Jane Harding’s 10,000km journey: Sligo teacher joins See Beyond Borders to support schools in Cambodia
The Sligo Champion“It was so eye-opening; we don’t realise how lucky we are.” These were the words of Jane Harding, Deputy Principal, St Lassara’s NS Ballinacarrow who recently returned to Sligo after an inspiring trip to Siem Reap, Cambodia with See Beyond Borders, a charity that partners with Cambodian educators to provide quality primary school education and teacher development.
Only back in Ireland a few days, Jane was full of admiration for the work being carried out in Cambodia, a country that ranks amongst the worst in the world in terms of education standards. One reason for the low standard of education in Cambodia is that under the Khmer Rouge regime, it is believed 90% of the country’s teachers were murdered as educated people and professionals were deemed a threat to the regimes power.
Casting her mind back to how she found herself on a plane, travelling 10,000 km to a country she was not overly familiar with, Jane recalled seeing an advertisement for See Beyond Border in a teachers union magazine, and it immediately appealed to her.
Jane, along with all the other volunteers, covered the cost of her travel to Cambodia where she found people to be welcoming and genuine as she recalled one of the Cambodian teachers she worked alongside during the two week workshops saying, ‘Thank you for walking with us’.
Jane acknowledged it was the fact that the Cambodians would have such a strong influence over how the workshops would be conducted that initially appealed to her.
“It was led by the Cambodian people themselves, the teachers were asking for certain things that they wanted to know. It wasn’t a ‘we know better than you’ issue. They asked for help and we provided that help. That was a thing that appealed to me, that it was Cambodian led.”
‘When the Khmer Rouge were in control in the 70s they killed 90% of the teachers, even people who wore glasses were killed’
The fact that the education system in Cambodia is amongst the worst in the world was another incentive for Jane as she knew her two week stint there would be of real benefit to the Cambodian people and she was overwhelmed with how appreciative the Cambodian people were for the help she was offering.
Detailing the terrors the Cambodian people have suffered she noted, “When the Khmer Rouge were in control in the 70s they killed 90% of the teachers, even people who wore glasses were killed because that meant you wanted to see things, therefore you wanted to better educate yourself. They decimated the education system so they are starting from very low. In the Pisa Report they are bottom, Ireland is ninth.
“The teachers were so grateful, some of them were saying, ‘you have come all this way to help us’. I felt a bit uncomfortable almost, they were so grateful. Somebody said it is 10,000km from Ireland to Cambodia and you have come all that way to help us. ‘You are walking with us, side by side’ that is what another man said to me. It felt really worthwhile, it was such a worthwhile thing to do, it was really moving.”
Jane Harding proudly stands beside the school emblem of St Lassara’s NS Ballinacarrow during her recent trip to Cambodia with See Beyond Borders
When they got down to business at the workshops, Jane revealed the enthusiasm and eagerness to learn from the Cambodian educators was immediately evident.
“The workshops were so well received. I have been to workshops here before as an Irish teacher and you always get one or two cynical people who are like, ‘what can you teach me’ but they are not like that at all. They are so open to learning new methods. We had these teacher discussion groups and one of the questions was ‘why did you become a teacher?’ It started off with the Irish teachers and I was saying, ‘to give something back’ and ‘to help the future’ and all this kind of stuff but the Cambodians were like ‘I want the next generation to be better than us. I want our country to get better’.
“It was a much bigger picture than what the Irish teachers were looking at and it they are not cynical at all. It was just so inspiring. I have come away thinking Cambodian people are so nice and so generous, they are so kind and I just want to do something more to help them because they have such a struggle ahead of them.”
Most of the children start off attending school but on average they only go for four years and then they drop out
While the work that Jane and See Beyond Borders have been carrying out in Cambodia will have a major impact, Jane gave an insight into just how much work lies in store over the coming years to improve the standard of education in the country.
“Most of the children start off attending school but on average they only go for four years and then they drop out. They are so poor, there is such an amount of poverty there that the families might need them to start working in the rice fields and some of the girls stay home to look after the other children. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, it is a cycle. They don’t have an education to better themselves so they are stuck in that when they are adults.”
To give an indication of the scale of the challenge to improve standards, Jane revealed, “Some of the Cambodian people in See Beyond Borders, they were the only person in their district to go to secondary school. I live near Tubbercurry and that is like one person in Tubbercurry going to secondary school.”
With drop-outs one of the biggest challenges faced in order to improve standards for future generations, Jane was asked what is done in Ireland to ensure children continue to attend school.
To their surprise, Jane told the Cambodian people she met,”They don’t drop out, they have to go to school, it’s not an option.”
The challenges continue within the classroom environment with Jane explaining, “They have very few resources in the classroom, they have chalkboards, it’s like back in the day. They asked for help with literacy and numeracy workshops and we were just giving them ideas to get the children more involved because they have huge class sizes. I was in classes of 40-50 students and that would all be one age. They come from miles around to attend school and they start early. They start at 7.30am and finish at 12pm because it’s too hot. They just have a couple of little fans and no windows.
“It was so eye-opening and I was thinking, ‘We don’t realise how lucky we are’. It was really humbling for me, I got a lot out of it personally as well as professionally. They had a conference there and Ballinacarrow’s emblem was on it and it felt really amazing to see that 10,000km away. There are only 30 Cambodians who live in Ireland because it is so hard to get a visa and it is so expensive to get here. I said I would try and raise the profile a little bit to make people aware of it.”
The work carried out by Jane and See Beyond Borders in Cambodia will make a very real difference but as Jane explained, it is a process that will take time before the benefits are truly reaped.
“In our workshop there were 16 Cambodian teachers, so they were going back to 16 different schools and taking the ideas to those schools. It felt like planting seeds because I know if I went back in two years time I would see a difference.
“It’s made me appreciate what we have here in Ireland. In many ways it’s not too dissimilar to what was here a couple of generations ago and to see how far Ireland has come gives you hope that Cambodia can get there.”
For more information by See Beyond Borders or to make a donation, visit seebeyondborders.ie.
Article Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.