Editing Khmer Rouge (section)

===== Education =====
{{further|Anti-intellectualism#Democratic Kampuchea}}
It is often concluded that the Khmer Rouge regime promoted [[functional illiteracy]]. This statement is not completely incorrect, but it is quite inaccurate. The Khmer Rouge wanted to "eliminate all traces of Cambodia's imperialist past", and its previous culture was one of them. The Khmer Rouge did not want the Cambodian people to be completely ignorant, and [[primary education]] was provided to them. Nevertheless, the Khmer Rouge's policies dramatically reduced the Cambodian population's cultural inflow as well as its knowledge and creativity. The Khmer Rouge's goal was to gain full control of all of the information that the Cambodian people received and spread revolutionary culture among the masses.<ref>[https://gsp.yale.edu/literacy-and-education-under-khmer-rouge "Literacy and Education under the Khmer Rouge"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190217012047/https://gsp.yale.edu/literacy-and-education-under-khmer-rouge |date=17 February 2019 }}.</ref>

Education came to a "virtual standstill" in Democratic Kampuchea.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|185}} Irrespective of central policies, most local cadres considered higher education useless and as a result, they were suspicious of those who had received it.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|185}} The regime abolished all literary schooling above primary grades, ostensibly focusing on basic literacy instead.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|183}} In practice, primary schools were not set up in many areas because of the extreme disruptions which had been caused by the regime's takeover, and most ordinary people, especially "new people", felt that their children were taught nothing worthwhile in those schools which still existed. The exception was the Eastern Zone, which until 1976 was run by cadres who were closely connected with Vietnam rather than the Party Centre, where a more organised system seems to have existed under which children were given extra rations, taught by teachers who were drawn from the "base people" and given a limited number of official textbooks.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|184}}

Beyond primary education, technical courses were taught in factories to students who were drawn from the favoured "base people".<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|184}} There was a general reluctance to increase people's education in Democratic Kampuchea, and in some districts, cadres were known to kill people who boasted about their educational accomplishments, and it was considered bad form for people to allude to any special technical training.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|185}} Based on a speech which Pol Pot made in 1978, it appears that he may have ultimately envisaged that illiterate students with approved poor peasant backgrounds could become trained engineers within ten years by doing a lot of targeted studying along with a lot of practical work.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|185}}