Education bill and the real mess behind the educational system

Education bill and the real mess behind the educational system

Elwin Tobing, Founder, The Indonesian Institute, Jakarta,
elwin@theindonesianinstitute.org

Anyone new to the debate on the education bill recently
endorsed by the legislature may be forgiven for thinking that the
issue was about religion, not education, given the main
controversy surrounding it.

Yet for years, our national education system has been in a
mess. Problems include a shortage of teachers and a limited
education budget. National spending on education as a percentage
of national output is one of the lowest in Asia. Other concerns
include a poor quality of teaching, inadequate textbooks and a
low standard of postsecondary institutions.

According to a survey conducted by Asiaweek magazine in 2000
on the 77 best multidisciplinary schools of Asia and Oceania,
University of Indonesia and Gajah Mada University, the best
performers from Indonesia, were ranked at No. 61 and No. 68,
respectively. Kyoto University was ranked No. 1 and the National
University of Singapore was No. 4.

Our institutions of higher education are behind those of
Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand. The University of Malaya in
Malaysia was ranked No. 41, University of the Philippines was No.
48 and Thammasat University in Thailand was No. 51.

The low quality of college and university graduates is another
concern. From 1982 to 1998, unemployment among the educated labor
force continued to increase while the number of jobless workers
who were less educated decreased, a trend that is likely to be
seen in the five years following 1998. In the early 1990s, former
education minister Wardiman Djojonegoro tried resolving the
problem by introducing a concept of link and match. The concept,
however, was a failure as the gap between the labor market and
education, especially postsecondary education, continues to
widen.

The latest results from the nationally administered final
exams for senior high schools only adds further weight to the
messy problem. About 10.6 percent of the public high school
students who took the exams across the nation failed.

The disgraceful results occurred in West Sumatra, East Nusa
Tenggara Timur and North Sulawesi, where the rate of failure was
30 percent, 29.54 percent and 26.47 percent, respectively. That
means 12,044 high school students of the 37,522 who took the test
in West Sumatra, failed. This number is not a mistake. If one out
of every three high school students cannot pass their final
exams, there is a serious problem with our educational system.

The failure rate among vocational high school students is even
worse. Almost half of the vocational high school students in East
Nusa Tenggara could not pass the test. Nationally, there were
900,000 students from public high schools and 500,000 students of
vocational high school students who took the exams.

Dikmenti Suharyanto, the national head of the vocational
school program, said mathematics was the main cause for the
students' failure, followed by English. About 25 percent of the
students from vocational schools who failed performed poorly in
maths. At one public high school in Jakarta, 17 of the failing 20
students had flunked the exam because of the English section.

Improving the quality of teaching, redesigning the curriculum
and hiring more qualified teachers for the two subjects would be
obvious solutions, however, this all implies an increase in
spending. But the new Education Law also implies more of the
same. The government has to deploy 100,000 religious teachers.
Minister of Religious Affairs Said Agiel Munawar said that the
government was ready to deploy 30,000 additional teachers funded
by the state budget and an additional 70,000 teachers would be
recruited from the Ministry of National Education.

Ours is not only a rapidly changing era but also a
technologically demanding one. Globalization means ferocious
competition in almost all aspects. The fundamental key to
survival and prosperity is the ability to acquire knowledge, and
education is the means to do that. The fundamental purpose of
education is to teach students how to imagine, think, analyze and
propose solutions to problems as well as how to behave.

To be able to compete internationally, our entire population
has to be better educated than the populations of our
competitors. Our secondary schools and colleges need to strive
for excellence in all fields and particularly in science and
technology.

Our universities and research institutions have sufficient
human and financial resources to be able to compete globally as
well as to bring them closer to the business sector. Our teachers
have to be better teachers. Our students have to become
multilingual with English as their second language. Every student
will need to do things better than they are at present. The key
to the future is what is being taught in today's classrooms.

Just like a monument, education endures not because of the
bricks but because of what they represent. Its true foundation is
neither of rock nor symbols, but of values such as liberty and
freedom; the freedom to question and to explore the answers of
any question. These core values, which underpin education and the
development of our society, have to be solid.

But the recent debate and the new bill have revealed something
else. We tend to be more interested in symbols rather than
addressing the fundamental problems that are worsening our
education system. Instead of taking care of the mess, the
politicians, leaders and many influential figures in our society
are trying to appease the masses.

As a nation, our huge task goes beyond improving the education
system. We also have a huge mess in our national economy and
fsecurity. The number of unemployed in the country almost totals
40 million. The number of people living in poverty has also
reached about 40 million. Since 1998, large numbers of people in
different parts of Indonesia have had to flee from one part of
the country to another, primarily as a result of political
conflict and ethnic violence.

The official number of internally displaced persons in
Indonesia has hit more than one million. It accounts for more
than 20 percent of the total number of people who have been
forcibly displaced by internal conflicts, intercommunal violence
and related violations of human rights in Asia. Many are in need
of basic assistance, protection and reintegration and development
support.

This huge task demands sincerity, not dishonesty. It requires
a respect for differences, not disrespect. It demands
cooperation, not the alienation of others.