sep-tember 1981, the Economics Institute in SepSep-tember 1984, and the Chamcar Daung Agricultural Institute in January 1985. The new regime was particularly concerned with the rehabilitation of higher education, as it was regarded as a solution to the country’s chronic shortage of tech-nicians and leaders in “economics, politics and culture.”54Its primary importance, however, was in the promotion of socialism. A KPRP Cen-tral Committee decision noted the “the main objective of higher and technical education is to provide good political training and good tech-nical training.” Good political training, it went on, should be “con-cerned with serving and protecting the nation leading to the socialist way and following the objectives of socialism.”55
Without the capacity to administer higher education, the PRK relied almost exclusively on Vietnamese and Soviet support. In so doing, the policy of the “Khmerization” of tertiary education, although addressed by the administration, was practically abandoned. By the mid-1980s, Vietnamese and Russian were the dominant languages of instruction in those tertiary faculties where there was no adequately trained or quali-fied Khmer staff.56
The PRK’s adult literacy program was adopted by the People’s Revo-lutionary Council on June 19, 1980, which was declared the National Day of Struggle against Illiteracy. The broad objective of the program, the “liquidation of illiteration,” was a laudable one. While the regime’s claim that 1,025,794 people had been left illiterate by Cambodia’s for-mer regimes, especially “the genocidal Pol Pot-Ieng Sary régime,” can-not be verified, there is little doubt that the legacy of civil war and de-struction since 1970 had left a significant literacy problem among Cambodia’s young adult population. Even more so than the develop-ment of primary, secondary, and higher education, the regime’s adult literacy program was an explicit exercise in diffusing socialism. Arguing that the literacy plan was “necessary and urgent” in the struggle against
“enemies” (who were not specified), the regime associated participation in the program with “patriotism” and “love of the fatherland.”57
If Paul Quinn-Judge’s observations of an adult literacy class in Kom-pong Cham province in June 1980 are any indication, we can reasonably question how much was actually learned at these schools. The class ob-served by Quinn-Judge was held in a school building, its “musty smell” a legacy of its use as a “grain store” during the Khmer Rouge period. The classroom had no electricity, its fifty students relying for light on small oil lamps made out of ink bottles.58Koy Nong, an English teacher in
Phnom Penh and a former instructor in the literacy program in his native Kratie province during 1984 and 1985, corroborated these ob-servations. The program was “poor,” he said, concluding that the “con-ditions were very bad” and “students did not learn very [much] in the classes.”59
UNICEF’s consultant to Cambodia reported in 1981 that “govern-ment priorities in the education sector are gradually shifting from quan-titative expansion to qualitative improvements.”60Except in relation to attempts to improve the quality of teachers, there is very little evidence to support this claim. Contrary to its educational priorities, the regime’s political priorities were given precedence. These political priorities re-lied explicitly on the expansion of educational provision. A former official, who played a significant role in the policy development process throughout the 1980s, believed that in its attempt to achieve “universal school enrollment,” the ministry neglected questions of educational quality. “Quality was a long-term project,” he asserted. “At that time, we were concerned only with enrollment.” Importantly, the “Vietnamese were too.” Providing a socialist education for everyone was “a govern-ment ‘number one’ priority.”61
The former official was unable, or perhaps unwilling, to account for the motivation behind the regime’s emphasis on the quantitative ex-pansion of the education system. It is abundantly clear, however, that le-gitimizing its socialist state was at its core. In its statement of educational goals and needs for 1980/1981, the ministry demonstrated an awareness of the crisis of quality, noting that maintaining quality in education was
“a serious problem.”62Despite an awareness of the problem, and despite a policy emphasis on improvements in educational quality, it continued to base the project of building a new socialist society on the rapid ex-pansion of educational provision. The project, as the years that followed were to unquestionably demonstrate, was a failure.