Documentation Center of Cambodia

 

GENOCIDE EDUCATION IN CAMBODIA
The Teaching of “A History of Democratic Kampuchea (1975-1979)

 

Training for University Lecturers across Cambodia

 Institute of Technology of Cambodia

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

July 25, 2011

 

Photo by: Socheat Nhean, Serey Kith, Terith Chy, Piseth Phat and Sophat Mam

From July 25 to 27, 2011, DC-Cam hold its first-ever university lecturer training with approximately 150 lecturers and professors. In all, over the next two years, DC-Cam will train foundation year lecturers at nearly 200 higher education institutions. These new initiatives are part of the ongoing genocide education project run by DC- Cam, the Accreditation Committee of Cambodia (ACC), and the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sport's (MoEYS), which seeks to implement genocide education curriculum in all public Cambodian high schools by 2013. In order to teach this complex, and at times, sensitive history, teachers must first be educated in the history as well as in methodology of how to grapple with enormous tragedies. To date, DC- Cam and MoEYS have trained over 1,000 history teachers; in 2011, they will train an additional 1,000 teachers on such subjects as morality and literature. They have also distributed over 500,000 Democratic Kampuchea textbooks with the goal of reaching one million.

 

The Cambodian government's new mandate will affect 94 universities in Cambodia (21 state universities and private universities) and hundreds of thousands of students. Through their studies, university students will be expected to understand DK history through practices of analyzing and evaluating DK ideology and policies; valuing survivors' knowledge and comparing notes with their elders; identifying the root causes of genocide; examining state terror in the lead-up to the killings; evaluating the current effects on the Cambodian society; fostering compassion, empathy and reconciliation; and thinking critically about how to prevent future mass atrocities in Cambodia and the rest of the world.