Never mind boxing, corrupt education is the problem

By Heng Long, Phnom Penh

Bribery and corruption in kickboxing is no worse than it is in the state education system.

In school, students must buy sweets and cakes from their teachers if they want to get high scores or avoid their teacher’s anger or curses. If the students do not buy, they will face punishment.

Sine teachers shamelessly demand money from students before they being teaching the lesson because their salaries are low and they cannot support their families.

Some students who have not attended class for the regulation minimum number of days in a year have to pay money to teachers and school administrators to be able to move up to a higher class the following year.

Bribery and corruption in education has destroyed the morality and dignity of Cambodia’s teachers, and teachers they younger generation from their infancy that they must submit to corruption and bribery if they want to survive.

Students show “respect” for their teachers not from their hearts but because they are afraid for their scores.

Foreign universities that offer scholarships to Cambodian students always require evidence of their scores and study records. Rich students pay school administrators to write new records and thus get high scores for study records; poor students with inadequate attendance records because they have had to help their families have no chance to continue their study abroad, even if they have the capacity. Surely this is unjust.

I would like to think that teachers have not willfully descended into corruption, but have been forced into this way of life by their empty stomachs.

Recently the government increased teachers; salaries, but they are still low. The government is trying to discourage teachers from teaching their private classes during state working hours, but the increased salaries still do not afford teachers an adequate living standard, so inevitably corrupt practices continue.

I hope that eventually salaries in the education sector will be sufficiently improved so that sweets and cakes, or demand money from students before beginning lesions, or sell students copies of the answers to monthly tests.

In kickboxing, if a boxer is corrupt and takes bribes and the spectators become aware of it, they will hit him and shout curses at him and throw bottles at him.

I do not want to hear of corruption or bribery-in kickboxing or education or any other sector- because bribery destroys the morality of humanity and teaches people a culture of habitual corruption. This makes society unstable and full of injustice and forces the people to sleep in a nightmare.