Responsible Leadership មគ្គុទេសន៍ភាពប្រកបដោយទំនួលខុសត្រូវ

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Posted by Chanroeun Pa

Cambodian New Traffic Law”ច្បាប់ចរាចរណ៍ថ្មី”

Personally, I hope that this new law will make life a bit safer, but this can be effective unless everyone has also “Soft-Law”, “Traffic Ethics” or “High Conscience”. Safety must begin at home….

To download , please click following links

Cambodian New Traffic Law- Khmer Version “ច្បាប់ចរាចរណ៍ថ្មី” (PDF File)

Cambodian New Traffic Law- English Version “ច្បាប់ចរាចរណ៍ថ្មី” (PDF File)

Posted by Chanroeun Pa

Doing and Teaching Philosophy in the Cambodian Context- ការធ្វើនិងការបង្រៀនទស្សនវិជ្ជា នៅក្នុងបរិបទប្រទេសកម្ពុជា

By

Chanroeun PA, MA Ph.

Email: chanroeunkh@gmail.com

A Paper presented in the World Philosophy Day

15-18 November 2006, Rabat, Morocco

 

(Draft Only)

 

I. An Overview

Cambodia is one of the oldest nations in Asia. It is the land of cultural heritage and civilization. During the Angkor Period (802-1431 A.D), it was the Golden Age of Cambodia. The temples in that era represent the great civilization and thoughts. Yet after that period, the country faced civil wars and suffered a lot from wars with her neighbors for long time. From 1431 to 1863, the education in Cambodia survived through Buddhist temple and community supported school, even in the French colonization period (1863-1953). From 1960-1975, philosophy was taught in the university, Royal Khmer University, as a course, but not as a major subject. Philosophy was also taught in the final year of high school. It covered the brief history of both Easter and Western Philosophy and some major concepts.

Yet, schools, university were closed during the Pol Pot regime (1975-1979). After the fall of Pol Pot regime in 1979, the university was reopened. Since the new government followed the communist ideology, the priority of teaching philosophy in that time was Marxist and Leninist Philosophy. Some courses such as Philosophy of dialectic materialism, Political Economy and Scientific Communism were included in the curriculum at that time. In 1993 after the Cambodia changed from Communist government to Constitutional Monarchy, the Philosophy Department opened its window to the West. With the financial and technical support from an NGO called “New Humanity” from Italy, in 1994 the curriculum was updated by including both Western and Eastern Philosophy and lecturers also received further training and education.

Later, the curriculum has been updated every four years. There in only one Philosophy Department, Royal University of Phnom Penh, in Cambodia. Yet, from 2005 the Accreditation Committee of Cambodia (ACC), Ministry of Education, required all first year university students (non-philosophy major) to take at least one course in Philosophy.

II. Teaching Philosophy in Cambodian

Teaching and doing philosophy are two different things. The outcome from philosophical research or philosophizing can enrich the teaching. Yet, many teachers of philosophy pay more attention on teaching rather than doing philosophy outside of the classroom. The point is poverty. Teachers are poorly compensated in Cambodia; therefore, many teachers need do get another job outside of the campus for survival.

III. The Challenges of Teaching Philosophy in Cambodia

There are two obstacles for Philosophy Education in Cambodia

(1) Difficulties in teaching philosophy

- Lack of teaching materials in Khmer

- The obstacle of language

- The obstacle to raise some issues relevant to politics, culture, and history

- The obstacle for those who teach philosophy but don’t do philosophy. This results in many students of philosophy who getting the preparation for philosophizing without having the ground in dealing with philosophical problems in a creative manner.

(2) Obstacles to the practices of philosophy

- The nature of philosophy is controversial and abstract

- Majoring in Philosophy does not guarantee a good job after college

- Some people disvalue and prejudice philosophy because they don’t really understand clearly philosophy what philosophy is especially it is also the result of the long civil war that communist ideology was used as crucial philosophy at that time.

To solve this problems philosophy should be taught in a very simple way and need to include both theories and practices. In short, how philosophy is being taught in Cambodia? The answer is depending on the teachers. One can teach philosophy as a subject matter to be memorized. Or one can also teach it to encourage reflection and critical thinking. It is critical thinking that helps students to have a better self understanding and the crucial tasks to make them capable to be and to do what they values in life.

IV. Doing Philosophy in the Cambodia Context

Etymologically, philosophy means the search for or loves of wisdom.

+ Is there Cambodian (Khmer) Philosophy?

+ What is Khmer Philosophy?

There are attempts to answer these questions among the philosophy scholars in Cambodia and the discussion is still going on. To me, the answer to the above questions is “yes” and “no” because there has never been in our academic tradition a “Khmer Philosophy” in the same one speaks of “Chinese Philosophy” or “Japanese Philosophy” or “Indian Philosophy”. And there nobody does philosophy by intently specifying it to be a philosophy of his or her own country.

As one of the oldest nations in Asia, Cambodia has originally rich heritage of her own culture. And that culture has been transformed from generation to generation. Base on this reality, there are four sources in searching for Khmer Philosophy:

 

 

(1). The first source is the folklore, the myths, epics, proverb, and many forms of versed debate in Khmer culture that have survived to this day.

(2) The second sources is language: Khmer language is a root of the cultural value. The language determines the moral conduct, social order and the way of thinking

(3) The third source is the religious experiences of Cambodians: the teaching of the Buddha and the practice of Buddhism in Cambodia (the combination of Khmer Traditional religion “the belief in Nak Ta”, the Theravada Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism, and Brahmanism)

(4) The fourth source is the social ethics, norms and the way of life. This open one’s consciousness to many ethical issues in the country: oppression, democratization, rights and responsibility, civil society, poverty and so on.

V. Conclusion

Philosophy plays very important role in human resources development in Cambodia. It helps to challenge people to shape their world and make people to be and to do what they values in their lives. The challenge of teaching Philosophy is to provide the academic capability to form a generations of leaders and citizens who can adjust their lives in the changing world. Recently poverty is a big challenge to many of our philosophy professors in Cambodia. Yet, it is our task to overcome this obstacle for a better future; therefore we need to:

(1) Promote learning and teaching philosophy in all level in order to train the next generation to become critical and ethical people;

(2) Put our resources together in order to train the next generation of philosophy professors;

(3) Popularize the philosophical insights by translating, teaching and writing in Cambodian language (Khmer);

(4) Search for our authentic ways of life and thoughts (Khmer Philosophy) which can be served as the bacon of light for the national reconstruction process;

(5) Learn and offer different courses: Khmer Philosophy, Eastern Philosophy, and Western Philosophy in order to assist students to comprehend different dimension of thoughts;

(6) Interact more often with international seminars, conferences and scholars in order to learn and share the information for the sake of cooperation, peace and development.

Our task as philosophers is to play the roles as an educator in encouraging the liberal education to direct the mind and the heart of young citizens and future leaders towards greater concerns and compassion for society.

_________________

 

The Roles of Philosophy in War and Peace.​ទួនាទីទស្សនវិជ្ជានៅក្នុងសង្រ្គាម និងសន្តិភាព

By

Chanroeun PA, MA Ph.

A Paper presented in the World Philosophy Day, 17-18 November 2006, Rabat, Morocco

(Draft)

“If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.”

                                                  ​- Mahatma Gandhi

1. Introduction

People all over the world desire peace, law and order, and security form of life, but things are happening the other ways round. There is restlessness and nameless unquiet flows at the heart and hands of humanity. In the age of modernization and globalization, science and technology have played a very important role in producing unlimited wealth, so that with a judicious management, there would be enough good things of life for all humans.

On the other hand, man continues to live in indescribable suffering, degradation, poverty, social injustice, and dehumanization. There are conflict and violence everywhere both in the heart and hands of humankind due to the inequality, misunderstanding, and injustice in the society and so forth. The result of these problems can be seen in one form or another in every corner of the world in rich and poor countries alike.

Man becomes not only the victim of the unpreventable; for example, natural disasters, but also the victims of man himself. Therefore, what is the meaning of life? Is there any way to solve these life obstacles in order to make this world more peaceful and a better place to live in?

 

2. What is Peace?

In a narrow sense, peace has been understood as the absence of war and conflict. However, this definition is not sufficient. In a dynamic sense, peace means the creative elimination of the causes of conflicts and violence and the promotion of human dignity and humanization.

Peace requires harmony within a person, harmony between human beings, harmony between human beings and nature, and the harmony between human beings and the ultimate source of life. Peace does not happen spontaneously, we will have to build and maintain it. There are some causes, which obstruct the way to peace such as:

​​​ (1) Culture: pride in one’s heart, closed culture;

(2) Religion: religious intolerance, hatred, misunderstanding, lack of proper religious education;

(3) Politics: system of balance of terror based on nuclear arms race, physical forces or military conflict, unjust oppressive government, aggressiveness, lust of power;

(4) Economics: development, structures of economic exploitation, poverty, disparity, lack of opportunities for education, jobs and service;

(5) Historical Cause: extremist nationalism;

(6) Information Explosion: people are conditioned by mass medias–papers, journals, books, radio, television, internet and so on,meaning to say some information is not what people should know, but what some other want people to know for the sake of their interests;

(7) Ethnicity: discrimination, racism;

(8) Nature: environmental degradation, dwelling natural resources, natural disasters and so on.

 

3. What Are the Roles of Philosophy?

These major causes of war and conflict grow in the heart of man. Therefore, in order to solve the above problems we have to cultivate peace in the heart of man as well. A Philosopher says: “What we want to put something into a nation put it into her school.” This means that we can promote peace through education because education plays a very important role in shaping the heart and the way of thinking of human person. Hence, philosophy education for peace can also work as a moving force in weaving or building culture of peace from within.

It is necessary for philosophy education to promote universally shared values for the development of peaceful, democratic and pluralistic society such as human rights, democracy, tolerance, non-violence, solidarity, mature understanding, intercultural acknowledgment and so forth. In other words, the goal of philosophy education for peace is to promote the broad and critical understanding of the root causes of all forms of conflicts and violence at all levels no matter it is personal, family, interpersonal, community, society or the world.

 

4. Conclusion

The role of philosophy is not to interpret the world, but also to challenge people to shape their world and provide solutions to make the world to be a better place to live in. Students need to be taught only knowledge and skills, but also values and attitudes especially the respects and love of life.

*******