MoEYS Oks Cambodia’s Genocide History in School Curriculum

Source: Rasmei Kampuchea
By: Layum
Posted date: 07-05-2008

Phnom Penh: The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport have approved of including the study of the genocide history of Cambodia in the ministry’s school curriculum.

The decision has been made in response to an official request by Documentation Center of Cambodia Director Youk Chhang.

“The study of the history of Democratic Kampuchea, especially the Khmer Rouge’s genocide, is significantly important as the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport is also preparing a curriculum to promote the general knowledge,” said Im Sithy, Secretary of State for the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport, in a letter no. 1573, dated 30 April 2008, adding that the ministry favored of the four points raised in the request.

It should be recalled that on March 6, 2008 Youk Chhang, director of the DC-Cam, submitted an official letter to the MoEYS to inform the ministry of his center’s project relating to the study of the genocide in Cambodia. The project has come to its second stage after the publication of the book, A History of Democratic Kampuchea 1975-1979.

Youk Chhang claimed that there were four tasks in the second stage: (1) preparing a teacher’s guide for teachers who teach Democratic Kampuchea history, (2) organizing a workshop to discuss with the teachers on this history book, (3) distributing Democratic Kampuchea history textbooks to students, and (4) translating the book into French, Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese and Thai.

Youk Chhang also claimed that the DC-Cam had already published another book, Buddhism Under Pol Pot. He hopes that the MoEYS will help to make the project successful and cooperate to hold a workshop on this issue.

Some primary, secondary and high school teachers told Rasmei Kampuchea on May 6 that they welcomed and supported the MoEYS’s decision to include the study of Cambodia’s genocide history, especially the study of the Khmer Rouge regime, in the school curriculum.
“History is a real science, if we talk about reality,” they said, “We should take good points and abandon or modify the bad ones.”

Unofficial Translation-Extracted from Rasmei Kampuchea, vol. 16, #4582, Wednesday, May 07, 2008.

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