The World's Mary Kay Magistad reports that only a third of Cambodia's population is fully literate. The Cambodian government blames the brutal reign of the Khmer Rouge. Others blame current government corruption.
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LISA MULLINS: I'm Lisa Mullins, and this is The World. It's been said that literacy is basic to the survival of a democracy. Well, in that regard, Cambodia's young democracy could use some help. Just 37 percent of the population is fully literate, and only 3 percent of teachers have ever gone to college. Most didn't get past middle school. Some of this is the legacy of war – three decades of war, plus the grisly reign of the Khmer Rouge. But critics lay some of the blame at the feet of the current government. They say it's grossly under funding education and allowing a system riddled with corruption. The World's Mary Kay Magistad visited the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh.
MARY KAY MAGISTAD: Chatamuk School in Phnom Penh is one of the better schools in the country. The kids are well dressed, the classrooms basic but clean. But even here, a veteran primary schoolteacher like Hou Sokim, with 30 years experience, gets a salary of just $40 dollars a month. That's about one-tenth of what she and her husband need to live. To make ends meet, she says, she has to charge students for extra classes in the afternoon – and she also tutors a few students one-on-one, in the evenings. That tutoring alone earns her four times more than the school pays her.
HOU SOKIM: Of course I need a good salary, so that I have enough to support my living. And if the government can do so, it will make my life easier. I'm not so tired or exhausted after the extra class.
MAGISTAD: Why do you think they pay teachers so little?
SOKIM: I heard the Prime Minister said we don't have enough to pay for the teachers' salaries or the salaries of the workers in the country.
MAGISTAD: And yet, there is money for the Prime Minister, Hun Sen, and other senior members of government to build themselves huge private villas and live the good life. Even middle-ranking civil servants don't do badly.
DONALD BOWSER: A significant portion of civil servants drive cars that the average American wouldn't be able to drive. I don't know many junior civil servants within any public service in the West who are able to drive Lexuses, Porsche Cayans, Cadillac Escalades.
MAGISTAD: Donald Bowser heads the American aid agency PACT's anti-corruption program in Phnom Penh.
BOWSER: So while the official salary is $200 dollars a month here in some of the ministries, they seem to have a much higher degree of wealth that is beyond their official salaries. This is one of the reasons why perceptions of corruption are so high in Cambodia.
MAGISTAD: The watchdog Transparency International ranked Cambodia 166 out of 180 countries on last year's Corruption Perceptions Index. That ties it with Zimbabwe. Bowser says that low ranking makes corruption sound worse than it is, but there's no doubt it is systemic in Cambodia. It's made worse by the fact that government workers, including police, judges, and teachers, are paid such low wages that they have to find income elsewhere to survive. Rong Chuun, the president of the Cambodian Independent Teachers Association, has been leading a push for the government to give teachers a living wage.
RONG CHUUN: I think the government has the money and capacity to increase salaries for teachers, but it doesn't have the will. Maybe if there were less corruption, the government could increase teachers' salaries. I think they deliberately don't increase the salaries of teachers because they want the teachers to be in this situation, so the government can easily control them.
MAGISTAD: That is, if everyone's on the take, because they have to teach extra classes or charge extra fees to make a living, then it's hard for anyone to point fingers at anyone else. Of course, some teachers take the money-making possibilities to extremes, says PACT's Donald Bowser.
BOWSER: Even students who study well are sometimes requested to pay for good results on their exams. And, in fact, I was just out doing focus groups, and one of our participants said, “You know, I don't understand it. My son studies really hard and yet can never get a good grade.â€
MAGISTAD: So the students who are too poor to pay don't necessarily advance – if they can afford to go to school at all – while a bad student who has means could pay his way right through to becoming a surgeon, without having a clue what he's doing. That's one hazard of what's happening in Cambodia's education system. The head of the Cambodian Independent Teachers' Association, Rong Chuun, lists others:
CHUUN: Because of all the extra classes and tutorials they have to give to earn enough money, teachers don't have the time and energy to provide a good education to students during normal class hours. And then these students don't learn how to think or how to participate in society, and society suffers. Also, the fact that teachers have to charge extra fees and hold extra classes just to earn a living – people lose their respect for the teachers, and teachers aren't valued as much in society as they used to be.
MAGISTAD: Rong Chhun remembers a time before the Khmer Rouge came to power in the mid-70s and killed most of Cambodia's teachers and other intellectuals. He says the education he got was a good one, and back then a teacher could support an extended family on his or her salary. Now, teachers and schools have to scrounge for cash. According to one study, families pay 75 percent of the costs of primary schooling. The government pays just 13 percent, one of the lowest government contributions toward primary education in the world. And yet, when Prime Minister Hun Sen speaks to international conferences, like this recent one on the Asian economy, he boasts about his government's achievements, about Cambodia's 9 percent economic growth last year – before the economic crisis slowed it down. The idea that future growth may depend on how the next generation is educated doesn't seem to have sunk in. For The World, I'm Mary Kay Magistad, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
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