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)