“the state of books in cambodia”

being a teacher, something i often deal with is books, or lack of books. in a typical 60 student classroom, i’ll be lucky if 20 of the students bring their book to class. the others claim to have either forgotten it, but in reality most of them don’t even own it. if bought from the market, most of these textbooks (more like pamphlet-size) are copied and would cost the students about 30 US cents. while the poorest of the poor students actually cannot afford to buy the book, 95% of class should ideally have a textbook. another lack of books is the lack of resources for teaching and studying. book stores have plenty of things that students can buy, but many of them that i’ve reviewed are translated into english very poorly and would actually create more questions than answers. recently, i’ve seen advertisements for the ‘harry potter‘ series translated into khmer. (but i’ve never seen them, nor seen anybody reading them.) reading for leisure isn’t really a pastime in cambodia, both because of the lack of ‘read-for-leisure’ books (in khmer) and the cost of books. the following link (CLICK!) is an interesting article that expands this:

Phnom Penh Post:
“the state of books in cambodia”