Currents in Literacy

Khmer Cultural Survival and Native Language Literacy

By Ellen Rintell

It is no longer surprising when teachers in urban and even suburban schools today find themselves in classrooms with newly arrived immigrant students. Many teachers have learned a great deal about the languages and cultures of previous waves of immigrants, yet may find themselves suddenly facing students about whom they know very little. This was the situation of teachers and school administrators in a few Massachusetts cities - especially Boston, Lynn, Lowell, and Lawrence - when in the middle eighties a large Cambodian immigrant community began to resettle in Massachusetts after having originally lived in a variety of locations around the United States.

Lowell soon became home to the largest Cambodian resettlement in the state, indeed the second largest in the country after Long Beach, California. The public school system found itself opening new classrooms and hiring new teachers almost daily. During this period, I developed and opened, with two colleagues, a teacher resource/staff development center for Lowell and Lawrence. One of our highest priorities was to help the newly hired Cambodian and other Southeast Asian teachers who were teaching in Lowell's bilingual programs.

Southeast Asian teachers and students alike were new and strange to the rest of the community. Their language, customs, clothing, religion - almost everything about them seemed to be different. As so often happens when unfamiliar cultural groups begin to populate a community, those who had been longtime residents looked upon the newly arrived Cambodians with a range of responses. The new students and families were at once exotic and foreign, interesting and strange. Many teachers saw the students as part of the Asian "model minority," and had high academic expectations of them, particularly in math. The teachers noticed that in general the students were quiet and well behaved, but it soon became evident that many Southeast Asian students did not fit the stereotype and had the same language and adjustment problems of any immigrant group. Further, they suffered the severe problems of refugees who have experienced devastating war and traumatic personal loss. The Cambodians had also experienced an academic loss caused by Pol Pot's closing of all the schools in Cambodia years before many were able to escape to the refugee camps in Thailand.

We in the teacher resource center were accustomed to working with immigrant children, but admittedly knew almost nothing about the Cambodian community. As we worked with teachers and got better acquainted with them, we became more and more curious to know as much as possible about their background. I planned some research that would help me to know more about Cambodian families, their home literacy practices, their attitudes about maintaining their native language, Khmer, and their cultural values. I especially wanted to know what Cambodian parents thought of the education that the public schools were providing and what they wanted from the schools for their children. At the same time, I wondered what the perceptions of teachers were, especially Cambodian teachers who taught in bilingual programs. In other words, I felt that I wanted to learn everything that would help me to understand how to best help Cambodian students attain academic success and form bridges between their own culture and mainstream culture. This could not be done by the students and teachers themselves. Clearly, the whole community needed to provide support to learn about the Southeast Asian refugees, their history, and why they had come to Lowell. This article is about one piece of that work: attitudes about language and cultural maintenance in both homes and schools.

Our first steps were to interview the very people from whom we wanted to learn: Cambodian parents and teachers. With help from my friend and colleague, Eileen Skovholt, and with help also from a Cambodian student who acted as interpreter and as guide, greeter, and introducer, we began to ask our questions.

First, we wanted to hear what parents thought about maintaining Khmer in the U.S. Some parents we interviewed were also teachers, others were not. Some parents thought their children should learn Khmer immediately, and some "when they grow up," but we never heard parents say they did not want their children to become literate in Khmer, even if they had not placed their children in a bilingual program. One Khmer parent put it this way:

I do not teach them [reading and writing] in Khmer. I don't want to mix the languages. I just want them to learn in English. When they grow up I will teach them to read and write in Khmer. We always speak Khmer in the house. They know both languages equally. We live in the United States, so we have to speak English. English is not just in the U.S.- it's all over the world. It's important for the future. Khmer is not a world-wide language.

Another parent voiced a different perspective:

It's important that the children learn to read and write in Khmer and English, too. I visit the school and I saw them teach in Khmer...I help them to write in Khmer at home. I am happy they have a Cambodian teacher. I want them to learn in Cambodian, too. And I want the schools to teach Khmer at a higher level so the children will learn to read and write at a higher level.

We asked a man who lived in a city with no bilingual program if he and his wife spoke Khmer at home to their children. "Yes," he said, "all of the time. One hundred percent. Yes, since they are babies. But when they went outside to play with the friends they start to speak English." Had he ever tried to teach the children to read and write Khmer at home?

Oh, no, because I don't have the time. I only able to teach one day and a few weeks later another couple of words. Sometime I read them a Khmer story. They like it. Then one night I showed the book and tried to show a consonant.

A bilingual teacher, commenting upon his own perception of the community's attitudes about keeping alive the Khmer language, told us that Khmer parents have differing views:

Some of them feel like they came to the United States, they live in the United States, they don't care. But most of them care. They want their children to learn their own language. Even if they know that English is the most important language, in the United States they still want to keep their language.

This same teacher also expressed frustration with the bilingual program in that many students don't get to stay in it long enough to achieve an adequate level of literacy in Khmer:

I think with some children you should make the rule to keep them maybe five years. The student can read and write, you know. Now, they just learn to read and write and they go to mainstream. They gone and then expect the parent to teach them at home. But they don't have time. That's why the bilingual program doesn't help the children to learn or keep the native language.

So, this teacher's problem with bilingual education is that the current rush for children to be mainstreamed within three years shortchanges them. His concern is not that three years is not enough time to learn English, but rather, it is not enough time for native language literacy to be adequately developed.

Another question I had concerned the role of the teacher in the school and in the community. Many Cambodian parents told us that it was very important that their children be taught by Cambodian teachers. Parents who supported bilingual education said that they did so in great part because they wanted a Cambodian teacher to teach their culture to the children. For a while, I assumed I knew what they meant by culture, but then realized I must not make assumptions and decided to ask parents to explain what it was they meant. I wanted also to know more about the role of the teacher in the Cambodian culture.

The meaning of the phrase "teach the culture to the children" was made quite clear as soon as I began to ask. When asked what he meant by "teaching culture," a grandparent linked culture to language as he talked about what he thought young children needed to learn: "The Cambodian teacher must teach correct behavior. When to bow, when to say excuse me, and how to formally address someone."

A cultural and a language lesson are being taught in this first grade Khmer primer. The young boy greets his grandfather.

Another father said that everyone knows how to teach, but the teachers know more than parents. The teacher needs to teach the children how to speak and behave. The essence of learning "culture" is for young people to know linguistic ways of showing respect to elders and others higher on the social ladder in the community, especially teachers and monks.

Another teacher explained how she meets this obligation to the community.

The Cambodian parent expect the children learn everything from the teacher. And the Cambodian teacher will give the children a good education and help the children in the future...Some parents never come to school because they think, oh, the Cambodian teacher is really good and give good advice to the children and good knowledge to the children and will provide a good life...The parents expect the teacher will help the behavior, too, because most children listen to the teacher...Values. Cambodian parents hope we will teach values, like the polite ways children should use in the family. The parents want, they like a homelike lesson.

What I didn't realize when I started seeking answers was that the Khmer language is one of many languages that reflects social differences between speakers in a highly formalized way. Therefore, relationships according to traditional culture can only be expressed through this language, and without knowing the proper use of the language one cannot be seen as part of this tightly woven social system. So, when teachers and parents want their children to be taught "culture" by Cambodian teachers, it is to preserve both linguistic and cultural values. And yet, many American-born educators believe that for the children to learn English from the beginning, and not take time with attempts to teach native language literacy, would help immigrant and refugee children such as these to "succeed."

I spent this time asking Cambodian parents and teachers what they wanted from the public schools. With few exceptions, the parents said they wanted the schools to help the children to attain literacy in both Khmer and English, and they explained why they felt as they did. The public schools have a unique opportunity to help ensure the cultural survival of this community and others like it. Much is made today of "parental involvement" and getting more parents to feel comfortable in their children's schools. Will schools also listen to language minority parents about what they most want from their children's schools?

Afterword: I submitted a report about this research to higher administrators of the school systems in the communities where the parents I interviewed were living. When I originally had asked parents if they would allow me to interview them, some told me how pleased they were that someone was asking them these questions. Unfortunately, I never received a response from the administrators, although the reports were apparently passed along to Bilingual Education administrators, who did respond favorably to the report. I am left with no real idea of who read the report or if the parents views ever really reached the people who could respond to their needs.

Ellen Rintell is an Assistant Professor of Education, and the Coordinator of the M.Ed. in TESL and Bilingual Education Programs at Salem State College. She is interested in cultural issues in second language and literacy acquisition and in teacher education in the ESL and Bilingual Education fields.