Music education

　　JHP promotes a music education project in order to train teaching staff so that every student in Cambodia can have an opportunity to take music lessons. For instance, we organize workshops for music teachers and train leaders for the workshops. At the same time, in order to motivate music education for these schools, we hold music contests and encourage marching band club activities.

　　However, musical instruments have been in short supply in Cambodia. Therefore, since 1994, JHP has been running a project to raise musical instrument donations in Japan to support teacher training and marching bands in Cambodia.

Current condition of music education in Cambodia

　　When JHP conducted research in 1994, we found that there were no teachers who could read music and the supply of musical instruments in Cambodian schools was low. At that time, we were requested by the Director of Education, Youth and Sports to dispatch Japanese teachers. Since then, we have been providing software assistance to Cambodian children, sending teachers and donating instruments for the purpose of fulfilling emotional education.

　　School days in Cambodian elementary schools have been shortened and divid ed into two or three segments per day. Because of the shortage of classrooms, students are rotated throughout the day and their classroom time is considerably reduced.Therefore, they only have a half or one-third of the time to study compared to a fulltime student. As a result, hours of teaching are intensively used for core subjects such as national language or mathematics instead of other subjects. For example, Cambodian traditional instruments are introduced in social studies textbooks, but schools do not have most musical instruments, so students don’t have an opportunity to touch or play them. Music classes are currently a part of social studies or “local life skills” course.