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My experience at Jay Pritzker Academy reaffirmed my beliefs about education: a successful educational model is one in which the voices of teachers and students are valued, heard, trusted, and empowered. It is one in which a dynamic relationship exists between administration and staff, where concerns are addressed collaboratively, and decisions are reasonable and transparent. It was in the absence of these things that I discovered their worth.
The problems with JPA's treatment of its employees, both foreign and Khmer, is an issue already enumerated at length in this blog, so I won't be redundant. While unbelievable to me prior to my employment at the school, I can now attest to these allegations as being accurate. Despite the stress and difficulties staff endure under Steve's leadership, some of them – at least, the foreign staff – have the luxury of being adults from a culture where free speech is upheld as a constitutional right, where we won't necessarily face governmental retaliation for protesting. We drive around with bumper stickers that say "question authority." Such behavior can and has cost people their lives in Cambodia. In disturbing parallel with this dark humanitarian plight, JPA, too, tolerates nothing outside of absolute obedience, or a student will be expelled.
During my year at JPA, it was clear that the school founders and administration prided themselves on that culture of obedience, and that my students were blind with a fear that caused them to put a lookout on guard in every class so that they could shush each other and straighten up into a posture of military-style "attention" each time Steve approached the classroom. Worse, it is a fear that insisted they refrain from voicing their earnest opinions. Such an environment stymies the development and identity formation of the young learner, producing an only marginally effective educational environment. It was almost surreal, though in retrospect unsurprising, to witness some of the events that transpired in my year at JPA. The head of school is a model by which students can measure the dangers of authoritarianism. This reality only reinforces the fearful silence the students and their families have suffered through over the past 40+ years at the hands of their government's dictatorial regimes. Steve and the Pritzker’s methods are seemingly benevolent, but quietly and repeatedly damaging. The most insidious act I witnessed in the year I taught at JPA was the expulsion of our top student for attempting to voice his honest concerns about JPA admin. Steve later threatened to get this student's full-ride scholarship at an American university revoked. If you are inspired by JPA's mission to help students obtain access to Western education, don't be fooled. This was their first ever student to earn this mark of success, and Steve attempted to squelch this golden opportunity. Unfathomable.
The school stands behind a mission that believes education will improve the host country. How will this occur with the suppression of critical pedagogy? Students who grow up to be great doctors and engineers may do so in an attempt to improve infrastructure and public health, but it will do little to uproot the antiquated and deep-seated personal and political fear ideologies that persist in the culture today. If we do not encourage students to express and shape their opinions, how can we expect that they will learn to shape their country? How can we expect them to stand up against a dictatorial government and become its new leaders? To support such an educational model continues the tradition of teaching the populous to remain fearful and silent. These are the same tools of oppression and can create future oppressors if alternate models are not actively explored or espoused.
I am sad to say that I was unable to find a way to speak up about these issues during my time at JPA. Productive discourse was difficult to engage in – or impossible, as in some cases it resulted in employee termination. I was told partway through the year that my employment was contingent upon keeping my opinions to myself. I did so. Sadly, though perhaps fittingly, I joined my students in their voiceless, disempowered predicament. Of course, I can know nothing of the true hardships my students and their families have suffered through over the years, though I left with an undying appreciation for how indomitable the human spirit can be – these bright children seemed to always exude a near endless attitude of kindness and gratitude – even for the privileged and unimaginably wealthy foreigners who, though they came and talked down to them and their families, still offered the best education they could have ever imagined. My colleagues and I knew better of course, and my silence has long condoned the subjugating practices of the school founders and administration. I regret that I could not find a way to have done more.
