Teaching Indonesia’s children

Teaching Indonesia’s children Adhityani Putri ;  A Post-Graduate Student at The Australian National University

JAKARTA POST, 21 Oktober 2012

  

Indonesian children may soon no longer be taught English in primary school. Musliar Kasim, the deputy education and culture minister, reasoned that teaching English to children, along with science, was “burdensome” and that it should be considered haram or forbidden under Islam. This latest development in the government’s attempt to overhaul the national curriculum prompted an outcry among parents and non-parents alike. My Facebook newsfeed and Twitter time line were immediately flooded with strong reactions, calling it “a joke”, “outrageous” and “a bid to destroy Indonesia’s future”. As a young parent, I share these sentiments. I want my children to be able to go out into the world and have access to a range of opportunities. To meet that goal, they need a world-class education. If our national leaders hold the same aspiration for the children of Indonesia, then the national curriculum should provide nothing short of just that: a world-class education.  I came across this news right after attending a public lecture by Trade Minister Gita Wirjawan at the Australian National University. The minister boasted about Indonesia’s bright economic outlook, and cited its human resource potential as one of the country’s biggest strengths. A couple weeks before that, Paramadina University Rector Anies Baswedan conveyed the same view when addressing the conference “Indonesia Update” at the same university. Anies argued that with a nearly 240-million-strong population, it was time for Indonesia to shift its gears and move toward a human resource-centric economy. Education undoubtedly holds the key to unleashing this potential. Anies understands the importance of, particularly, primary education. He founded Indonesia Mengajar (Indonesia Teaches), a program that sends Indonesia’s top graduates to the most impoverished and remote areas to teach in primary schools for a year. Gita, whose philanthropic work in education is widely recognized, argued that Indonesia was committed and capable of giving its children access to the best possible education. Indonesia has made national education the top national priority, determining that 20 percent of its state budget or an estimated US$2.4 trillion be allocated for the next 20 years. It is a crying shame that these views are seemingly not shared at the Education and Culture Ministry. Instead of fine-tuning the curriculum to give Indonesian children a competitive edge on the global stage, it has decided to strip it bare of key skills and knowledge. Mastering English should undoubtedly remain a key feature of the curriculum. We have long-lamented how Indonesia lags behind its neighbors — Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore — in global competitiveness, and poor English has always been cited among the many reasons. It’s simple, really: How are Indonesians supposed to project themselves in the world, in other words “beat their chests”, if they cannot adequately express themselves in the world’s lingua franca? Among the four countries, Indonesia ranks at the bottom of the Human Development Index and scores lowest on education. Indonesia isn’t doing much better among the major emerging economies, a club — including Brazil, China and India — of which this country aspires to remain a member. Even the Chinese get it. They are not resting on their laurels as the world’s largest economy. In fact, the government has mandated that English be taught in early childhood as part of a five-year program that aggressively promotes the teaching of English as a second language. One of the concerns expressed by the deputy minister regarding teaching English in primary schools is that it might excessively strain children’s ability to learn. He added that children should master the Indonesian language first, before moving to a second language. This statement is baseless, as empirical studies dating back to the 1980s show that children are capable, much more so than adults, to learn two languages at once. Many parents around the world raise bilingual children without a problem; and there is nothing wrong with harnessing this ability by introducing a second language, even in early childhood. Another motivation to overhaul the national curriculum is apparently to reduce the study load so that children are once again “glad to be studying”. As a parent and a keen observer of education, I fully agree that there are many things that need to be improved in our national education. But taking shortcuts, such as dropping subjects from the curriculum in the hopes of reducing study load (and the amount of books to be carried to school by the grandchild of a certain national figure), is definitely not the way to go about it. Indeed, I fully support a comprehensive review of the entire educational system, not only of the curriculum but also of the teaching methods and material. And it should be carried out in consultation with the public, given the impact of such changes to our children and the nation’s future. Indonesia has progressed in leaps and bounds in achieving universal primary education, a Millennium Development Goal. In 2009, official statistics revealed that more than 95 percent of school-age children were enrolled in primary school. And in the same year, the proportion of children who completed primary education reached 93.5 percent. Now that we’ve got the quantity right, it’s time to work on the quality. ●