Education system in Indonesia

Your article on the Indonesian educational system (The Jakarta Post, Nov. 5) leaves a lot to be desired. Perhaps a way to evaluate an educational system is to look at the success of its graduates.

When I did my PhD at the University of Manitoba in Canada from 1996 to 2000, there were 83 lecturers on staff who were originally from India, more than half as many from China and none from Indonesia!

How many internationally acclaimed scientists from Indonesia in either the natural or social sciences are widely known? Why does the fourth largest nation in the world produce so few scientific research papers in renowned international journals?

Unlike schools in the West, where critical thinking and individualism are encouraged while teaching dogma is banned -- most Indonesians don't even know that religious instruction is not allowed in public schools in the West -- Indonesian schools continue to foster the opposite.

Teaching children blind obedience and beliefs based on insufficient (or contradictory) evidence, such as religious dogma, is contrary to teaching them to be intellectually curious and to rely on the scientific method in their thinking, which is the best thing we've got in the last 200 years. Without the scientific method, we would perhaps still be counting how many angels can sit on top of a pin (a major intellectual pursuit in Europe during the Middle Ages).

No wonder some Indonesian parents are not happy with Indonesian education and choose private western-like schools instead for their children in spite of the high cost. Perhaps it is time to take a hard and critical look at "Indonesian educational values that the private schools must respect to be allowed to operate", which the editorial refers to without explaining these values.

If Indonesia wants to have an internationally competitive workforce, a major overhaul of its educational system is only the first step in a long process that lies ahead.

NESA ILICH Calgary, Canada