Are
international school students Indonesian enough?
Danau Tanu ;
The writer completed a PhD in Anthropology and Asian
studies at the University of Western Australia on “third culture kids” and
international education
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JAKARTA
POST, 15 Juli 2014
…..(??) seen as foreign to Indonesia. The Indonesian
children who attend these international schools are often accused of being kebarat-baratan, or “too Westernized”
— in other words, not Indonesian enough.
But
inside the gated campuses, deciding who is foreign and who is Indonesian is
not so simple.
Take
a typical scene from my research on international schools and their alumni:
At one high school, as students flooded out of the classrooms at recess you
could hear a Russian and French teenager speaking fluent Jakarta slang to
their Indonesian classmates.
The
next minute a Taiwanese teenager was speaking English, Mandarin and
Indonesian in one sentence. Some of these students were seen as Indonesian
despite their background.
There
was a large clique among the senior students whom everyone labeled
“Indonesian”, or “Indo” for short. But the so-called “Indonesian” group
consisted of Javanese, Balinese, Chinese and Indian students, as well as
children with mixed parentage
There
were also Korean, Filipino and Taiwanese nationals who were fluent or
semi-fluent in Indonesian and called Indonesia home.
Regardless
of what was officially printed on their passports, there were many students
who espoused a sense of Indonesian nationalism. These nationalisms came in
different forms.
Dae
Sik (all students’ names are pseudonyms), a male student, had an antagonistic
sense of nationalism. “This is my country,
so the bule [white foreigners]
shouldn’t mess with our country,” he said, while perched precariously on
the back of a bench. Dae Sik was talking about Indonesia. He grew up in
Indonesia, but he was technically South Korean.
“But,
aren’t you Korean?” I asked. “Of
course,” he responded, “it’s in the
blood.” As far as Dae Sik was concerned, there was nothing inconsistent
about being both Indonesian and Korean.
Dae
Sik spoke fluent Indonesian, English and Korean. But even though he was
officially Korean according to his passport, he always hung out in the
“Indonesian” group because he could not relate to the Koreans anymore. “Nggak nyambung [can’t connect],” he
said of his Korean peers.
One
time Dae Sik and a few of his friends took drastic measures to prove their
nationalism toward Indonesia. According to a fellow student, Dae Sik and his friends were at a nightclub
when they took offense at something that a male American classmate had said
to their female Indonesian friend.
So
later they hired some bodyguards and visited their American classmate at his
family’s home to intimidate him.
Dae
Sik strived to show himself worthy of calling Indonesia home by taking an
antagonistic stance toward his more foreign-looking Western peers. His
friend, Shane, agreed. Shane said of their Western peers: “They walk around
like they own the place. So we put them in their place. It’s my country. This
is my home.”
Ironically,
Shane’s father is British, though his mother is Indonesian.
Others
were skeptical of Dae Sik and Shane’s nationalism. Anaya, an ethnically
Indian girl with a Spanish passport who grew up in Indonesia, said, “It’s a show they put up. They don’t
really have anything to be angry about because they have everything that they
want.” According to Anaya, putting on a nationalistic show gave these
wealthy boys a sense of “power”.
In
contrast, Jason expressed his sense of nationalism by exercising his right to
vote as an Indonesian citizen. He had turned 17 (the legal voting age) just a
few weeks before the 2009 presidential election. Jason was eager to vote.
“I was always looking at the news and
everything about the election to see who would make a good leader and I based
it on that. I am sort of a nationalist,” he claimed. His
parents did not bother to vote that year, so Jason went by himself to the
polls for the first time.
Jason
had a more accommodating stance toward his Western peers. Even though he did
not feel as though he could relate to them as well as he could his friends in
the “Indonesian” group, he said that he and his friends would often invite
Western students to parties.
“We don’t like to make it exclusive or
anything, it doesn’t feel right,” he explained. If fights
break out between boys, Jason reckoned they are isolated incidents triggered
by one or two who happened to be arrogant and fueled by teenage angst.
Rajesh
was also accommodating of differences. Rajesh is an Indian national who grew
up in Indonesia, is fluent in Indonesian and likes to listen to Indonesian
pop music.
He
was aware that some of his fellow foreign students were well acculturated in
Indonesia like himself, while others showed a lack of interest in the
country.
But
instead of focusing on these divisions, Rajesh chose to serve his community
by running for student council president. Rajesh won the election because he
was well liked and could talk to both Indonesians and foreigners with ease.
Rajesh also knew how to get things done to improve student life.
Whether
or not international school students are Indonesian enough depends on how we
define what it means to be Indonesian: Is it about the name of the country
printed on legal documents like passports, or is it about how you treat the
country itself?
Is
it about making a performance of nationalism like Dae Sik and Shane, or is it
about taking responsibility for the future of the country and of the
immediate community, like Jason and Rajesh?
These
are questions that lack straightforward answers. But perhaps the important
question is not whether international school students are Indonesian enough,
but why we are asking these questions to begin with. After all, identities
are complex. ●
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