What instruction has to be used for Cambodia?

S K Monoha visits Angkor Wat in 1965.

By S K MONOHA of Cambodia, France

Which instruction ?

On an individual level, the access to education makes it possible to leave poverty and to improve its standard of living.

In a more general way, the education system prepares the future generations to accompany the development by the country. However, in Cambodia, these waitings are not particularly satisfied. The citizen is not aware that its individual participation in the economy by the means of the production, contributes to the total creation of richness. One it him forever known as and especially one forever learned how to him which role to play within the company. Adopted for eighty years, the current education system has achieved an incomplete mission. If it gives an instruction to million men and women, it does not give them the tools in order to use this instruction to create richness. The current system did not know to adapt and especially adapt the old instruction exempted in the pagodas (which corresponded to one era of agriculture) to the modern instruction being used as a basis for the era of industrialization. This era is characterized by the production and the consumption of manufactured goods, industrial and of services. The countries which produce and sell their production are generally rich. Contrary, the countries which do not produce them and buy them are poor. Force is to note that the current instruction does not lead to industrialization.

Thus, of the reforms of education impose themselves. And this necessary handing-over of cause which challenges all the nation must be done in a wide-ranging debate. The following observations are to be taken into account in the research of the answers and the actions to be undertaken: firstly, it is clear that under equal conditions, the young Kampuchean (Cambodian) people emigrated abroad can support the comparison with the young people of the countries developed, on the intellectual level and their capacities of work.

Those which remained in Cambodia have certainly the same potential. Then, the examination of all the countries of planet shows that the developed countries (whose citizens have high wages and incomes) practise an industrial policy with the very active participation of all their citizens. If their level of studies is raised more, they especially were more impregnated of industrial crop which can be summarized by the following words: productivity, creativity, inventiveness, innovation, technology. These concepts are cruelly lacking in Cambodia.

Moreover, the report/ratio “work wages returned” (TSR) from the industrialized countries is much higher than the TSR of the agricultural countries with predominance. The agrarian sector, though fundamental, generates low wages and of limited number. The population of Cambodia will double in the twenty next years. She will pass from 15 million to 30 million inhabitants. With progress of schooling, the 15 future million people “will be informed” and the great majority of them will come to enlarge the number of the current graduates who will turn over never again in the country world. Where are the companies to accommodate them? A rapid examination of the stores, shops, stands of markets through all the country in the cities to the small villages, shows in an obvious way the absence of Cambodian products. Almost the totality of the consumer goods since most sophisticated until simplest, like candies, rods, forks, etc are imported. Cambodia obtained conditions particularly favorable for the export of a long list of products towards several countries. But, except for the sector of the clothes industry, there is not large-thing to export because one cannot produce.

Several billion dollars injected by tourism, the clothes industry, agriculture, or by the assistances and the loans, set out again towards the foreigner in the form of product imports manufactured. The local producers are, either non-existent, or very weak and have market shares in regression, because of the continuous floods of imported foreign products. And that in an general indifference (political, administration, salesmen, consumers). Little became aware that this fact is an enormous shortfall in term of TSR.

The acquisition of know-how and the production of local goods are a key to leave poverty.

Nobody feels concerned. The communication campaigns are insufficient and the vocabulary used is badly included/understood. The mass does not perceive only to leave poverty requires an collective effort. Each one has its role to play. The development policy engaged by the government needs the participation of the individual. The slogan “to support the local production, it is to take part in the national development”, remains timid, abstract and not very percussion.

Impregnation of the industrial crop

It is important initially to render comprehensible that if the others can do it, we can it too.

It is a question of confidence. For that, communication campaigns with large scales are necessary. The best and most effective remainder impregnation since more the young age on the benches of the school. It is advisable for that to reform the education system to learn how to the young people to become citizens hard-working, productive, creative, inventive, and responsible. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. The will is what misses because we are able to produce.

The increase in the purchasing power involves consumption and the latter makes it possible to develop the production in order to continue the satisfaction of the needs.

Thus, to buy Khmer, it is to pay the wages of Cambodian, just like to buy foreign, it is to pay the wages from abroad. To export, it is to take money from abroad to pay the wages of the Cambodian ones. To import is to take money of Cambodian to pay the incomes from abroad. In the modern world, it is clear that the government must sign international agreements and cannot prohibit the imports. On the other hand, the households, the companies, and even the State have sovereignty on their porte-monnaie and their expenditure.

To produce, export and buy Khmer are priority codes of conduct that any citizen should integrate. The Cambodian proverb says it well: “To be informed it is necessary to go to school, to be rich it is necessary to produce”.