'Animal Farm'

Of all the ridiculous plans that have ever come out of President B.J. Habibie's office, the projected ban on parents sending their children to study abroad, at least until they reach university age, must qualify as one of the most absurd. The reason given for the ban was that the sense of nationalism among children who studied abroad was found wanting. The plan, unveiled by Minister of Information Muhammad Yunus at the end of a Cabinet meeting to discuss national welfare problems on Wednesday, drew scant attention and publicity, probably because the nation seems to be more preoccupied with other important issues. Yet, the lack of publicity, and therefore public reaction, to the plan means that it will get a swift passage with little if any opposition.

The number of parents who have the financial means to send their children to foreign schools cannot be large, especially now with the plunge in the rupiah's exchange rate. Nevertheless, the plan is a gross violation of any parents' right to choose what education they think is best for their children. All decent parents will be concerned for the future of their children, and therefore will want to give them the best education they can afford. If they cannot find it here, they should be allowed to send their offspring abroad. Banning them, as the government intends to do now, is a human rights violation. It is ironic that the plan should be unveiled on the same day Habibie promised to the whole world that his administration will respect and protect people's human rights.

The fact that many parents, including undoubtedly many Cabinet members themselves, have sent their children to study abroad, is mostly a reflection of their lack of confidence in the quality of the local education relative to that which they can buy abroad, rather than a reflection of their financial means. Many more concerned parents, given the chance, would send theirs too.

For the past 30 years, the national education system has been continually reformed by every incoming education minister as Indonesia struggled to find the best format. Quantitatively, the New Order government succeeded in providing schooling for all school-age children, but on the other hand there appears to be an erosion in the quality of school graduates. The violent interschool fights, or tawuran, which occur far too frequently in Jakarta and other big cities nowadays, are symptoms of a bigger problem: the overall state of national education.

Rather than trying to stop parents from sending their children abroad, the government should be more concerned about improving the quality of our national education. Then, there will no reason for parents to look for alternative education, and no reason for the government to issue the ban in the first place.

The more disconcerting part of the government's plan however is the reason cited by Yunus: that children who study abroad are not as nationalistic as those who study at home. We cannot recall any empirical study conducted on the subject. The assertion can only be a very rough guess. Since this was the outcome of a Cabinet meeting, one can only assume that the President and ministers present had talked about their children's behavior, and then concocted the ban for the rest of the nation.

Moreover, no one, particularly not this government, has the monopoly right to define what the term "nationalism" means, and much less determine who is nationalistic and who is not. We appear once again to be degenerating into George Orwell's pig-run Animal Farm regime with a paraphrased motto that goes "We are all nationalistic, but some of us are more nationalistic than others".

This nation has only just come out of one repressive Animal Farm-type regime in which everyone claimed to be Pancasilais, but in which some of us appeared to feel more Pancasilais than others, and felt therefore the right to torment the rest of the nation.

The very people who claimed to be the most Pancasilais were also the most corrupt and repressive. All the nation's leaders in the past went through various screening stages, supposedly to select the nation's best sons and daughters. They passed various Pancasila and other leadership indoctrination programs for the privilege of leading the country. Many of them turned out to be the worst kind, unfit to lead, and they even brought this nation into its present deep crisis. Unfortunately, many of these self- righteous corrupt people are still running the show.

To test their sense of nationalism, we should line up these officials and politicians who went through various screenings and indoctrination courses next to children who are studying or have studied abroad, and assess which of these two groups is more nationalistic. If taken purely on merit, the officials and politicians should feel ashamed of their poor record. If assessed by definition, it all depends on how one sees nationalism. One thing for sure, the definition cannot be a monopoly of the government.