Since I teach in the ESLU Department (English as a Second Language Unit) and not in the English Department, my students aren’t English majors but students majoring in other departments and fulfilling the University’s liberal arts-style English proficiency requirement. During my first day of classes, in my introduction to my students, I explained that I had not majored in English either but in public policy and photography at Princeton. Last Thursday, at the end of the last class of the week, one of my students came up to me to asked me to qualify exactly what public policy was, explaining that he knew what studying politics was but didn’t really see the difference between that and public policy. I tried to explain as best as I could, not really knowing how to distinctly describe the already subtle differences using very simplified English. I resorted to using some examples, such as global warming, to explain what a student studying public policy would look at.
This example than sparked the interest of one of my Environmental Studies students, Kro, who was still in the classroom. He’s taking my essay writing class with the hope that it will help him get a job at an environmental NGO here in Phnom Penh. He talked about the particular pollution and contamination that pollutes a lot of the air and water in Cambodia and explained that he was taking a class trip this past weekend to one of the provinces to study pollution’s effects on the lake fishery (which, in turn, supports the fishermen in the area). He then asked if the US had similar environmental problems, to which I said that the US’s main environmental problems were a little different and talked about global warming. Thinking it over for a few seconds, he then asked me, “What is your country’s biggest problem?”
I was trying thinking about what the US’s biggest problem actually is, and the first thing that came to mind is its contribution to global warming and the accompanying disregard for how it effects the rest of the world and even its own environment. I then added that another big problem is that healthcare is not available to everyone, feeling that our previous conversation had maybe framed me to think my initial answer. It’s easy to see what a country’s faults are from the outside when they appear fresh and different, such as the absolute corruption of the government and the lack of security here, but it was hard to think of the biggest problems in the US when I could think of all of the minor problems (as well as great achievements) in a country I know so well.
I then came home to read the Cambodia Daily, which has about half its stories about Cambodia, written by its staff, and about half its stories from the wire (such as NYT, Washington Post, and LA Times articles) that are relevant to this part of the world or are related to important worldwide events. I proceeded to follow up this conversation about serious environmental problems and my reading about Burmese monks protesting against huge violations of human rights by reading an article in the NYT online about the anti-immigration laws being passed by municipalities in the US because of “changing character” that apparently results from their immigration. Fortunately, the article was talking about the fact that these towns were starting to earn racist reputations, and I have to admit that I was somewhat happy to read that they were suffering economically as a result of reduced customers at their downtown shops and lost employees for many business. Not that reading this article about Riverside, NJ changed my mind about the issue, as I’ve always felt that people who call immigrants “criminal aliens” and state that they turn the US into a lawless version of the Wild West lack a certain sense of humanity, but in a place like Phnom Penh, it’s hard not to think what humanity means. After rethinking the question, I decided that even a lack of action on global warming is a result of the biggest problem of not caring about the interests of people outside (and sometimes inside) the US’s borders and, on occasion, a certain lack of humanity. To read about these people whining about people trying to improve their lives by immigrating to the US seemed like utterly misplaced attention and highlighted a complete intolerance that seems very noticeable from Cambodia.
At the same time, two days ago, I was contacted by a State Department funded teaching fellow who has been helping the University with its curriculum and staff development and realized that there are also a lot of things that the US does do to help complete strangers that don’t always get noticed. It made me happy and inspired to meet this person and to see what she was doing after being somewhat disgusted by the laws I had been reading about last week.
Additionally, so as to try not to appear holier-than-thou or immune to a lack of tolerance, I was a little behind in the scheduled curriculum for my 201 English class and was trying to figure out a way to catch up with the rest of the classes. Then it became obvious what I could do. So I conveniently ignored the lesson about the road trip through “the really cool state of Texas.” It just wasn’t going to happen in my classroom, and I got my little sense of satisfaction knowing that I skipped the lesson praising the “don’t mess with” state.