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Correspondence Address: Emily Anderson, International and Intercultural Education, Florida
International University, Modesto A. Maidique Campus, 11200 SW 8th Street, ECS 450 Miami,
FL 33199; Email: emanders@fiu.edu
ISSN: 1911-4788
Volume 12, Issue 2, 215-234, 2018
From Schoolgirls to “Virtuous” Khmer
Women: Interrogating Chbab Srey and
Gender in Cambodian Education Policy
EMILY ANDERSON
Florida International University, USA
KELLY GRACE
Lehigh University, USA
ABSTRACT Chbab Srey (Code of Conduct for Women) is an important piece of Khmer
literature outlining expected behavior for girls and women in Cambodia. Pieces of the
poem are taught in secondary school and interwoven into the educational experiences
of girls and female teachers, yet there is little research on Chbab Srey in education.
Using discourse analysis, this article considers the influence of Chbab Srey on
gender-related education policy in Cambodia. This research highlights the
juxtaposition of Chbab Srey and gender mainstreaming in education policy and in the
curricular experiences of girls and teachers in Cambodia, and introduces an
unexamined and culturally coveted piece of Cambodian curriculum to the fields of
teacher-related policy and girls’ education.
KEYWORDS Chbab Srey; girls’ education; female teachers; Cambodia; policy
discourse analysis
Introduction
This article investigates the ways in which the Chbab Srey, an important
piece of Khmer poetic literature, contradicts Cambodia’s incorporation of
gender mainstreaming within its education policy agenda. Aligned with the
special issue’s thematic foci, this article centers Chbab Srey as an important
context for teachers’ lived experiences and girls’ access to “gender-
redistributed” curriculum (Kirk, 2004, p. 394). We apply policy discourse
analysis (Allan, 2008; Anderson, 2016; 2017; Monkman & Hoffman, 2013)
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to describe how Chbab Srey is embedded in policies that affect girls and
female teachers in Cambodia.
Chbab Srey is a poem that was orally passed down from the 14th to 19th
centuries, and then codified in written form. It details a mother’s advice to
her recently married daughter. The mother, as narrator, advises her daughter
to maintain peace within the home, walk and talk softly, and obey and respect
her husband. The poem survived recent Cambodian history, which saw the
complete destruction of the Cambodian education system at the hands of the
Communist Party of Kampuchea, or Khmer Rouge, and mass genocide that
targeted teachers, monks and those considered the educated elite. During this
time, all educational activities were banned, teachers were outlawed and
killed, and illiteracy increased (Chandler, 2007; Ogisu & Williams, 2016).
The persistence of Chbab Srey in Khmer culture, despite the Khmer Rouge’s
attempts to wipe out Khmer culture through mass genocide and banning
Khmer cultural expression, and the inclusion of Chbab Srey in the newly
rebuilt education system and curriculum, are indications of the poem’s
importance in Cambodian society.
Until 2007, students were expected to memorize the entire Chbab Srey as
part of the secondary school curriculum in Khmer literature. In 2007 the
Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MoEYS) substantially reduced the
number of verses taught in schools, though copies of the poem are usually
found in school libraries. Currently, Cambodian girls in Grades 8 and 9 use
textbooks and lessons that include a truncated version of the poem
highlighting important verses as prescribed in the national curriculum (Derks,
2008; Ledgerwood, 1990). The decision to remove most of Chbab Srey from
the school curriculum stemmed from concerns regarding whether it supported
gender equity in schools (Derks, 2008). In addition to socializing women to
accept the dominance of men, Brickell (2016; 2017) argues that the influence
of Chbab Srey contributes to silencing domestic violence victims and
normalizing domestic abuse. According to Jack and Astbury (2014, p. 220)
Chbab Srey “represents a profound obstacle to gender equality and the
reduction of violence against women.”
We apply a feminist discursive institutional approach (Kangas, Niemelä, &
Varjonen, 2014; Kulawik, 2009; Mackay, Kenney, & Chappell, 2010;
Schmidt, 2008) to policy document and curriculum analysis in order to
interrogate gender-related policy and agenda-setting in Cambodia, using
Chbab Srey as context for our analyses. We consider the policies themselves,
as well as the social and cultural contexts in which they exist. Our feminist
discursive institutional analysis centers gender and constructions of gender-
related policy as both meaning and messaging that inform the lived
experiences of female Cambodian teachers and the girls they teach. There has
been limited research on the role of Chbab Srey in women’s and girls’ lives,
and none investigating how Chbab Srey informs educational policy and
curriculum, despite, or perhaps as a result of, its status as a representation of
Khmer culture and literature. We center Chbab Srey to investigate its
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intersections with gender equality in girls’ education policy and practice.
Inspired by Kirk’s (2004; 2008) work on the lived experiences of female
teachers, we consider how Chbab Srey informs teachers’ work and the
contexts of girls’ education in Cambodia as policy and as official curricula.
Chbab Srey and “Virtuous Womanhood”
Chbab Srey is considered an important piece of Khmer culture and is thus
taught in schools as Khmer literature by teachers of Khmer language and
literature. Chbab Srey is attributed to Krom Ngoy, who is acknowledged as
the “father” of Khmer poetry; however, it existed in oral form long before it
was codified in writing. The writer’s voice alternates between the
perspectives of a third-person narrator and of a recently married women’s
mother, and instructs girls and women to obey their husbands, walk and talk
quietly, and keep family matters in the home by maintaining the boundary
between home and community (Brickell, 2011; Derks, 2008; Ledgerwood,
1990; Smith-Hefner, 1999).
Chbab Srey codifies women’s status in the home, reminding them that
married women should show deference and subservience to their husbands.
Khmer women are expected to perform domestic duties within the household,
and to model accommodating, submissive, virtuous and demure behaviors
when interacting with men (Ledgerwood, 1996; Smith-Hefner, 1999). For
example, the poem instructs girls to “turn around the cooker” (“sut trey voel
jong krann min chum”), translated as to “stay at home,” while boys are
expected to move out into the world and earn a living for their families
(Velasco, 2001). Chbab Srey explicitly instructs girls to “forgive and be
fearful” of their husbands, not to “say anything that treats him as your equal,”
and to “instead keep silent in order to have peace.” These directives are
culturally embedded and reinforced at the family and school levels. That is to
say, expectations for girls and young women in the home, and in Khmer
culture generally, reflect Chbab Srey’s influence (Derks, 2008; Ledgerwood,
1990; 1996).
Chbab Srey as Cultural Context for Education Policy and Reform
In the discursive analysis that follows, we describe the ways in which Chbab
Srey is embedded in official curriculum and policy documents. We hope our
study will inform future research that purposefully interrogates teachers’
identities and girls’ experiences in school. We begin with an overview of the
gendered-conditions of teaching as a profession in Cambodia in order to
introduce the policy contexts that inform teaching and learning. Following
these policy document analyses, we focus attention on the policy contexts of
girls’ education. Together, these discursive analyses show the ways in which
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Chbab Srey is embedded in the policies that inform female teachers’
professional identities and girls’ educational experiences in Cambodia.
According to the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MoEYS, 2016)
just over 20% of secondary teachers identify as female. According to data
collected as part of MoEYS's 2015 analysis of capacity for technical-
vocational education, teachers in upper-secondary schools can expect to earn
60% less on average than professionals in other fields with commensurate
levels of education and training (MoEYS, 2015a, p. 24). Low salaries
coupled with the low status of teaching as a career have necessitated policy
attention on how to recruit, retain, and professionally develop female teachers
in secondary schools. Further, preliminary evidence from an ongoing study of
gender equity within the teaching profession in Cambodia suggests teachers
believe strongly that Chbab Srey is an important part of the curriculum
(Grace & Eng, 2015). However, teachers determine how those lessons are
taught and the extent to which they engage students with the meaning of
Chbab Srey. Teacher Training Centers (TTCs) briefly address how to teach
Chbab Srey for pre-service teachers, however teacher manuals are limited
and rarely available once teachers are in the classroom (Grace & Eng, 2015).
Existing scholarship suggests that curriculum and instruction in Cambodia
relies largely on memorization (Ogisu, 2016). How and to what extent
teachers engage in critical consideration of Chbab Srey as curriculum is
currently underexplored. What is known, however, is that students are
exposed to Chbab Srey through official curriculum as embedded in literature
lessons about the structure of poetry.
Data and Analytical Approaches
Our analysis uses an original Khmer-to-English transcription of Chbab Srey
as the primary source of evidence. Chbab Srey has significant cultural value
and meaning in Cambodian society. As white, female scholar-practitioners
engaged in this research, our distance from the cultural and identity contexts
of Chbab Srey inherently limits our ability to fully understand the ways in
which it informs the lived experiences of female teachers and the girls they
teach. As former classroom teachers ourselves, we were drawn to this work
because of the ways that teachers’ lives and practices are intimately tied to
the cultures and contexts of the children they teach and the communities they
serve. Neither author has direct experience teaching in Cambodia, where – as
our findings show – Chbab Srey influences expectations for female teachers
and girls’ education. Drawing from our experiences as former classroom
teachers, and now as scholars in comparative and international education, we
undertake this work with care and concern for how our cultural distance from
Chbab Srey may affect our conceptual and methodological approaches and
the conclusions we derive therefrom.
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The poem was transcribed by one of the authors with two native Khmer
speakers over a six-week period in 2017, with the support of a Khmer
language and literature secondary teacher to ensure accurate translation
and interpretation. Transcribed lines were organized as discrete analytical
units and categorized by theme. Thematic categories were then derived from
the transcribed text to maintain the narrative features of the poem and to
reflect their “situated meaning,” described by Gee (2004, p. 160) as, “cases
where words and phrases are being given situated meanings that are nuanced
and quite specific to the speaker's worldview or values or to the special
qualities of the context the speaker is assuming and helping to construe or
create.” Cross-sections of text were audited to ensure intercoder agreement
(Creswell, 2018). Lines were further refined using descriptive and pattern
codes to contextualize the text within and across each thematic category
(Miles, Huberman, & Saldaña, 2013).
Limitations
An important limitation of this research is that neither co-author is a native or
fluent Khmer speaker. One author has extensive field experience working in
Cambodia and participated in translating the text to English. With the support
of two fluent Khmer speakers, we were able to clarify specific terms in use as
they appeared in the transcript. Keeping the text structure intact when
applying first and second-cycle codes shaped our reading and analysis of the
poem as education policy discourse. Consequently, if we had instead applied
descriptive first-round codes to the entire text and not by narrative section,
the analysis would have resulted in different findings than those identified
here. We tested this approach when first working with sections as they were
transcribed and found that the narrative and rhetorical elements of the poem
were lost. Ultimately, we segmented our analysis by sections of the text’s
original poetic form. Keeping related lines of text together enabled us to
interrogate the poem’s embedded and “situated” meanings (Gee, 2004, p.
160) in their original narrative contexts. This manner of examining textbooks
is both a limitation of the study as well as a potential line of further inquiry
that expands textbook analysis.
Policy Documents
The document corpus was created using publicly available reports, white
papers, and policy guidance on girls’ education and teacher education,
recruitment, and retention policy in Cambodia. Our analysis of the document
corpus applied the same descriptive and pattern codes derived from our work
with the translated version Chbab Srey. We used a date filter to search for all
publicly available policy documents published between 2005 and 2015 on the
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MoEYS website to construct the corpus. It was then further refined to 12
documents to reflect policies affecting lower secondary grades (6 to 9), girls’
education, and teacher-centered policies, and to reflect the grade levels where
Chbab Srey is implemented as official curricula. Table 1 lists all documents
included in the corpus.
Publication
Year
Document Title
Authoring
Institution
2006
School Health Policy
MOEYS
2007
Educational Law
MOEYS
2008
Strategic and Operational Plan for HIV 2008 - 2012
• Sub-Decree on the Organization and Functioning of
Ministry of Education Youth and Sport Royal
Government of Cambodia
• Sub-Decree on the Ethics Code for the Teaching
Profession
MOEYS
2009
Kingdom of Cambodia Education Strategic Plan
MOEYS
2014
Cambodia Gender Assessment
• Chapter 2: Gender Relations and Attitudes
• Chapter 7: Gender Relations and Violence
MOWA
2015
Master Plan for Technical Education at Upper
Secondary Level (2015-2019)
• Teacher Policy Action Plan
MOEYS
Table 1. Document Corpus
Textbook Excerpts
To further contextualize Chbab Srey as implemented curriculum, we applied
the same descriptive and thematic codes to translated textbook excerpts used
in Grades 7, 8 and 9. The textbook corpus was constructed using convenience
sampling (Creswell, 2018), from those textbooks available to the authors
through colleagues working in girls’ education in Cambodia. As with the
translated text, we cross-checked randomly selected sections of the document
corpus and textbook sample to support intercoder agreement. Table 2
describes the textbooks included in these analyses.
Of the four nationally-issued Khmer language and literature textbook
excerpts examined, two contained passages taken directly from Chbab Srey,
two contained passages from the corresponding Code for Boys, Chbab Pro,
and one contained biographical information regarding the author. Sections of
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Chbab Srey are included in the eighth and ninth grade textbooks of Khmer
literature and language.
Publication Year
Document Title
Authoring Institution
2011
Khmer Studies Book Grade 7
MOEYS
2011
Khmer Studies Book Grade 8
MOEYS
2011
Khmer Studies Book Grade 9
MOEYS
Table 2. Textbook Corpus
Ninth-grade students are presented with six lines from the Chbab Srey.
This short presentation of Chbab Srey is followed by an equally truncated
version of Chbab Pro, which warns boys against impolite behavior towards
their elders, lest their parents be subjected to gossip and their family be seen
as “poorly educated.” The eighth-grade excerpt from Chbab Srey includes 33
lines directly from Chbab Srey. This excerpt introduces warnings against
“babbling childishly” and “laughing flirtatiously,” warning that this will bring
the unwanted advances of ill-intentioned men. Girls are instructed that girls
and women who participate in such behavior are “bad,” lacking value,
character and self-control and will be a “dishonored” woman. The excerpt
urges girls to work hard and complete any work that they begin, to take care
of their body while they are single, as later they will be “busy with crying
children and will rarely have the chance to work hard” (Translated, Line 29),
and “you will be worried and short sighted with a baby, one after another,
crying for food; Suffering in your heart to find something for your one or two
children so that they are quiet” (Translated, Line 31). Finally, the excerpt
references the “three flames” that women must keep in order to ensure
harmony in the home: respecting their parents, respecting their husbands, and
controlling the spread of gossip.
Findings
In the sections that follow, our analysis shows how girls and female teachers
are targeted as specific populations of interest in the policies used to advance
gender equality in Cambodia. The analysis then moves to interrogate the
juxtaposition of Chbab Srey and the Teachers’ Code of Conduct as policy
contexts for teaching, and of girls’ education in Cambodia. Our findings
suggest an alignment between Chbab Srey and education policies that are
targeted at Cambodian girls and their female teachers. This alignment,
however, conflicts with Cambodia’s gender-mainstreaming policies. We
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integrate direct passages from Chbab Srey in policy analysis to highlight the
poem’s influence on the contexts of teaching and learning in Cambodia.
Gender Mainstreaming in Education Policy and Reform in Cambodia
In 2000, the Millennium Development Goals (hereafter, MDGs) and
Education for All (hereafter, EFA) converged through their shared goal to
achieve gender parity in primary education by 2005 and at all levels of
schooling by 2015. During the MDG era and into the Sustainable
Development Goal (hereafter, SDG) transition, Cambodia addressed issues of
gender equity in education through a gender mainstreaming approach to
policymaking. The most salient of these policies is the Neary Rattanak: Five
Year Strategic Plan for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment
(Ministry of Women’s Affairs, 2014a). It outlines the government’s gender
mainstreaming strategic plan, which has provisions for the promotion of
gender equity in education, reducing violence against women, and supporting
education for women and girls. The Neary Rattanak includes only a single
reference to educational rights, but offers specific provisions for women and
girls’ social and civic entitlements.
The Neary Rattanak articulates Cambodia’s inter-sectorial approach to
gender mainstreaming; this approach is also represented in the country’s
education development agenda. The policies described in the document
corpus reflect a holistic, inter-sectorial approach to gender mainstreaming as
a strategy to achieve the targets set through EFA, the MDGs and the SDGs.
In addition to these policy areas, gender mainstreaming is also used to
promote teacher retention and HIV/AIDS prevention education. As an
example, the Technical Vocational Education (TVE) Plan explicitly frames
gender as a “cross-cutting issue” (MoEYS, 2015a, p. 24), which involves
capacity building, incentives (McDonnell & Elmore, 1987), and advancement
of female teachers, as strategies to improve TVE upper secondary education.
Building from Cambodia’s EFA commitments, the 2009-2013 Education
Strategic Plan promotes children’s schooling access, retention and transition
at all levels. Training and retention and evaluation of pre- and in-service
teachers and training programs for students in rural, remote, and
economically disadvantaged areas are provided (MoEYS, 2010, p. 56).
Population Targeting
Women and girls are targeted as two specific target populations (Schneider &
Ingram, 1993) across the document corpus. The social construction of target
populations rely on normative, often stereotypical, constructions of identity
that are reified through policy language. The Education Strategic Plan targets
girls as a discrete population of interest and explicitly focuses on their
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schooling access as a policy priority. Girls are discussed in distinction from
“marginalized students,” who are described in the policy guidance as
“children from poor families, child labor, children in disadvantaged areas,
children with disabilities, children affected by HIV/AIDS and other
communicable diseases” (MoEYS, 2010, p. 15). Overall, the education policy
guidance included in the document corpus narrowly and purposefully
constructs target populations to identify the policy needs of both girls and
female teachers. This narrow construction enables girls’ educational needs
and the barriers that restrict female teachers’ professional status,
development, and retention to be aligned with the policies themselves.
The focus on female teachers in Cambodia’s education policy agenda is
apparent throughout the 2015 Teacher Policy Action Plan (MoEYS, 2015b).
The Action Plan articulates the Kingdom’s priorities for recruitment,
retention, and professional development for teaching staff. As with the
Strategic Plan’s focus on girls as unique and distinct from other
“marginalized” student populations, the Action Plan differentiates women
from other targeted groups including those from economically disadvantaged
backgrounds, differently-abled persons, and those from ethnically
marginalized communities.
Cambodia’s approach to gender mainstreaming within education policy
extends to improving teachers’ living and working conditions. The Action
Plan articulates policy goals for improving housing and sanitation facilities
for teachers as a way to improve retention. Female teachers are not the
explicit population of interest in the document, but they are identified as the
primary population of interest, who require dedicated pathways to become
school leaders and are integral in the effort to “strengthen” the
“effectiveness of school leadership mechanisms” (MoEYS, 2015b, p. 18).
The commitment to teachers’ professional development and training is also
referenced in the 2008 Sub-Decree on the Organization and Functioning of
Ministry of Education Youth and Sport Royal (MoEYS, 2008a). Girls are not
identified in the Sub-Decree as a unique or distinct population from children;
nor are female teachers differentiated from or within educational personnel as
a targeted population. The 2008 Sub-Decree provides additional guidance on
MoEYS’s focus on teacher education and training within its overall strategy
to improve the contexts of teaching and learning. It includes specific
language supporting the inclusion of gender-responsive approaches to
education policy and development by integrating “gender management work”
(MoEYS, 2008a, p. 6) into how teachers and other educational personnel are
recruited, evaluated, and retained. The Department of Teacher Training is
established in the Sub-Decree (Article 27), which also mandates teachers’
access to professional development through the creation of regional training
centers and inter-sectorial engagement with private and community-based
providers. While the Sub-Decree references an accountability and data-
sharing mechanism between the regional and national providers, it does not
identify how these interactions will be supported. Further, there is no
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reference to how these centers are funded or regulated. The lack of targeted
funding to support teachers’ training and professional development is also
apparent in the Teacher Policy Action Plan’s (2015b) attention to female
teachers. Despite the direct attention to female teachers as a population of
interest within Cambodia’s gender-mainstreaming efforts, these mandates are
largely unfunded, thus distinguishing them from the other actionable policies
detailed in the Action Plan and Sub-Decree.
The Ethics Code for the Teaching Profession
Teachers’ rights are expressed in the policy documents included in the corpus
under study. Our document analysis unveils similarities between teachers’
rights and the behavioral expectations for girls communicated through Chbab
Srey. Teachers’ rights to professional status, development, and respect are all
explicitly guaranteed under the Education Law of 2007, although the
gendered-dimensions that shape their work are not addressed. For example,
the 2007 Law guarantees teachers’ “right to achieve career value dignity and
social high respect” (MoEYS, 2007, p. 14). Teachers’ obligations under the
law require that they respect their professional code of ethics and the law, and
obliges them to “undertake and develop their work with due high diligence
and responsibility” (MoEYS, 2007, p. 14). The absence of Chbab Srey in the
2007 Education Law is consistent with the other policy documents sampled
in the document corpus. Chbab Srey is not discussed explicitly as a context
for teachers’ work or the ways it informs teachers’ engagement with
parents/caregivers. It does emerge as an implicit context for teachers’
professional roles and responsibilities as articulated through The Ethics Code
for the Teaching Profession (MoEYS, 2008b).
The Ethics Code for the Teaching Profession, also referred to in policy as
the Teachers’ Code of Conduct, was created in 2008 and fully implemented
in 2011. The 2009 Education Strategic Plan, discussed previously in relation
to Cambodia’s gender-mainstreamed approach to teacher recruitment,
training, and retention, also references the Code of Conduct. While the Code
is referenced explicitly, the 2009 Education Strategic Plan does not provide
inducements or targeted funding to professionally develop current teachers
under the Code.
The explicit focus of the Teachers’ Code of Conduct is to “improve” the
morale and dignity of teachers, as well as the “quality and effectiveness of
education” (MoEYS, 2008b, p. 2). Teachers’ duties are outlined in the Code
and range from providing support for activities and processes as directed by
education managers, prohibiting financial gain through or as part of their
teaching assignment, and requiring they uphold the law as part of their
professional role. Chapter 2 of the Code specifies teachers’ duties and
dispositions. Table 3 highlights the behavioral dispositional expectations
noted in Chapter 2, Articles 5-14, of the Code. We focus on these Articles
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because they detail behavioral expectations for teachers that mirror the
expectations communicated to girls and women in Chbab Srey.
Article 5
Teachers shall respect the life, body, psyche, and dignity of people in
their teaching profession. Teachers shall strongly hold the morale in
their teaching profession.
Article 6
Teachers shall keep their profession as confidential in case it is
restricted by law or regulation in order to protect the beneficiary of
learners. Teachers shall strongly hold liberation during teaching
profession such as: independence, freedom, and prosperity.
Article 7
Teachers can be a guardian of learners and shall listen, monitor, and
give advices to learners fairly and equally. Teacher shall not
discriminate by age, sex, language, race, nationality, color, disability,
gender, belief, religion, political view, or social status, resource, or
others situation in education and educational service.
Article 8
Teachers shall strongly hold the conscientiousness in their profession.
Teachers have duty to prepare the lesson plans and define good
explanation in order to achieve the quality and effectiveness in
teaching.
Article 9
Teachers shall be self-study and do more research for self-
development; and teachers shall regularly attend every training
activity. Teachers shall do self-evaluation and evaluate their own
performance during the teaching profession.
Article 10
Teachers have duty to support every education activity and education
service in all management level of education authority.
Article 11
Teachers shall speak carefully and think of their own speech’s
repercussion to students and publics when they release any
information related to (public + private) education through media
myths. Teachers shall not do the demagoguery to the learners.
Teachers shall not reveal the result of disciplinary judgment of
administration and people in the educational circles as well as public
circles.
Article 12
Teachers shall not conspire to ruin the benefits of students in
Education service. Teachers shall not punish the students physically
and psychologically which they will be affected.
Article 13
Teachers shall not raise the money or collect informal fees or run any
business inside the class. Teachers shall avoid doing others job in the
education institution.
Article 14
Teachers shall avoid doing anything to disgrace their profession.
Teachers shall not provide several facilities that make them be illegal.
Table 3. (Chapter 2 of the Sub-Decree on Ethics Code for the Teaching
Profession; MoYES, 2008b, pp. 1-2)
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As referenced in Table 3, the Code specifies teachers’ conscientiousness
and service to the profession as expectations. It provides that, “Teachers shall
strongly hold the conscientiousness in their profession” (MoEYS, 2008b, p.
2) through lesson planning and delivery. The concept of teachers’
conscientiousness as a professional domain is also referenced in a subsequent
section of the Code, stating, “no matter what the circumstance is teachers
shall not lose the conscientiousness of their duty and obligation in the
teaching profession which is covered by the contract or statute of public and
private education institutions” (MoEYS, 2008b, p. 4). Service to the
profession is discussed as preserving the honor and status of teaching as a
profession. The Code operationalizes service to the profession as supporting
“every educational activity and service” (Article 10, p. 2). The Code
specifically references the importance of upholding “good relationships”
with school personnel and parents (Articles 34; Article 3.18). The Code’s
attention to service and servitude to the teaching profession mirrors Chbab
Srey’s expectations for women in the household. The convergence of the
Code of Conduct with Chbab Srey extends and institutionalizes women’s
service at work and at home.
The convergence of the Code and Chbab Srey illustrates how ingrained
traditional gender norms are in Khmer culture; these norms continue to be
reflected in contemporary policies despite the aim to achieve gender equality
in educational, social, economic, and political spheres. Next, our analysis
turns to how girls are targeted as populations of interest in Cambodia’s
gender mainstreaming policies. We focus on the contradiction between
Chbab Srey’s implementation as official curriculum and girls’ education
policy in Cambodia.
“The Disgraced Ones”: Chbab Srey and Girls’ Education in Cambodia
These girls are called the disgraced ones, who are not afraid of rules of conduct
for women.
Chbab Srey (Translated, Line 20)
Like the Teachers’ Code of Conduct, Chbab Srey is a directive that demands
adherence to the rules for virtue, character, and ideal Khmer girlhood and
womanhood. In the discussion that follows, we describe how Chbab Srey is
implemented as official curriculum and evidence the ways girls’ schooling
access, opportunity, and mobility are informed by the implementation of
Chbab Srey as official curriculum. Building on these findings, we draw
parallels between Chbab Srey and the Code of Conduct for Teachers to
further highlight the disconnection between Cambodia’s education policy
agenda and the poem’s implementation in girls’ education.
Although Cambodia has reached near parity in primary schools, girls
continue to drop out of secondary schools at high rates and are less likely to
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enroll in tertiary education (MoEYS, 2016). Cambodian women’s traditional
roles are located in the home as wives and mothers. Girls’ responsibilities to
home and family, conceptually and materially, are perceived to interfere with
their educational attainment, and subsequently diminish their ability to work
outside the home to support their own school fees (Escamilla, 2011; Ministry
of Women’s Affairs, 2014b; Velasco, 2001; Velasco, 2004). The 2009
Education Strategic Plan specifically targets children’s equal access to
quality schooling as a strategic priority to promote national economic and
social development (MOEYS, 2010), reflecting a rights-based approach
(Tomasevski, 2003) to ensuring children and youth’s full access and
participation through all levels of schooling, and the explicit prohibition of
discrimination.
The Plan highlights gender differences in students’ enrollment and
retention as an ongoing challenge across all school levels, with emphasis on
girls’ transition to secondary school. It also includes protections for children
from ethnic minority groups and those with disabilities (p. 13), and incentives
to support girls’ retention and transition in grades 7 to 9 through scholarship
and food subsidy. It includes, “increasing the supply of teachers, providing
houses to teachers and building dormitories for students in disadvantaged
areas, especially girls” (MoEYS, 2010, p. 13) as policy priorities. The focus
on girls as a population of interest extends from linking their educational
opportunities with increasing the numbers of female teachers, to establishing
a scholarship program to support secondary enrollment and retention.
Interestingly, the Plan links teacher recruitment and capacity building with
these barriers to girls’ schooling access and persistence, but does not
reference Chbab Srey as a potential barrier to girls’ schooling opportunity or
mobility, or teachers’ professional development.
Because Chbab Srey is implemented as official curriculum, girls are
explicitly taught how to become virtuous wives through their embodiment of
the characteristics described in the poem. Chbab Srey includes 225 lines
dedicated to the need for careful vigilance regarding women’s societal,
family and marital duties and obligations. Service and conscientiousness are
discussed throughout these sections of the poem and exemplified in a
description of virtuous women as vigilant and careful keepers of “The Three
Flames.” The Flames further characterize what it means to be a virtuous
Khmer wife. The First Flame describes preventing bringing gossip or bad
news into the house as well as keeping unpleasant events from spreading
outside of the house. These sections are translated as directives to,
Control the flames; don’t let them spread by blowing on them. Otherwise they
will scatter and spread, and burn everyone. (Translated, Lines 37-38)
Don’t bring an outside flame into (the family), and stubbornly blow on it and let it
start a fire. Carelessly controlling an inside flame (in the family), brings it out to
start a fire outside. (Translated, Lines 39-40)
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One flame you must keep is the good deeds of your parents who took care of
you. And girl, commit to the path, serve your parents and do them no wrong.
(Translated, Lines 45-46)
One flame is to respect your husband and regularly have sex with him. And
definitely serve him. Don’t upset and disappoint him. (Translated, Lines 50-51)
As exemplified in these sections of the poem, service and conscientiousness
are central to the tenets of “The Three Flames” and the role of women in
society, family and at home. These tenets extend to the profession of teaching
through directives and language in the Teachers’ Code that reflect those
prescribed in Chbab Srey. Conscientiousness also implies that teachers are
careful and vigilant of their behavior and their duty and obligation. Here
again, the implementation of Chab Srey as curriculum contradicts the
national policy framework to improve teachers’ professional status as well as
girls’ schooling access, opportunity, and mobility. This mixed-messaging
communicates that girls are meant to develop themselves both to fulfill the
roles of virtuous wives and mothers as an outcome of schooling, and to
persist in schooling to fulfill social and economic demands outside, or in
addition, to their responsibilities to home and family.
Speaking Up and Speaking Out
(Don’t) Use strong or mocking language without considering that you are a girl.
Chbab Srey (Translated, Line 70)
Both Chbab Srey and the Teachers’ Code of Conduct reinforce the
expectation that speech is a dangerous act that will result in the loss of status.
These risks are heightened for girls and female teachers because they extend
from the home and are reinforced in the classroom. The rules for girls’ and
teachers’ speech are explicit; speaking out or out of turn is strictly prohibited
and, if violated, will result in consequences that bring shame to the family or
to the profession. Both the Teachers’ Code of Conduct and Chbab Srey
outline expectations related to speech. The Code details moral and ethical
behavioral expectations for teachers, which communicate the obligation that
they refrain from public or private acts that may reflect poorly on the
profession. Article 11 (2008b, p. 2) states,
Teachers shall speak carefully and think of their own speech’s [sic] repercussion
to students and publics when they release any information related to (public +
private) education through media myths. Teachers shall not do the demagoguery
to the learners. Teachers shall not reveal the result of disciplinary judgment of
administration and people in the educational circles as well as public circles.
Articles 14 and 20 continue in this vein, requiring that teachers “avoid doing
anything to disgrace their profession” (Article 14, p. 2) and “maintain good
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interpersonal relationship with others in order to be a good model or pattern
for students and in order to protect teachers’ honor and dignity” (Article 20,
p. 2). Here, the Code cautions teachers from speaking freely or in ways that
may conflict with MoEYS’s authority.
The Code’s focus on expectations for teachers’ speech acts closely aligns
with how Chbab Srey articulates expectations for girls’ speech. In the
example that follows, girls are cautioned from speaking and from speaking
out of turn; “If you must speak, as a woman, do not say something silly”
(Translated, Line 14) and warns, “don’t be fickle, my dear, if your words are
not (strong), you should be ashamed” (Translated, Line 18). Along with
shame, other consequences are also implied as outcomes for speaking out or
out of turn.
Chbab Srey identifies shame as a consequence of girls’ failure to abide by
her husband’s wishes. Chbab Srey gives specific advice for girls, as future
wives, to ensure harmony in their marriage. A wife’s deference to her
husband and expectations for speech are noted in the following excerpt
(Translated, Lines 79 - 83):
Even though your husband curses you, go to bed and think it over.
Come back to him and use gentle words to rectify his mistake.
Even though your husband admonishes you, remember to keep it to yourself.
If something goes wrong, don’t forget the advice which you were given.
If you are not afraid and don’t listen to the advice which has been given to you,
(you will) create only arguments.
The preparation for “good” girls to become “good” wives continues in the
section detailing the “Seven Characteristics.” The first line of this section
states, “A wife like an enemy does not have the seven good characteristics”
(Translated, Lines 168). “Bad” wives are framed as those who do not fear or
obey their husbands. Here, like in the example above, girls are cautioned to
follow their husband’s word. The first of the Seven Characteristics is that
“good” wives should listen to and obey their husbands. The following stanza
characterizes girls who do not listen and obey as “insolent and reticent:”
“Her husband tells her three words, but she does not reply” (Translated, Line
170). The next line continues by further describing “bad” wives as those who
do “not like to listen when her husband advises (her) regarding some rules”
(Translated, Line 171). Although these pieces of the poem are not taught in
the classroom, Chbab Srey often can be found in libraries in primary and
secondary schools, with lessons taught and developed by librarians (Grace,
2017).
Conclusion
Cambodia’s use of gender mainstreaming as a framework to achieve the
shared goals of EFA and MDGs 2 and 3 is evident throughout the document
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corpus, particularly in the policy language used to construct populations and
goals. Girls and female teachers are named as specific populations of interest
for achieving the goals and targets set throughout the policy documents under
study in this article, with few exceptions. Both groups are constructed as
separate and distinct populations of interest in these two important policies.
Naming girls and female teachers as discrete populations is a rhetorical
extension of the gender-mainstreamed approaches to policy making. The
focus across the document corpus on female teachers’ retention and salary, as
well as their need for improved access to professional development and
training, highlights Cambodia’s inter-sectorial approach to gender
mainstreaming during the MDG-era and provides a framework for ongoing
education development through the SDGs. Although naming is not enough on
its own, our findings illustrate the ways in which policy language can enable
more narrowly targeted policy guidance.
Chbab Srey prescribes a model for women’s marital and maternal
behaviors, which has been passed down as oral tradition, and contemporarily
through official curricula. Our findings identify the diffusion of Chbab Srey
within the policies that inform female teachers’ professional and girls’
schooling experiences. As we conclude our analysis, we identify limitations
in document and artifact selection, as well as the transcription used in our
analyses. We also highlight opportunities for future research that continues
Jackie Kirk’s legacy of scholarship in the areas of female teachers’ work and
girls’ education.
Future research on female teachers and the girls they teach is important and
necessary and will, we hope, come as an outcome of the analysis presented
here.
Contributing to Jackie Kirk’s Legacy: Interrogating the “Conditions” and
“Approaches” of Gender-Mainstreamed Education Policy in Cambodia
Our analyses of the policy and curricular contexts of teaching and girls’
education in Cambodia is inspired by Jackie Kirk’s body of work. We
attempt to embody her commitment to understanding the cultural and
contextual conditions of teachers’ lives and girls’ schooling experiences. The
“symbolic power” (Winthrop & Kirk, 2008, p. 648) of schooling in
Cambodia is intertwined with Chbab Srey’s value as a cultural artifact. As
posited in her collaborative work with Winthrop, Kirk asserts, “under certain
conditions and with certain approaches, schooling can support children’s
well-being” (Winthrop & Kirk, 2008, p. 639). By questioning the normative
expectation that formal schooling can be a catalyst for all things from peace
to development, Kirk, with her collaborators, called into question the
conditions of and approaches to formal schooling that influence children’s
experiences and outcomes. Our contribution to this Special Issue of Studies in
Social Justice aims to extend Dr. Kirk’s work in fields of comparative and
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international education and girls’ education, particularly by centering Chbab
Srey as a “condition” that shapes girls’ education and female teachers’
engagement with formal schooling.
Chbab Srey holds significant symbolic and cultural value in Cambodian
society and communicates expectations and consequences for women and
girls’ behavior at home and at school. These values are further reified through
Chbab Srey’s diffusion as curriculum and embodiment in the Teachers’ Code
of Conduct. The codified and normalized conditions of girls’ education and
female teachers’ work informs individuals’ schooling experiences as well as
the approaches used to implement curriculum. As noted by Kirk & Winthrop
(2007) in their work on education in refugee contexts, teachers play an
instrumental role in girls’ protection at school. By locating girls and female
teachers as populations of interest within Cambodia’s education policy
agenda, our analysis reflects Kirk’s inquiry (2008) into how girls and their
teachers experience schooling, and the ways that culture and experience
intersect with policy implementation.
Chbab Srey is unique to Cambodia and the Cambodian education system
and forms a codified description of patriarchal expectations for girls and
women that is handed down through educational channels and solidifies girls
and women’s place within Cambodian patriarchal society. While Cambodia’s
patriarchal society is not unique, Khmer culture supports the socio-cultural
expectations of women through Chbab Srey (Derks, 2008; Ledgerwood,
1990; Ledgerwood, 1996). The findings presented here provide an initial
attempt to empirically and theoretically examine the implementation of
Chbab Srey as a culturally-coveted, written poem in the national curriculum
that remains an active force in the lives of female teachers and the girls they
teach. As Cambodia seeks gender equity in education, future research is
needed to consider how this influential text is embedded and contested in
policy documents and curriculum artifacts, as important contexts of teachers’
and girls’ educational experiences.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Mr. Bunny Kheng and Mr. Ratha Chhum for their
translation support.
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