Experts

Screw the experts. I’ve had so much trouble these past days because of European experts that tell my Cambodians stuff about how to do a presentation or a flip chart but don’t tell them about the importance of the content.

So a couple of days ago during the staff meeting we were supposed to work in groups and then present the results. Instead of thinking about what we needed to do for our little Job Agency in the future the Cambodians started discussing which would be the best flip chart picture to present the results on. When I asked them to first concentrate on the content and then on the presentation they were sulking. Half of the group drew a picture not paying attention to the other half which was thinking and discussing. In the end the drawing group didn’t like their picture, destroyed it and we used the thinking groups mind map, not without apologizing for not having a picture.

Same thing happened yesterday. Rath and I prepared the documents about CVs, cover letter etc. when he told me it would be much nicer to do it as a power point presentation. So I asked him if he wanted to present it with power point and he said no, but the experts always put it on slides so that we can take notes if we don’t understand it. Then he showed me some slides made by some so called experts, they were no different than any word document, contained loads of text and were by no means designed in any special way. So I stood my ground and we had a small fight. He sulked again for some time until we started to discuss the lessons. Apparently Cambodian teachers lecture by reading their script to the class and then giving examples if the class doesn’t understand it. All the great pedagogic reforms on teaching haven’t reached Cambodia yet and so we had another small argument about teaching methods which was solved by the decision, that we will do all the preparation of the lessons together in Siem Reap with Ruth (my tutor) and Max. I just hope we don’t end up boring the little Cambodian students to bits and pieces.

In the end we became friends again when I offered that we could prepare some flip chart drawings for the lessons. I spent the rest of the day sitting on the floor watching Rath drawing the flip charts and enjoying himself immensely.