Community newspapers help boost literacy

By A Chaedar Alwasilah

BANDUNG (JP): British sociologist Basil Bernstein (1958) introduced a theory of linguistic deficiency, hypothesizing that access to social privileges depends to a certain extent on one's linguistic ability to communicate.

Socially disadvantaged people are characterized by a restricted language code, while the socially privileged are associated with an elaborated code. Although Bernstein's hypothesis was based on research conducted on native English speakers, his theory has relevance in the context of Indonesia.

The restricted language code is characterized by a lack of vocabulary, over-repetition of certain words and a lack of coherence between sentences. In other words, the language is rhetorically weak. The elaborated language, on the other hand, employs a rich vocabulary including various logical connectors which make the discourse fully coherent.

Those fluent in the code have a wide vocabulary to draw upon in the course of building up a discourse in a flexible and communicative way.

Translated into the multilingual and multicultural context of Indonesia, the restricted language code refers not only to the command of language as defined above, but also to the state of monolingualism, especially in minor or ethnic languages.

By the same token, the elaborate language can be defined in terms of the number of languages known.

The monolingual, those who are literate in a minor language, get less access to social and occupational privileges. Those who are multilingual with a command of a minor language, the national language and English, will gain higher positions in society and benefit more from national development.

Almost all jobs now require that the applicant be competent in a foreign language, usually English.

Children from poor homes, especially those in rural areas, who do not develop fluency in the elaborated language code will not benefit to the full from other schooling, the mass media and national development, and will therefore stand less chance of progressing in society.

Education in Indonesian should be designed to encourage literacy in the elaborated language code, which is the formal, public, and standard variety of the national language. Competence in English should also be strongly encouraged.

It is estimated that over 60 percent of the population live in rural areas and 27.2 million of the population still live below the poverty line. These most disadvantaged people live in 20,663 villages scattered across Indonesia.

There are thought to be at least 5.72 million illiterate people in the country, 3.31 million of whom are female. These statistics are congruent with data on education of the older generations in Indonesia.

The 1990 national census reported that 68. 4 percent of family heads in rural areas were elementary school dropouts and only 28.8 percent had completed elementary education.

In urban areas, 54.4 percent of family heads failed to complete elementary school while 34.4 percent said they had completed elementary education.

Only 6 percent of family heads graduated from junior high school or higher institutes of learning.

These statistics are alarming and will hinder efforts to develop the nation into an industrial power.

Industrialization cannot be achieved overnight, but must take place in gradual steps in time with developments in the literacy of the people.

From European history we can see that the literacy rate was relatively high when the Industrial Revolution began in Britain, and that the first European countries to import the revolution from Britain immediately invested some of their profits in basic education.

Indonesia began a literacy campaign in the 1980s through the community newspaper program. Minister of Information decrees No. 75A/1994 and No. 93/1996 reconfirmed the government's commitment to literacy development.

Fifty newspapers throughout the archipelago were officially assigned to run community newspaper programs with the objective of bridging the information gap caused by the linguistic deficiency of people in rural areas.

The program aims to reduce the linguistic deficit evident in rural areas, which observers believe is correlated to the poorer economic conditions which are also found in such areas. The assumption is that improved literacy rates will enhance participation in the national development program.

From my observation of four community newspapers in West Java -- Mitra Desa, Bandung Pos Kandaga, Mitra Dialog, and Mangle Tepiswiring -- all such publications focus their reporting on rural development issues which can be seen in the voluminous coverage which they give to themes like home renovation, cooperatives, water management, family education and health, family planning, agricultural counseling, and environmental awareness programs.

The emphasis of news in these papers is centered heavily on the local area where the readership resides.

Mitra Dialog, a sister publication of Pikiran Rakyat, is considered to be the best community newspaper in Indonesia and in Asia, according to UNESCO criteria. It is classified as a community newspaper because it focuses on a specified territory, namely the growing city of Cirebon and the surrounding region. It is an ideal model for community newspapers in multicultural Indonesia.

Community newspapers are still developing in content and management, but they have been successful in teaching people in rural areas how to improve education, control air and water pollution, look after livestock, and create a safer and more efficient transportation system, which in turn improves the general standard of living and helps to keep their economy sound.

Industrial development should progress hand in hand with improvements in industrial literacy, because to further develop the economy people must improve their ability to read and write in the elaborated language code.

The community newspaper program has been an ideal medium through which to develop literacy, however it has been difficult to introduce on a nationwide basis because of economic and cultural factors. The publications are non-profit making and have been forced to cut pages because of the monetary crisis. It is likely that many will not survive the lean times which are ahead.

Furthermore, listening and speaking skills are more developed than reading and writing skills in Indonesian society. This gap has been exacerbated by television, which generally shows programs which are more visually stimulating but cognitively less challenging than the printed word.

Television is a phenomenon of industrialized society, but to get the most out of it, people need to be better educated and have industrial literacy. Only then will they be able to interact functionally in an industrial society.

The writer is a lecturer at Graduate School of the Teachers Training Institute, Bandung.