The devil is in the detail

Happy Birthday to Charles from 27 assorted Cambodian teachers, Genevieve, and one mother who is sorry not to be going out to dinner with you.

Education Cambodian style
Below is a list of the principles of Cambodian education, as far as I can tell, based on at least two days experience.

• The better the student the more details they remember. The more details they remember the better the student.
• All questions should be answered in as much detail as possible all the time.
• There is no such thing as synthesising information and discussing the idea, because the information itself is the important thing.
• Penmanship is a matter of national pride.
• The reasons/motivations/or connections between the actions are not important, what is important is the order of the events.
• Everything needs to be a process. A three step process is good. All lesson plans have five steps.

So, they understand things like "Think, Pair, Share" or "read, discuss, write" etc. They cope really well when we enumerate our pedagogy in some sort of systematic way. When we refer back to whatever system we have taught earlier they like it. They like it even more when we revise what we have learnt in terms of the system we just made up. We are learning.

Today, three young Cambodian teachers joined us to work as teacher trainers. We were told that they are Cambodia's best and brightest. One was a bit laid back, they other two were brilliant. We showed them our plan, they understood the worksheets and, in one very brief conversation could see the concepts we were trying to teach. They jumped up and helped. They wrote on the board in Khmer while we were teaching, they helped the translator, they gave us useful feedback. After about an hour, we just handed over to one of them. Not only did he take over our idea, he did it better than we would have. He had the students laughing, reading, writing, talking doing real productive group work, sticking their writing up around the room. It was as if we had slipped into an educational paradise where all the theory works. I had crossed into another dimension; some sort of fantasy teacher training film perhaps.

Off to University
We had lunch with our translator, then went and taught his ESL class at university. His students were bright, funny, open and interesting. They all asked us questions. Here are a few.
1. What sports do Australians like?
2. When is the Australian government going to do something to stop racism?
3. What sort of jobs do people do after university?
4. How did the Australian economy fare in the GFC?
5. What do you think of Battambang?
6. What is your opinion of the Cambodian democracy?

We answered carefully, sometimes just by giving observations. Step lightly, think quickly. (By the way, if any one has an answer to question 2, let me know.)