Berkley Center

Background: As part of the Education and Social Justice Project, undergraduate student Annie Dale interviewed Toi Suiu, director of a village primary school in Battambang, Cambodia, in summer 2013. In this interview (conducted via a translator), he discusses challenges facing the school, collaborating with the nearby Arrupe Center, and his hopes for the students' and school's futures.

What is your job function?

I am a director at the primary school here.

So what do you do here? What are your day-to-day responsibilities?

First, as the director, I need to think of the schedule for all of the teachers and plan when and how they work every week. As a director, there are many jobs and I can not say exactly one job.

But you teach as well?

Yes, I am always teaching.

What grade do you teach?

Grade three and grade two. I teach all subjects.

Did you always want to become a teacher?

I had always wanted to become a teacher. Also, I am always thinking of the children because I was from a poor family. There are many children that cannot get what they need. There are many kids that cannot get an education, so I want to help teachers find children in need so that they can get an education that isn’t too far away from their home.

How many kids do you teach here?

Over 80 students.

What are the lives of the children like? What are their families like?

The children have difficult lives because they are poor and they don’t have an education. There have no food, and there is no place for them. The most important aspect is that the parents do not understand the importance of education. All of the parents wonder what the kids will do if they come to this school. They don’t think about the future. Most of the parents here, almost 95 percent, don’t know how to read and write. They never got to go to school. So far, the teaching is very difficult. The children learn here, but then they go home and get nothing, so when the children come in, we cannot teach them everything. They need help at home, too.

So when they are finished with third grade, do the children continue on to secondary school?

Here it is very hard to go to another [secondary] school. We have thirteen kids in grade three and grade four. Very few, only about 10 percent, go on to secondary school.

And is that because they don’t have access to a secondary school or because their parents don’t want them to?

First of all, there is no school. It is so far. From here, it is fifteen to eighteen kilometers to get to high school, and the secondary school is ten kilometers away. Most of the kids, like 50 percent of them, stop studying because the school is so far and also because there is no support. So most of them stop. From grade four, half of them stop. And here, we only have until grade three, so most of them will not go on to another school. This is a problem.

And when they stop, do they work for their family?

Yes. When they stop studying, they start working, and most of them will be in the fields; however, many of them will also go to the border with Thailand. There, they will go to the places that farm corn, potatoes, and other crops to find work. They will go to Thailand for a few months to work, and they must leave school.

The Arrupe Center has built a new and more accessible school for these children. How different is the school now from before?

First, the biggest difference is that the old school did not attract the kids. Second, the transportation was insufficient. During the rainy season, the children would have to swim through the water to get to the school. Some of the kids could not swim, so they didn’t go to school. After the new school was built, it was able to attract more children, and more kids started coming to school.

In what way does the Arrupe center continue to help the school?

First, it helps the kids come to school. Second, it gives materials to all of the kids in the school.

And how does the government help the school?

Actually, the government does not help the school with anything except for the teachers’ salaries. The school is too new and too underdeveloped. This is very common in Cambodia. The government won’t pay attention to the school until it is more visible. Only then will they see it and see where they can help. Only then do they start to give funds.

How many students went to school here before the building was rebuilt?

Only 54 students attended school here, and if the number of students at a school is low, the government doesn’t care about the school.

Now that the school is being built up, is there more support from the community?

Yes, more than before.

If you, as the director of this school, had more funding, what would you improve?

Now all the parents in the community are asking to have grade one through grade six. They want more grades here to make it easier for the children to go to school. I have meetings with the parents, and they say that if they had secondary school here, they would support the kids, but they cannot support the kids to go far outside of the village. The next step is to open a new school here with more grades. If we do grade five and grade six here, we could even go to grades seven through nine.

So if you went to grade six, the government would give more funding?

Yes, then we could fund even a high school. You would cut down on the kids’ travel time, and more children would come to school.

How different is a rural school like this one than a school in a bigger city?

Very different. The schools in the city have more teachers and more offices to report to. Here, we cannot be as fast as they are in the city. The most important factor is that in rural villages like this one, we don’t have any rooms for children to learn in. There is no space for them to go to school if there are no schools built. Also, no teachers want to live here.

What is one goal you have for the children you teach here?

My main goal is for the children to at least finish primary school and go to secondary school.