Education the key to industrial transformation
Education the key to industrial transformation
JAKARTA (JP): Education plays a major role in the process of transforming an agricultural society into an industrial one and in curbing the cultural clashes that might occur in the process, Minister of Education and Culture Wardiman Djojonegoro says.
Speaking at the fourth national workshop of the Indonesian Association of Moslem Intellectuals (ICMI) here on Saturday, Wardiman said education was the "instrument for structural change" and therefore could maintain the equilibrium needed between industrial culture and traditional values.
"In a developing society, changes within a culture or within the values adhered by the culture, should be well-planned and structured so the society can control them," Wardiman said.
Education, he continued, is a good way to accelerate such changes. By preparing the necessary human resources through education, the changes that are expected to happen will be systematic and future-oriented, he added.
Wardiman said the education sector was prerequisite to conduct development in other sectors such as economy, industry, science and technology, socio-culture and security and defense.
"Education is seen by many countries as an extremely important factor and they use it as a part of their development strategy... On the other hand, if development in a country fails, education is sure to be the first to blame," Wardiman said.
President Soeharto in his speech on the draft state budget for 1995/96 last week announced that the human resources sector -- comprising education, national culture, religion, youth and sports -- would obtain a budget of almost Rp 3.4 trillion (US$1.5 billion).
For education, the budget will be used to provide elementary school buildings, textbooks and other school facilities and to upgrade the academic qualifications of elementary and junior high school teachers.
Wardiman explained that there were currently great barriers faced by education in playing the important role of "instrument for transformation" as education itself had its problems.
"Any efforts to revive and change education in Indonesia always calls for enormous actions because of the huge number of teachers and pupils and other factors," Wardiman said.
There are currently 1.8 million teachers in the country, of which 1.2 million of them are elementary school teachers. This figure makes up 46 percent of the 4.96 million civil servants in the country.
"From the total amount of budget allocated to education, 80 percent of it goes to pay teachers' salaries and the rest is used for operational and maintenance costs," he said.
Emphasizing that finance was not the only problem in education, Wardiman said the government planned to upgrade the academic qualifications of teachers, thus elementary school teachers should at least own a 2-year college diploma, junior high school teachers at least a 3-year college diploma and senior high school teachers at least a degree holder.
For this purpose, about 900,000 or 78 percent of elementary school teachers, 150,000 or 54 percent of junior high school teachers and 62,000 or 34 percent of senior high school teachers have to be upgraded.(pwn)