The Relationship of Socio-Economic Environment and Ethnicity to Student Career Development in Contemporary Cambodia: A Case Study of High Schools in Phnom Penh(<Special Issue>New Japanese Scholarship in Cambodian Studies)

Abstract

As a means of analyzing present and future socio-economic trends in Cambodian society, I willpresent my findings concerning the orientation patterns of a selected population with regard toeducation and occupation.I will analyze the social process which affects the development and differentiation of suchorientations in light of socio-economic and ethnic variables. I chose Chinese Cambodians as thesecondary ethnic group in this study for two reasons. First, amidst the pluralistic milieu of Cambodiansociety, the Chinese have developed a particularly distinct ethnic community, and second, they were historically the first to form a merchant class in Cambodia. The data deployed in thispaper are derived from a consciousness survey which I conducted in Phnom Penh.I developed three types of questionnaires for this survey: one for senior high school students, one for their parents, and one for their teachers. From the results of these surveys, Iaimed to derive propositions regarding the orientation of senior high school students, their parents, and their teachers toward the students' career development.It has become apparent that there is a gap between the occupations of the parents' generationand the desired occupations of senior high school students. Some occupations appear to begaining in popularity while others are losing ground. A typical occupation which is losing popularityis farming, while an example of an increasingly popular occupation is that of officework. Professional work is an occupational category which seems to be stable from one generationto the next.Differences in orientation due to gender and locale are also evident. The better off the parents, the better the learning environment for female students. The orientation patterns of malestudents are more independent of economic factors. Students in suburban districts are deprivedof social and economic resources. These handicaps are countered somewhat in cases where parentshave a high level of schooling (a cultural resource) and/or strongly support their children'seducation.