Ciganjur school fosters a love of nature in the young

By PJ Leo

JAKARTA (JP): On a tranquil morning in the southern Jakarta suburb of Ciganjur, the students of SAC began to arrive in cars, on motorbikes or on foot, escorted by their parents and other family members.

They lug large school bags containing their textbooks, clothing and food, descending 46 steps from the parking area to their leafy school compound.

There are three school buildings, with a teachers' common room and library, all built on stilts in the architectural style of Bengkulu. There is also a mosque on the 6,000 square meters of land at Sekolah Alam Ciganjur (SAC), a school which puts the study of nature at the top of its curriculum.

"It took us a long time to find a location which was sufficiently lush and green in the Jakarta metropolitan area like Ciganjur to build SAC," said Yusriana Lendonovo, wife of Lendonovo, one of the school's founders.

"The owner of the compound is Citra Nurul Falah Foundation which originally planned to build a Muslim boarding school. But because of the unresolved financial woes, the construction of the boarding school was not realized, so we from Alam Semesta Foundation sought cooperation to build a school based on nature."

SAC, established in 1997, currently has 119 students, ranging from play group to the third grade of elementary school. There are 16 teachers, all of them graduates of either the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB) or the University of Indonesia.

There is an average of 20 students to a class, and two classes for the play group, based on age. The first is for under-threes, the second for those over three years.

When the school bell rings to mark the start of lesson, the students remove their shoes before entering the classrooms one by one.

After filing out an attendance list on the whiteboard under their respective teacher's guidance, the students yell in delight as they leave their classrooms without walls for their weekly morning physical education session.

"We do morning physical exercise on Wednesday only, followed by outward bound games, such as an adroitness game to develop the children's physical and mental faculties," said the school's principal, Iman Kurniawan.

"In the outward bound games the children's bravery is tested, such as how to cross a river by walking along a rope tied to two tree boughs at a height of 10 meters, or how to climb a steep slope and go up through a net."

After the outward bound games are over, the students get dressed in suitable clothes for their next activities.

Some of them set off to do some gardening, such as planting or observing flora. Others look at livestock, feeding the cattle and jotting down their observations. The reports are submitted to their teachers.

"The method we apply at this school is to learn in the realm of nature, using the media of nature, and learning from nature," Yusriana said.

Despite the school administration's good intentions, it has encountered difficulties in obtaining an operation license from the education ministry. The regional office has yet to issue the document.

"I'm disappointed by the government's procrastination in issuing an operation license, as this school is aimed at studying nature," said Dian Kartika Sari, a private company employee and a supporter of the school. She and her colleagues have contributed to the school from their earnings teaching foreign children in Jakarta.

She argued the government should take the school as a shining example.

"The government should have been more responsive to this school for nature. If children already know how to preserve nature, when they are adults they'll probably have a greater appreciation of it, unlike now when the forests are denuded and wild animals are hunted."

Another supporter of the school, Endah Sarawati Adhiguna, said the education ministry was doing the children a disservice by not issuing the accreditation.

"It doesn't matter to those still in the play group or kindergarten, but what if the parents of some elementary school students move to other cities, and the children who are already in the third grade have to start from scratch because their is no letter from the ministry?"

SAC also emphasizes lessons about Islam in addition to its regular curriculum.

Registration fees are Rp 1.5 million for the play group, Rp 2 million for kindergarten and Rp 3 million for elementary school. The monthly fees are Rp 150,000 for the play group and kindergarten, and Rp 200,000 for the elementary school, although Yusrina said needy parents were only required to pay what they could afford.