Beyond Just Reading
Eighty-one years ago, this nation proclaimed its independence to break free from the shackles of colonialism. Yet, in today’s classrooms, a fundamental epistemological question still looms: are our children truly free in their thinking?
Currently, Indonesia’s greatest challenge is no longer eradicating illiteracy, but eradicating ‘reasoning illiteracy’—a condition where learners can functionally spell out text but fail to understand, analyse, and verify the truth behind those strings of words. Freedom of learning must not be reduced to a mere administrative formality of class attendance; it must be realised as freedom of reasoning.
If we engage in historical reflection, it would be unfair to turn a blind eye to the various qualitative and quantitative achievements this nation has attained. Indonesia deserves appreciation for its constitutional commitment to consistently allocate 20% of the State Budget to the education sector. The systemic impact of this budget policy is real: the Net Enrolment Rate for primary schools has surpassed 98%, while the rate for junior secondary schools remains robustly high. From the western to the eastern borders of the archipelago, physical facilities and technological inclusion are gradually reaching the frontier, outermost, and disadvantaged regions. Demographically, the state has successfully brought Indonesian children into schools.
However, in critical pedagogy studies, getting children into a classroom is one thing, whereas providing a learning experience that liberates the mind is quite the opposite. Behind the majestic school walls, empirical indicators present a reality that jolts our critical thinking. PISA data consistently places the reading literacy scores of Indonesian students at the bottom tier globally. The most alarming finding is that more than 60% of 15-year-old students in Indonesia have not reached the minimum proficiency level in reading. This figure is not merely a technical statistic; it is a portrait of a cognitive crisis: millions of our young generation are proven capable of reading a paragraph, yet they falter when asked to draw implicit inferences, cannot distinguish objective facts from subjective opinions, and are extremely vulnerable when facing disinformation in the chaotic landscape of digital media.
This learning disorientation brings us to the classic critique by philosopher Paulo Freire regarding the phenomenon of ‘Banking Education’. In Freire’s pedagogical discourse, a paternalistic education system tends to reduce learners to passive empty vessels into which teachers ‘deposit’ material, rote memorisation, and dogmatic formulas. Students are accommodated to comply with multiple-choice frameworks rather than being invited to engage in intellectual inquiry. This condition aligns with the views of Indonesian education expert Prof. HAR Tilaar, who asserted that ‘Liberating education is education that teaches critical thinking, not blind obedience to a technocratic curriculum.’ When classrooms are conditioned solely to produce standardised, single answers, we are systematically killing the natural inquisitiveness that is the primary fuel for a nation’s innovation.