Reflections: Teaching Adventures in Cambodia, Taiwan, and Japan

Certainly, many foreign service spouses living abroad, now or then, have shared these same experiences in one way or another. In retrospect, my time with the students in each of the three countries enriched my life and outlook tremendously. I hope my students of those many years ago look upon their experience with me in the same light.

Teaching at the Cambodian Ecole D'Agriculture at Prek Leap outside of the capital of Phnom Penh circa 1957.

(All photos.)

by Florence Jue
American Diplomacy

Cambodia (1957-59)
In the early years of the Foreign Service, the spouse of a diplomat was prohibited from earning a paycheck overseas, but could only volunteer for local charitable activities, to teach, and to assist with embassy’s representational functions. This tradition is now long gone, partly due to the demand for equal opportunity, and partly for gradual recognition of the inequality by the government as it moved forward the 21st century. When I accompanied my husband Stanton to his first overseas post in Cambodia, I was recruited early on to teach English at a local school because I happened to hold a Teaching Certificate from UC/Berkeley. I was surprised to learn that it was an agricultural college for government officials which was located not in the capital but at a rural area nearly an hour from Phnom Penh. This was a challenge of the unknown and wonder; I did not know what to expect.

The school, I was informed, was an institute to train young government officials in various agricultural sectors for the country’s development. It was located southwest of Phnom Penh, the capital, approximately 45 minutes by ferry boat, across the mighty Mekong River near the junction of the Tonle Sap River and then by jeep. An unusual aspect of the Tonle Sap was that it flows in two directions with a portion forming a lake. During the dry season it drains into a lake, one of the largest in Southeast Asia, and during the rainy season it expands into the Mekong.

A few times a week I took the local ferry, riding across the Mekong along with the chickens and the other barnyard population. The school jeep waiting for me was always on time and the Cambodian driver always welcomed me with the friendliest smile. Then we bounced along the unpaved dirt roads, colorful with the sights, sounds and smells of the exotic, tropical, rural countryside dotted with vendors lining the road selling local fruits and vegetables, cooking wares, roadside snacks and other street foods and huge ceramic storage jars serving as village walls, while we slowed down or swerved to avoid the barnyard animals and the children playing about.

Upon arriving at the school I was escorted to a simple outdoor porch type classroom. About 25-30 students in their early 20’s waited eagerly to learn conversational English. They attacked the elementary and basic phrases with great enthusiasm and gusto, drawing large crowds to the classroom. It was a pleasure to see such interest and motivation. A Khmer language magazine carried a story of my work as the “American Ferry Boat Teacher from California.” How can one forget such a unique experience! I was told that some of the students with enough English proficiency were sent to the United States and the Philippines for advanced training. But I never heard from them nor learned of their prospects, for, alas, this was long before the era of the Killing Fields and who knows what had happened to them since then.

When the principal of the American Community School left for another post, I was asked to take over as principal where I also taught the 7th and 8th grades. This was a vastly different environment in contrast to that of the Cambodian agriculture school. Read the rest of the article and see more pictures at The American Diplomacy.