Education of what kind?

Education of what kind?

People say that the West should finance better education for
Indonesia, and if that is so, then what is really required?
Clearly one area is to broaden the viewpoints of Indonesian
students so they can see the world for what it is. This poses the
million-dollar question as to who is in a position to really know
and who is qualified enough to teach? No one is truly neutral as
that is almost impossible to be, and therefore teachers tend to
teach as they are told to, rather than being innovative and
exploring other viewpoints. Even history is written in the main
by the victors, and war films totally dominated by the Americans.

Unfortunately there are nowhere near enough qualified teachers
in these islands, and therefore a real need exists to educate the
teachers as to how and what to teach. That exercise on its own
would take some years to even achieve a level that was considered
anywhere near adequate.

At the moment it is money and profit that tends to dominate
education as expensive, private schools try to strangle each
other in the competition to satisfy the bank account. At the
other end of the scale you have insufficient and under-qualified
teachers who earn peanuts and soon become ineffective and
understandably disgruntled.

Before the West donates whatever is required there is a need
here to rethink the whole education system so that money can be
directed to worthwhile institutions that really care about
educating children and in the future of Indonesia, as opposed to
the greedy waste-of-time schools that are only profit orientated
and unfortunately there are hundreds of them.

DAVID WALLIS, Medan