Confronting Cambodia's history

Last updated 10/05/2012  

By PETRA FINER-SOUTH 

TARANAKI STAR, New Zealand 

Walking the eerie, echoing halls of a Cambodian prison is an experience Emma Tosland will never forget.

She said it was even more disturbing than visiting the killing fields, charred remains of a burnt town or mass graves that she also saw while on a three-week school excursion to Cambodia last month.

"Just hearing about it and reading about it, it's not as intense as being there," Emma said. "When you just see photos, you don't get a sense of what the mood and tension was like."

Emma, Sheena Collis and Kain Nixon are three Hawera High School students who travelled to Cambodia in a group of 23 last month. They said the trip would help put their studies on the Cambodian atrocities of the Pol Pot era into perspective.

Teacher in charge of history Ricardo Pintor said overseas excursions were becoming a more common practice in high schools.

"It's better to have hands-on history," Mr Pintor said. "It's got more meaning for the students. History's not about text books any more."

He hopes the trip will be repeated for future history classes from the school.

"It's quite a cheap country to travel to. If we can get good fundraising events we'll go again. It was definitely worthwhile."

While Mr Pintor said it was not quite the intrepid journey it might sound; there were plenty of creature comforts and it had made the students appreciate their home more.

Sheena said, "It's so clean here."