Dilemma of elite education

Dilemma of elite education

By Jai Singh Yadav and John Phillips

YOGYAKARTA (JP): In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman on the earth. She was given many gifts, such as beauty and cunning, from the Gods, who also gave her a box, which she was instructed not to open. However, her curiosity got the better of her and finally she opened the box, only to let out all of the evils which now plague humankind. The only thing she managed to save in the box was "hope".

Indonesia can be compared to Pandora certainly with respect to the many gifts bestowed on it, especially its overall beauty, wealth, history and culture. However, Indonesia has also been plagued in the past with such things as colonialism, exploitation, and economic disparity.

Since its independence on Aug. 17, 1945 Indonesia has achieved remarkable results in overcoming most of the problems associated with these evils, but the most difficult problem to solve, that of economic disparity, persists as it does in most of the rest of the world.

One of the most widely used and perhaps best means of narrowing this gap and promoting upward mobility in any society is education. Primary and lower secondary education are seen by development specialists as being the key to economic development and prosperity of a family, society or a nation.

Governments sponsor education as a means of development, often using an established national curriculum to "teach" values and ideals that sustain a national identity and promote national goals. In sponsoring education for nation building purposes, governments tend to control and centralize decision making as they nationalize curricula for efficiency, convenience, and unanimity.

Unfortunately, this concentration of power and authority is removed considerably from the local educational context in which most schools operate, and the system may suffer from rigidity and a lack of imagination in addressing either the individual or local needs of the students.

Parents begin to look for alternatives to public education as soon as their circumstances allow them to do so. Private education then begins to grow in approximate accordance with the growth in the economy, even spilling over the borders of that country into countries with more "advanced" educational systems.

Wealthier parents "buy" the best education possible for their children, if allowed to do so. Better education leads to better opportunity, so the "privatization of education" inevitably leads to a paradox, in which the great "equalizer", education, becomes another way in which economic and social disparity are increased.

Indonesia has always had its "private" schools, in which some things that are generally believed to improve education, such as better teachers, better facilities and better materials, could be purchased, although disparity in education was minimized by the national curriculum, among other measures. Wealthy Indonesians have also always had the option of sending their children overseas to receive a so-called modern education.

However, allowing children to study overseas is also disadvantageous to a country in at least two ways. First, it takes a considerable sum of money out of the local economy and puts it into the economy of another country, as is evidenced by the fact that educating foreign students is big business in many English speaking countries.

More importantly, educating children overseas ill prepares them for their responsibilities as citizens of their native countries, and creates additional attitudinal barriers between the haves and the have-nots by indirectly encouraging elitist attitudes. The elitism that accompanied colonialism is sometimes sustained in former colonies by new "mandarins", who come from the wealthy and privileged class.

It matters little in this sense that the foreign elite no longer dominate a country if local ones continue to believe and act in elitist ways. Such attitudes are not uncommon among those who have enjoyed special privileges and status by virtue of their wealth and influence. Educating children overseas fosters the development of these attitudes to the extent that the children may almost become foreigners in their own countries.

The solution to this paradox, which has already cropped up in news items and articles over the years, lies in the recent development of new "truly" elite schools in Indonesia, particularly in the Jakarta region.

Commentators have suggested that the schools may serve as "models" for curriculum development and decentralization of education in Indonesia. Others criticize the amount of money being poured into such schools, although most educators believe that simply spending more money on facilities does not necessarily improve educational quality.

These developments have come at a critical juncture in the development of Indonesian education, in part because this is really a very critical time for educational reform across the globe.

All educational systems throughout the world are currently being viewed as inadequate, with respect to the future needs of "world citizens" (For this, one may see our article It's time to become 'Global Villagers', published in The Jakarta Post, Jan. 27, 1994). Governments and educators everywhere are trying to determine how to educate people to deal with the changes coming in the next century. Many educational systems are locked into a past which the future is rapidly making irrelevant.

At the same time, there is a real need for educational systems to preserve that which binds people together into a common purpose and understanding, while it provides the stability needed if radical changes are going to be made without breaking that society apart. In fact, no positive change is possible in education without the preservation, through education, of eternal truth and shared values, that bind the society together. This has been one of the strengths of Indonesian education since independence, and it has been achieved through strong leadership.

But, all school systems in the future must teach both the key skills, concepts and traditional values that allow the society to function properly, and assists students in adopting to new conditions not previously envisioned when the older curriculum were designed. In this sense, strong leadership is still important, but it is also important that educational systems have the ability to mold themselves to the local environment in which they operate, since change in a society is neither uniform nor entirely predictable.

The issues in the development of elite schools in Indonesia have already begun to emerge. Some of these issues have been identified above as issues involving combating elitism while encouraging improvement in educational quality, decentralizing decision making while retaining strong leadership, and curricular reform while retaining key societal values needed for consensus building.

If elite schools are to have a significant and positive effect on Indonesian society, then they need to do more than simply provide a better education for a few fortunate children.

These schools must seek ways of helping Indonesia solve the 21st century world educational riddle of how to educate people as both citizens of a particular country and as citizens of the world. They must be institutions that generate real curricular reform, that is usable in average schools, as well as those with riding stables, in the sense that the curriculum must be flexible and functional enough to fit the local, national, and world environments in which they operate.

Elite schools must be institutions that teach young people about the basic worth and dignity of all people, regardless of ethnicity, economic, religious, or social circumstances. They must be institutions rooted in the communities in which they exist as they welcome all levels of the society to participate in the educational process.

In other words, they must strive to be inclusive and not exclusive. They must be leading institutions, that finally assist the government in reducing bureaucracy and decentralizing decision making, even as the government works to build consensus and to ensure equal opportunity, based on social justice, for all children to pursue their basic educational rights as far as their abilities will take them. Finally, these elite institutions must represent the best hopes of mankind that were left in Pandora's box, and not the evils that escaped.

Jai Singh Yadav is an educator from India and presently visiting Associate Professor at the Faculty of Letters, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta. John Phillips is also an educator, from the United States, and is presently attached to the English teaching project at the School of Post Graduate Studies at the same university.