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