Bilingual schooling a fantasy or reality?

Bilingual schooling a fantasy or reality?

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