Bilingual education remains a fantasy for Indonesian schools

Simon Marcus Gower, High School Principal Harapan Bangsa High School, Tangerang, Banten

At the time of year when schools open their doors to receive registrations of new or continuing students for the coming academic year, all kinds of marketing ploys are being utilized to attract the eye of prospective parents and secure those signatures to fill the classrooms. From running advertisements in national newspapers to having "open days" at the school, in which parents and children may come and inspect the school's facilities and kinds of activities, numerous tactics are being deployed.

Among the variety of tactics intended to suggest that the school is the best choice for your child, the notion of tuition in two languages -- both Bahasa Indonesian and English -- is also employed and clearly this is seen as a selling point and attraction to potential students. But this notion of bilingual schooling should not be passively accepted on face value. It is wise, if not essential, to exercise careful scrutiny of precisely what the school means when it offers the idea of bilingual education.

There can be little doubt that there are precedents for bilingual education around the world. Take for example -- the United States of America where some schools that serve the Hispanic communities of that country accommodate those communities with bilingual education. Likewise, in Great Britain there are areas within cities that are mostly South Asian and so similar accommodations are made for education in both English and South Asian languages. But it is equally clear that the circumstances in Indonesia are slightly different to those examples.

Generally where bilingual schooling has existed, it has been possible to recognize that there are parallel languages in existence within the society or community that the school is part of, and so it is legitimate to incorporate some equality of languages for instruction. It is simply not possible to suppose that this kind of parallelism of languages exists in Indonesia. Anyone that suggests that it does is either being entirely unrealistic or elitist. Some students may be competent enough in two languages to receive instruction in both but they will be the minority and in this sense bilingual schooling will either sideline or entirely disregard a large portion of the schooling population.

This is not to say that bilingual education cannot be incorporated into the Indonesian school system. What must happen is the careful and well-designed introduction of the use of another, (or second) language where it may be considered appropriate and within the capabilities of the teaching staff that will administer it. Also, it has to be recognized that achieving a general education in a single (first) language is likely to prove challenging enough for students. Consistently it may prove to be too challenging and even confusing for the students to understand and think about concepts that are new to them and come to terms with them in a new, foreign language.

Examples already exist in which teachers have attempted to teach their subject using English and this use has created problems. At one Jakarta-based school an economics teacher deemed it appropriate to set a task for his students entirely in the English language and he insisted that they complete the task also using English. Now, the ambition here is admirable but ambition without the benefit of some degree of cautiousness can leave a person's efforts in the realms of recklessness and chaos. Unfortunately in this example there was some recklessness because the teacher himself did not possess sufficient knowledge of the English language. As a consequence his original documentation submitted to the students in English was littered with mistakes. Some of the students were able to note these mistakes and accommodate them but others would have been unaware of them and thus would have at least sub-consciously been learning those mistakes.

This example also illustrates the danger of over-extending the capabilities of teachers. In setting his economics task in English, it was quite likely that the teacher was going to expose himself to student answers which he would not fully understand, as his own knowledge of the language was clearly not yet nearly at a level of mastery. Where we are entrusting teachers with the great responsibility of educating children we should be able to trust that they possess a reasonable degree of mastery of their subjects.

Over-ambition or over-extension towards bilingual education can and will expose educators to shortfalls in either their knowledge or acumen to meet the high demands of bilingual teaching. Sufficient knowledge and acumen to meet these demands means that some selection of subjects, and even selection of topics within subjects, should be made in order to gauge appropriateness. Again, an example from a Jakarta school illustrates the point. An ambitious decision was made to teach some physics theory in English. It was not long, though, before this attempt had to be abandoned because the students were simply finding it too difficult to follow the theory and their first language had to be resorted to so as to clarify, and resolve misunderstandings.

There is some suggestion that the tendencies that may be observed towards bilingual education are a symptom of misgivings about the Indonesian national curriculum. Some schools evidently promote themselves on the notion that they are using curricula from outside of Indonesia -- among such curricula are the Singaporean and the Australian. Often, then, it is English language-based curricula and as such the use of English is advantageous.

This is another area where careful scrutiny and caution should be exercised. The wholesale adoption of foreign curricula is always liable to be dubious in educational terms; not least because, after all, a child in Indonesia is not a child in Singapore or Australia -- for whom and where the curricula was designed and targeted.

It is entirely appropriate for international input to find a place within the education system of Indonesia. Likewise, it is entirely acceptable for bilingual education to be adopted where appropriate. But education professionals in Indonesia should not shortsightedly adopt and attempt to implement either. They should have the strength of professional judgment to determine where such things may be most effective. In the same way, (at times when parents are looking for the best and most appropriate school for their children), parents should examine and ask questions to determine whether bilingual schooling is simply marketing fantasy or in fact holds education reality and thus value for their children.