Perils of planning the future
THE sites were awesome in the true -— rather than teenage -— sense of the word, the food delicious and the atmosphere intoxicating, but the highlight of my recent travels in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia were the conversations with our local guides, which provided a real insight into both the recent history and day-to-day life.
In commenting on the commendable English-speaking skills of Thuy, our guide in Hanoi, Vietnam, I asked (completely ignorantly) “Did you learn it at school?” “Oh no,” she politely replied. “We learnt Russian at school.”
Sipha, our guide in Siem Reap, Cambodia, had also acquired his English after completing his formal schooling. “We weren’t allowed to learn any foreign languages at all,” he explained.
These snippets of conversation demonstrated starkly just how much and how fast these societies have changed over the past decade or two or three. Although both these guides were youngish (mid-30s), the education they had received was based on a vision of the future that bore little or no resemblance to the present they now inhabited.
Russian as the key to success for students growing up within the communist bloc seems so outdated a notion as to appear quaint, and it’s difficult to comprehend the thinking behind educational visionaries who believed students would not need any language other than their mother tongue. (Admittedly, many in contemporary Australia would share this same blinkered thinking, but English allows us a luxury that Khmer does not).
Sipha’s memories of growing up as a young child under Pol Pot — his grandfather being killed because he was an engineer and therefore a suspect member of the elite; his parents being sent out to be “re-educated” in the fields; his brother dying of malnutrition and his mother paying for palm sugar with the last of her gold jewellery, gram for gram, so that he and his sister would not suffer the same fate; the western world’s indifference to the slaughter of nearly a quarter of the population (around two million people) — resonated personally and profoundly.
Pol Pot saw himself as the saviour of his country, the harbinger of a new age, exemplified in his concept of “year zero”, in which “civilisation” would begin afresh.
So many crimes committed, so many lives lost, so many children cheated in the pursuit of a brighter future. Writing about his experiences as a prisoner of the Khmer Rouge, French anthropologist Francois Bizot noted, “I detest the notion of a new dawn in which homo sapiens would live in harmony. The hope this utopia engenders has justified the bloodiest exterminations in history.”
All of us have a stake in the future. As a parent and educator, I like to think I am preparing my children and students for the future, conscious as I am that it is impossible to predict with any degree of certainty what qualities and skills will be the most valuable.
Thuy’s and Sipha’s education hadn’t exactly failed them in terms of the market economy in which they were now operating, but it hadn’t prepared them particularly well either, while the legacy of Pol Pot’s regime serves to remind us how dangerous a powerful person with a twisted vision and uncompromising mission can be.
All of this left me with a sense of the folly inherent in making predictions (confirmed by Sam Lipski in his recent AJN column, in which he announced his retirement from forecasting future events) and the need to be ever-vigilant of the present day, protecting it from those who would distort or destroy it in the name of tomorrow.
Checking my emails on my return to Australia, I read about the formal ostracising of the “Moshiach Men”, who had flagrantly flouted halachah by eating on the Fast of Tevet, claiming it was redundant as the Messiah had already arrived.
Messianism, with its inherent notion of the perfectibility of the world, can be viewed as one of Judaism’s most significant contributions to civilisation. While this ideal forms one of the 13 principles of faith and imbues much of the religion, the long history of false messiahs raising false hopes has brought about the tradition that there should not be too much focus or active preparation around this anticipated future.
In a sensible and somewhat sceptical vein, Yochanan Ben Zakkai taught that if you are midway through planting a tree and you hear that the Messiah has arrived, you should continue with your planting and then go and greet him. Planting is, of course, claiming a stake in the future, but it’s a practical, peaceful and gentle one, of which we have just been reminded this Tu b’Shevat.
Sidra Kranz Moshinsky is a Melbourne-based writer and teacher.