Mending Broken Glass: Khmer Rouge History Now to be Taught in Cambodia

By Jude | Monday, November 16, 2009 | 8 Comments

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46696650 textbooks ap Mending Broken Glass: Khmer Rouge History Now to be Taught in Cambodia Tuesday, 11 November, students at Sisowath High School received the first copies of a textbook detailing the autogenocide led by the Khmer Rouge regime in the years 1975 – 1978. Published by the Documentation Center of Cambodia, this textbook replaces five lines written on the Pol Pot era in current history books. Due to the changing political climate of the country, teaching about the events during Democratic Kampuchea has been anything but straightforward. With the Khmer Rouge retaining political influence well into the mid-1990s and former cadres occupying government roles, an honest portrayal of this period has been scant and gradually minimized from public education. This textbook comes also with the documentation of testimonies from the on-going Khmer Rouge tribunals conducted some 45 minutes outside of Phnom Penh.

Considering that I had the benefit to take an Asian American Studies course and learn about the genocide, I find it to be an odd privilege to possess this knowledge in light of the release of this textbook. In the United States, many Khmer Americans either seek to hear the stories of their parents, sometimes successful and other times not; or maybe never think to ask because their parents fall silent on why they ever came to the US. Public k-12 education also has not been a reliable institution to learn about a genocide that occurred partly in reaction to a US-supported ruler.

I find it shocking that many young people in Cambodia today do not believe the stories of their elders surrounding the genocide. It only makes more salient the notion of what is the “official record” that is accepted history. Who writes the textbooks, who is left out, who is valorized — such factors have significant impacts on how a generation is raised. Hopefully this textbook will correct a dangerous historical amnesia in Cambodia’s up and coming new leaders. With almost half the population under the age of 20, I believe the imperative of knowing one’s history is even more marked in Cambodia. The author of the textbook expressed, “The young generation has the responsibility to repair this broken glass. They need to understand what happened in their country before they can move forward to build up democracy, peace and reconciliation.”

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Savannah

I am still very frustrated at the way that the Khmer genocide is casted off to a five lined paragraph sub-section of the Vietnam War in all my textbooks since fifth grade...What's even more frustrating is the looks you get when you try to talk about it to a bunch of seventh graders, I know what they mean when they give me looks like "Get over it" or "Stop talking about it!"...You know what? I won't stop talking about it because, although it didn't happen to me, who else is going to educate them? I'm tired of the way kids my age think now...Actually, they don't think about it. It's like since it didn't happend to them, so why should they care?

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Savannah

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kbok

it may seem shocking to other people that kids don't believe their elders when hearing about khmer rouge atrocities, but if your mother told you that soldiers shot at her, pushing her off a mountain and into landmine paths would you believe it?!

i didn't believe it myself until i read about it in a book. sad, but true, and this is part of daily life of being a khmer-american.

btw, thx jude for your posts! i enjoy reading them.

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kbok

i didn't believe it myself until i read about it in a book. sad, but true, and this is part of daily life of being a khmer-american.

btw, thx jude for your posts! i enjoy reading them.

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leslie

Hey Jude! Great job on the article! It was really informative and well written.

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leslie

Hey Jude! Great job on the article! It was really informative and well written.

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Dan

I don't have a lot of knowledge or experiences with anything to do with Cambodia other than the a couple of kind of close Cambodian-American aquantinces that do go back to the country occasionaly. I had no idea that the young people there had such beliefs with regards to their elders or that they make up a large portion of the population.

Thanks for the information.

I kind of wonder though if the authorities delay such information on purpose. I noticed something similar to other societies where people wait a while, almost an entire generation or two before they "begin" showing the glimpse of reality of the past.

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