In this discussion on youth, education, and Cambodia's future,
topics in vogue today, I would like to introduce some brief theoretical
concepts about perceptions and reality; follow with what some regular
Cambodians (whom I have not met) write; and examine some observations
and survey results by several organizations. My purpose is to provoke
discussion about the present situation in Cambodia.

Our
unique political socialization; the information we've acquired; our
cognition, experiences, values and beliefs acquired from different
sources, do influence our perceptions and cause us to evaluate the same
experiences differently from one another.

From childhood to adulthood and
to the end of our lives, we never stop learning. As a child we learn
from our parents and those dearest to us. As we go to school, we learn
from our teachers and from books. As we grow up, friends and peers, and
our surrounding, influence our behavior. I never understood what my
father meant when he told me endlessly as I was growing up, "Live with
cow, sleep like cow. Live with parrot, sleep like parrot." In college, I
learned that political socialization shapes and molds our characters.

Our values and beliefs are
learned. The newspaper we choose to read, the magazines on our coffee
tables, the books we read and television shows we watch; the job we
hold; the special events we encounter, all contribute to molding our
personality. Some of us are unconscious of our learning.

Two quotes I like: "Learning without thought is labor lost," said Chinese teacher Confucius (551 BC-479 BC); and American futurist Alvin Toffler's assertion that the "illiterate" of the 21st century will be "those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."

To learn is to think. But all
thinking is not of the same quality. An opinion – which changes from
occasion to occasion – is not a thought based on careful observation,
reflection, and analysis. It's not what we know but the quality of our
thinking that determines the quality of what we do, and the quality of
our life. Thought leaders urge us to think objectively, positively,
creatively, and critically, and to never stop intellectual inquiries,
because our future depends on it.

Lord Gautama Buddha taught 2,500 years ago, "We are what we think … With our thoughts, we make the world."
Statistically, 95 percent of Cambodians claim affiliation with the
Buddhist faith. Buddha's teaching should be natural for Cambodians. Is
it?

Recall some psychological
experiments that revealed "one in three persons" follow what the
majority claim, even if these persons believe the claim is incorrect.
Generally, one laughs with the group even without understanding what the
laughter is about, and one changes one's stand if it is unpopular with
the crowd. That's frightening, but coincidental with the Cambodian
aphorism, "Thveu doch ke doch aeng," or "do like others do."

Although genes we inherit from
our parents do shape our attitudes and behavior powerfully – apples
don't fall far from the tree – I believe our attitudes and behavior are
influenced more by our long term socialization, which begins since birth
and ends only in death.

To people who belittle
Confucius's words, "You cannot open a book without learning something,"
is Confucius's answer: "Surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance."

There are two types of reality. One is tangible: roads, bridges, buildings. The
other is what we perceive as real: these are opinions based on our
perception and analysis. It's quantitative versus qualitative.

Last month, a Cambodian
expatriate on regular visit to Cambodia circulated an e-mail: "I am in
Cambodia now. A lot of Khmer youths have no guidance." He alleged the
government's half-hearted effort on television to "promote democracy" is
less attractive to Khmer youth drawn more to advertisements on "beer,
beer, and more beer; and then whiskey, whiskey, and more whiskey"; after
alcohol, the youth go for "hard cheap drugs … such as YA BA, and then
heroin." The expatriate called on Cambodians "anywhere around the world
to return to Cambodia to help reduce the pain of the Khmer youth who
have lost their soul without realizing it."

Some university students in
Phnom Penh who saw the e-mail, admitted to the alcohol advertisements on
TV, but criticized the blanket statements about Khmer youth.

Also last month, another e-mail
was sent by another expatriate, after "the first visit since my birth in
refugee camp" at the Khmer-Thai border. He said he had just returned
from Cambodia where he traveled the countryside and "reached out" to the
poor. "I was sad and shocked to see their overwhelming poverty and
despair. They have to deal with their miserable life without [care] from
the current Cambodian leaders."

He charged, the "new settlers" [read, Vietnamese immigrants] in Cambodia enjoy "better life and advantages" than the poor Khmers; his e-mail appealed
to Cambodians to forget their political affiliation for the moment to
unite to "save our people and our country before it is too late."

Within the same month, an e-mail
from a reader, a manufacturing coordinator who lives on America's West
Coast, landed in my box. I never met him. He described himself as "a
Killing Field survivor in the US since 1985" who has visited Cambodia
three times, the last trip some six months ago.

"From my personal observations,
Cambodia is better today than she [has ever been]: more children attend
schools, infrastructures are modernized." He described his travels to
border provinces, where roads are built, and power lines are up: "Travel which took me more than half day in 2007, now takes me only 2 hours; that is progress."

"I am proud to be Cambodian
today than I have ever been," he wrote. He criticized the US that he
said "never cared much about Cambodia and her people"; the US "realized
China's influence in the region, especially Cambodia," only recently.

The e-mails bring to mind
results from a survey of Cambodians by the International Republican
Institute (related to the US Republican Party), released in January 2011
that showed 23 percent of respondents believe Cambodia is headed in the
wrong direction – citing corruption, joblessness, poverty, inflation –
while 76 percent are satisfied with the direction Cambodia is headed –
citing infrastructure improvements such as roads, bridges, buildings,
schools, health clinics.

Ironically,
it was also in July that a different kind of e-mail reached my box from
Cambodia from a young Khmer, an Internet reader of my columns – I
called him Sambath for his security. He is a Bachelor's degree holder in
political science from a foreign country. He used to write in his
e-mails while he was in school that "the education of political culture
and socialization of Cambodians is necessary to bring change."

He had been silent for some
time, until last month. He graduated, has returned to his home village
in Cambodia's northwest, has been helping his 74-year-old grandmother
and his parents plant rice, and lived in a pagoda when he visited Phnom
Penh.

"Life is hard for the poor," he wrote. He described farming as "hopeless" because of the lack of fertilizers;
he was surprised there are "twin" vegetables at many markets – grown by
Khmer (more expensive) or imported from Thailand or Vietnam (less
expensive). In
the northwest, he found ginger, onion, sweet chili pepper imported from
Thailand. In Phnom Penh, at Tuk Laak, he found meat and other products
from Vietnam; one kilo of Khmer ginger costs 12,000 riels
($3), a kilo of Vietnamese ginger costs, 7,000 riels ($1.6), making
Vietnamese vegetables more popular. He lamented how Khmer growers can ever support themselves.

"Many
people talk more about Vietnamese immigrants flooding into Cambodia
than about Vietnamese products flowing freely into the country and
becoming much sought after as they are cheaper than Khmer products,"
he wrote and expressed concerns over what this alone can do the state
of the Khmer economy, Cambodians' welfare, and the future.

Sambath was matter-of-fact. He claimed most people
in his village are "indebted to Micro finance institutions"; they sell
their land, cows and buffaloes to the better privileged Vietnamese
immigrants; and sadly, many use the money for "gambling, alcohol, new
phone, motorbike." Many villagers engaged in "A Pao'ng" and card
games; many young people are "now good at drinking; to pure palm juice
they add ‘kduoch' poisonous herb to make the drink strong."

He hypothesized perhaps poverty
and low education, have led to "poor morality of teenagers and adults,
and people become selfish." He was sad to see "many old people" left to
work in the fields while many teenagers and adults left for Thailand for
work, and females leave Cambodia for Malaysia.

Sambath's father is an elementary school teacher whose monthly salary is about "$80 to feed 7 children." His uncle has a son, now in grade three. The child cannot read even the alphabet. Sambath claims that students
now copy exam answers from each other, buy exam questions in grades
9-12, bribe examiners to pass exams, and can buy a high school diploma
for $400-500. A young man from a wealthy family in Phnom
Penh, who never finished high school, ordered a high school diploma and a
grade sheet to enter a university abroad to study computer science.

"We do understand very well many developments are only for the rich as the poor are struggling," he asserted. Yes, there are more buildings, Sambath admitted, "but
one year after construction, some buildings like my old schools, and
most national roads … go broken in some parts because they were
constructed or built not according to standard."

Sambath said to connect for
power to the Chinese hydropower dam at Kravanh Mountain, his family must
spend $150-200 for connection service and an additional 3,000 riels per
kilowatt hour of electricity – money his parents don't have. So, there
stands the dam, and there live most villagers without electricity.

"Let me assure you that many
Cambodians I talked to in the capital and the rural areas do understand
the hardships they faced, the hardships that don't have to be, but they are not brave enough to talk publicly," Sambath wrote.

"I do believe one day, with a brave and honest person leading the fight for freedom, Cambodians will wake up!!"
Sambath expressed sorrows that the most popular democratic opposition
leaders, Sam Rainsy, Kem Sokha, and Kem Veasna, who espouse the same
democratic principles, whose political goals are similar, are
not only unable to unite to oppose the same enemy but fall into their
enemy's trap of "divide and rule" tactics by "colorfully" accusing each
other. Worse still, he said, they divide the people, prospective voters,
into three different parties!

Youth
is the future of a country. And the future is built upon what young
people are doing today. Tomorrow must take care of itself. People
usually look at yesterday to explain today's happenings. Some even get
stuck in the past and neglect to use today to prepare for tomorrow. I am
never tired of repeating Lord Buddha's words, "Each morning we are born
again. What we do today is what matters most." The future begins today.

Readers may recall the recent
release by Wikileaks of 777 diplomatic cables from the US Embassy in
Phnom Penh. Among the cables released online last month was Ambassador
Carol Rodley's "Cambodia's Burgeoning Youth
Population Increasingly Seduced by the ‘Perfect High'," dated 2009,
about a "recent uptick in drug use," ice or methamphetamine "preferred
by Cambodia's urban elite." Rodley spoke of "‘drug parties', domestic
violence, rape, and gang activity," and "spoiled children" spending
$1,000 a month on drugs "in a country where the average family lives on
less than a dollar a day."

The cable reported how
Cambodia's rich families are secretly sending their drug-addicted
children for treatment at private clinics in China or Australia under
the pretext of the children going abroad to "visit family or study."

Others
have written about the culture of bribery that is prevalent among
Cambodian youth from elementary schools to university level.
Today these reports appear even in Cambodia's English language
newspapers. What Sambath wrote in his e-mail is substantiated in public
media. It spreads nationwide. One may not like what Stanford University
Professor Joel Brinkley wrote in his book, "Cambodia's Curse," about
Cambodia's culture of bribery, but I recommend people to read the book.
It is very instructive.

Last month, the United Nations
Development Programme released the November 2010 survey of 2,000
Cambodian youth, a survey UNDP conducted with the BBC World Service
Trust.

Briefly, Cambodia has the
youngest population of any of the 10 member states of the Association of
South-East Asian Nations. Two out of 3 Cambodians are under the age of
25; and more than 30 percent of the country's 14 million are between 10
and 24 years old. The survey found Cambodia's young people understand
little about democratic institutions: Three-quarters of youth
interviewed had heard of parliament and 62 percent of that number had no
idea what it does; a third of those interviewed did not know what
commune councils do; and fewer than one in three young Cambodians was
interested in politics.

Yet, the survey found 95 percent
of Cambodia's youth are proud of being Cambodian and of the direction
in which Cambodia is headed.

While the UNDP reported that
some 300,000 young Cambodians who enter the domestic labor market every
year often don't have the skill sets required by private sector
employers, the August 12th Cambodia Daily
reported on Cambodia's Ph.D. degree inflation: While there are 2,000
Ph.D. candidates in the small kingdom, Cambodians seek Ph.D. honorary
degrees from non-accredited institutions to improve their job prospects
and social status.

If youth is the future of the
country and education is a sine qua non element of a country's
development, without change in the status quo ante, Cambodia's future
will be anything but bright.

It
is the government's responsibility to end the current situation and
bring about change. If the government cannot do that, a new government
should replace it.

The more the reason Cambodians of different political persuasions must work hard for change.

Cambodian Buddhists have access
to an historical culture that can provide a foundation for catalyzing
personal and collective change. Broad-based application of Buddhist
values and principles can help Cambodian society make its way to a
future those on the current path may never find.