Educational System in Cambodia

by: 00762

Education is very important aspect for the human being and people around the world give the value to it; however, in some part of Cambodia is still lack of educational system for several reasons.

First of all, it is poor of school material such as: text books in the library for students read or doing research and also it is poor of experimental material, in this case if students want to experiment something, they need to pay their own money to buy the material but if they do not have enough money, they can not do that.

Second, the school is poor of qualification teachers. Some teachers do not have teaching methodology but they have been chosen to teach. For example, according to director of Chipou Primary School (Svay Rieng, Cambodia) said that "Because of low of teachers' salary so we need to choose high school graduated students."

Third, teachers do the corruption. Because of low salary, so the teachers need to sell their key answers exam to the students so they can pass the exam easily. Moreover, students may use their money to buy their absences. 

Finally, when the students graduated from their school, almost they got nothing therefore Cambodia is still poor of human resources.

Internet Makes Life Easier

By   Mary Pharida

People use many ways for communication each other from one place to another place. In previous time, people used letter to contact from place to place. Nowadays, people are using the internet to communicate and do many other things. Most of the information has sent through the internet. It is no matter how far you are from each other, internet can makes keep in touch with your people.

Talking Through Internet

People like to communicate with each other. They often spend much time on phone. Instead of spending so much money on phone, we can communicate through the internet. For example, Skype is one of the popular messenger that let people call each other for free. Moreover, we can see each other via Skype video calling. This would be the benefit for who like to keep contact with their people.

Mailing Around the World 

In long time ago, people took so much time to send their mail from place to place. Nowadays, people spend less than 5 minutes to send their mail via email. It saves so much time and money. Moreover, we can get thing done faster than people did in previous time.

College Life

         Almost every student in college has an assignment to do. In last centurie, Students have to go to library to do the research for information. However, with the internet, students just sit in front of computer and log on the internet, then there will be a huge library out there. It stores many information around the world.

In brief, the internet makes distance shorter by saving time to communicate from place to place. This can keep people in touch and make thing done and faster than before.

Fear of Loneliness

After I watched the "Miss Representation" video, I think that the reason a lot of women spend a lot of money on cosmetic is because they were afraid of loneliness.  The women developed the ideal of who they are supposed to be in people’s head, men in particular, a skinny and thin woman with nice clothes and makeup.  By doing that, they were trying to impress rather than express themselves, and I think they were scared of being lonely. Because they had the idea of trying to impress, I think they were acting out the ideal person that they thought their society wanted them to be, which had nothing to do with who they really are.  I think everybody is scared of being lonely, but being who a person should be not being who he or she really is because that person does not want to be alone is a mistake.  If a person is acting out trying to impress others, that person does not show the real him or her to others, so how could other people know that person? And if they are not known, how could they expect others to really understand and love them as who they are so that they will not be lonely? Of course, it is tough to be who a person truly is.  People might say, “Agh, I don’t like you!” So what? If a person tries to change for other people to love them, he or she might be loved, but they will not be loved as who they are.  Somehow, they will still end up lonely because they are afraid of being lonely. Instead, one should express who they are to other people, so people will get to know them and love them.  All in all, I believe that the issue showed that there was insecurity in women because of the influence of society through media on how a woman should be, and the mentality of being who one should be instead of being who they really are has a huge effect on people’s behavior and thought which shapes the society, tradition and culture.  As a result, if a person is really afraid of being lonely or rejected, one has to simply be who they are at all times, or they will be lonely, and nobody will ever get to know them.    

ID# 1833

Arranged Marriage in India

After I watched a video, Arranged Marriage Is Not Forced Marriage, on The CNN Freedom Project, I think culture of India has change from days to days, but it is depend on family situations. Some normal families which be able to send their children to university, they participated in society, so they understand how important of freedom; they are not forced their children to marriage to person who they don’t prefer. Parents just arranged marriage, but the last decision is depend on themselves. For example, Priyank and Aditya Anand were not a love marriage. At beginning, their parents celebrated a party for them to recognize each other. Then, the parents said that just understand each other first before both of you decide to marry or not.  In this case, I think sometimes, arranged marriage is not a bad way for some people who are hard to find their lover or their lover is not as good as what they expected. Thus, why do not they accept arranged marriage? However, most of poor Indian families, they carry out too much on their custom and culture without considering about human right.  For instance, Meena had been forced to marry to a black man, who she never meet, by her father and grandfather when she was only 14 years old. They threatened her that if she does not marry him, they will poisoned themselves. At that time, she did not know what marriage really means and what happen after marriage. After 2 weeks, she escaped and moved to live with her aunt, but her father always call and ask her to be back to live with her husband. He does not care how hard and how hurt that Meena receive from that family. Only one thing that he cares is his fame, not his daughter life. I know each country has their own culture I cannot judge that their culture is right or wrong, but they should consider about their culture because some are unethical.

By:    00141

Corruption Hurts Everyone

Say No To Corruption

Corruption hurts everyone. It deepens poverty. It distorts social and economic development, erodes the provision of essential public services and undermines democracy. Instead of fair competition based on price, quality and innovation, corruption leads to competitive bribery. This harms trade and deters new investment. And also it is a universal challenge. No country is free from it. Cultural gift-giving traditions vary widely, but there is no country where the people consider it right for public officials to abuse their positions for private gain. 

Corruption is the abuse of public office for private gain. It means that:

• Decisions are taken not for the public benefit, but to serve private interests.

• High-cost, overly complex and prestigious projects are favored over cost-efficient development projects making use of the most relevant technology.

• A private levy is imposed on public investment which may rise to as much as thirty percent of the cost of the project. Such inflated costs often add to the national debt.

• The environment is threatened. When environmental protection agencies are corrupt the very foundations of sustainable human development are eroded.

• Human rights abuse flourishes. As corruption increases, regimes become more secretive, less tolerant of dissent and more fearful of the loss of power. Basic social and economic rights like access to medical care, education, adequate shelter and good water are threatened.

Sok Sovannarith

ID#:  01956

Things that surprised me by Khut Sey

Hello everyone. I read an article in the Cambodia Daily.  I was surprised to know that Senate President Chea Sim from the ruling party has 42 advisers. I don't understand why he needs so many advisers. According to historian and former politcian Son Suobert, all of the advisers are paid advisers and they are using the national budget to pay wages for those advisers.
One more thing, last week I went to a village in a rural area in Kompong Thom province. I was surprised and upset by what I was told. People there told me that in their village , there are two nurses. During the rainy season, people often get ill and the two nurses go from house to house treating the sick in the village. It seems that they have good, well paid jobs despite the fact that they have never been to university to study medicine. The people have to pay them a lot of money to have them come to their houses to treat a sick member of their family. A man who gets ill at least two or three times a year told me that the last time he was ill was two months ago and that it cost him a fortune to buy treatment from one of the nurses. He said he got  injection three times and took some pills and it cost him nearly $50.

I also have one more story that surprised me. I was so surprised to know that there are 552 kinds of birds in Cambodia. I was watching a game show called IN THE WALL on CTN when a question came up for the competitors. The question was" How many kinds of birds are there in Cambodia" 

This is last news that made me surprised. I was surprised that there used to be 35 fishing lots on the Tonle Sap lake. I believe that those fishing lots adversely affected the subsistence fishing. It was good that the government permanently canceled all the 35 fishing lots and created conservation areas.