In Cambodia, nobody can be perfect

Cambodian’s have accepted the notion that “nobody is perfect” to such an extent that they do not even have the word “perfect” in their language. You can say that something was good, very good or even extremely good. But you cannot say that it was perfect.

We learn our mother tongue without thinking about the rules that structure our language; we follow the rules almost naturally. When learning a language, not only do you have to learn new vocabulary, you also have to learn new rules. Rules that sometimes can seem strange.

Cambodians pluralise words in a totally different way than in the English language. For instance, we would add a ‘s’ onto the end of the word such as: “he owns expensive cars”. In Khmer, you would say the word for expensive twice to indicate that there is more than one expensive car, so the sentence would be structured as: “he owns cars expensive expensive.”

Cambodians also seem to be so far advanced in eradicating gender bias that they do not even have different words for he/she, him/her or his/hers. The same word is used for them all. When I was trying to describe to colleagues that I was going to visit a friend and her wife in Viet Nam, it took minutes of confused sentences before they understand that:

1. my friend was a female (not helped by platonic friendships with the opposite sex being abnormal here)
2. my female friend was married to another female (again, a scenario not that common in Cambodia)

Such experiences have opened my eyes to the deficiencies that languages can have. In that conversation, understanding was made more difficult because the language cannot differentiate between she and he. Languages enable us to communicate concepts but if we cannot even communicate the concept of perfection, can that concept even exist?

I remember learning, rather sceptically, about how language can restrict our knowledge, but now I have seen how this can happen and how it is harming the education of Cambodian children.

In Khmer, they do not have a word for a lesson or period, such as a period of maths in school. Instead they use the phrase “study hour”. However, in Cambodian schools, a study hour is not the same as an hour. In primary schools, a study hour is forty minutes and in secondary schools it is fifty minutes.

At this point, I would like you to pause, ensure that you have understood the paragraph above and then consider this question: if a primary school child has five study hours in a day, how many (normal) hours does that child study for?

If you can answer that question correctly, then you are doing better than one of the Secretaries of State for Education in Cambodia, and indeed a host of senior directors in the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport.

In the Cambodian national curriculum for primary education, there are 950 study hours per year. If a study hour equals 40 minutes, then this means that there are 633 hours and 20 minutes in a school year, which is one of the lowest in the world and below the internationally expected 800 – 1000 hours per school year.

However, because the concept of a study hour equalling only 40 minutes has not been grasped, the Cambodian government reports internationally that there are 950+ hours in a school year. At a meeting with the top people from the Ministry of Education last week, I heard (yet again) that Cambodia compares well to other countries.

Now that I see how the structure of Khmer affects their knowledge and understanding, I wonder how the structure of English has affected my own knowledge and understanding.

Gordon

Cambodia defies Gladwell's outliers

My eldest nephew was born in February so he could have started school either aged 4 and a half or five and a half. My sister, intuitively knowing what Malcolm Gladwell explained his in book 'Outliers', decide that he would start when he was 5 and a half.

Gladwell explained that in Canada people born at the start of the year are more likely to become professional ice hockey players than people born at the end of the year. When children are young, say 8 years old, the 11 month difference between being born in January and in December can create large physical advantages. The older kids are bigger and stronger and catch the eye of the coaches, who in turn provide more and better coaching. This makes the kids born at the start of the year, bigger, stronger and more skilled and makes them much more likely to be come professional ice hockey players. 

The NGO that I'm working with recently tested 1000 children in each grade 4, 5 and 6 in language and maths. As part of this, we also collected data on children's ages. In grade 4, children should be age 9, possibly 10 depending on what month they were born in; in grade 5, age 10, possibly 11; and in grade 6, age 11, possibly 12. However, off all 3000 children, only 30% were in the grade that corresponds to their age - and that includes all of the children who could be a year older because of the month that they were born in.

A school in Kampot province

In Cambodia, there are large problems with children enrolling in grade 1 already older than age 6 which is the age at which they should enrol. In 2011/12, 31.5% of all children starting grade 1 were older than 6. It is also common for many children to repeat grades which leads to so many children being overage.

In contrast to ice hockey, where older children enjoy physical benefits that assist them, children enrolling late experience mental deficiencies which harm their education. Our tests showed that overage children did worse than children of the "correct" age, and that the older you were, the worse you did on the tests. Starting school late leads to poorer educational attainment. 

She was laughing at my Khmer language skills

The overnight guard who works 6pm until 6am at the apartments across from us plucked up the courage to speak English to me the other day. He told me that during the day he went to school and that he was in grade 10. He is 24, which is one year older than the woman my research colleague met last week, who dropped out of grade 7 to get married. In Cambodia, these two probably aren't even outliers. 

Gordon

Take a step into my office

So, six months in and there's not really been much said about what we do. There's been a few pics of some nice places in Cambodia, the odd commentary on some issues facing the people here and a brief discourse on beer. But since so many people raised funds and donated money for us to come to Cambodia, I feel that I should at least give you a hint as to what I'm doing.

Come on in to my office. That's a mango tree you can see the trunk of by the way. 

NGO Education Partnership (NEP) is the association body for educational NGOs working in Cambodia. Their two primary goals are to represent the sector in policy discussions with government and to support NGOs by providing training, supporting cooperation and sharing information and best practice.

My role is to build the capacity of NEP to be successful in these goals, and specifically in terms of advocacy and fundraising ability. The key bit in that sentence is "build capacity". To help NEP achieve success, I'm not meant to lead people, direct work, or even do anything by myself in isolation. I'm meant to use my skills to make the people of NEP create that success themselves.

Me and Rithy, CEO of NEP. Constantly amazes me about how much he knows about things like Thatcher, Princess Diana, Falklands War, and English comics of course (see previous blog).

Mostly, I do this by sitting down with staff and working with them on their tasks and how to plan, implement and evaluate their work on these tasks. And because I am not meant to simply tell them what to do but actually to help them work out what to do for themselves, I basically ask a lot of questions. You know how 8 years olds go through phases of replying to every answer with "why?", well I'm kind of employing the same tactic.

I ask question after question to push them to think about what they are doing, why they are doing it and whether it will help them achieve what they want to. The one thing I try not to do is offer my opinion, which must be infuriating. It's also pretty hard for me!

Imagine having every question answered by a question, and then a guy who is meant to be there because is he knowledgeable about a subject refusing to give his opinion. I think it may be because they cannot reach up to my face that has saved me from a punch in the face. Even I want to punch me sometimes.

The room where it all happens - my desk in the far right corner, and Rithy's desk on the left. I broke one of the blue plastic chairs in my first month. Never learnt not to swing on chairs. 

However, the staff at NEP show a real willingness to work with me and in doing things this way, which I hope will mean that after 2 years they will not need another me, nor think that they do.

At our fundraising quiz/goodbye party, one of Claire's friends (mine too but you know what I mean) called Alasdair (not you Kipper) and I were chatting about the low enrolment rate in secondary school (35%) and that it would be a great achievement if after 2 years I had helped push that up a bit. But now, I'm realising that the real measure of success will be if it's the Cambodian staff of NEP who are pushing that up for years to come after I've gone home.

Every Friday at 4:30pm - party time! All the staff eat together with two different people each week responsible for choosing and buying the food. I'm going to hunt a haggis for them soon. 

I will leave Claire to explain how she's getting on as a newly found health expert who moonlights as a MC for Embassy receptions.
Take care
Gordon