Elite schools must balance idealism and commercialism

Elite schools must balance idealism and commercialism

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): This is a story about parents who felt betrayed
by a school they once trusted, and about the difficulties they
had in restoring that trust. The moral of the story is that trust
cannot be restored by parents and teachers alone. The school
yaysan, or foundation, which provides the capital and early
running costs of private schools, must also be involved in this
effort.

A young mother came to me recently expressing frustration at a
rise in her children's school fees. This middle class woman had
enrolled her children in a private school, at considerable cost
to her family.

It is common for the initial investment capital and operating
costs of many new private schools to be quoted in U.S. dollars.
Some private schools also hire expatriate English teachers, who
are usually paid in U.S. dollars.

As the rupiah has weakened against the dollar, so foundations
controlling private schools have felt compelled to safeguard
their financial position, and have done so either by increasing
school fees when they are charged in rupiah, or stipulating that
fees are paid in dollars. In the school attended by the children
of this young mother, fees are charged in rupiah and have been
increased by as much as 40 percent.

A number of parents panicked after hearing this bad news. The
bill paid by the lady in question for her two children's monthly
school fees rose to Rp 2.52 million, and will rise again, to Rp
2.8 million, when her son moves up to Elementary School at the
end of the school year.

This is stretching her family's financial means to the limit.
Both she and her husband are employed by Indonesian companies and
are paid in rupiah. They are afraid that they will be unable to
pay the tuition fees in the not-too-distant future.

"What shall I do?" she asked, "shall I keep my children at
this expensive school and let the whole family suffer? Or shall I
move them to an ordinary school and let them suffer? You know
what traditional schools are like in Indonesia. Teachers have
absolute power over children and if parents question their wisdom
on any occasion they get angry and ask them to take their
children to another school," she said.

I could not give any real advice, only suggesting that this
young couple discuss the matter with other parents. Surely they
are not the only parents on the horns of this dilemma. There must
be other parents facing the same situation.

About two weeks later I heard that the parents did indeed have
a meeting with other concerned parents and teachers at the
school. The school principal told the parents that they too were
shocked and upset by the increase in fees. Domestic teachers felt
aggrieved at what they saw as favoritism demonstrated toward
expatriate teachers. Foreign teachers were upset because they
felt their colleagues, the parents and students blamed them for
the entire school's problems.

The school management had received two very moving letters,
one from a student in fifth grade, written in English, and
another from a group of students in the junior high school
composed in beautiful Indonesian.

The letter from the fifth-grader informed the principal that
his mother was unable to pay the increased school fee. He pleaded
with the principal not to increase fees and in return was willing
to clean the classroom and toilets, and study without the cooling
influence of air-conditioning. The letter from the junior high
school students also asked that fees not be raised because, they
said, their parents had become poorer.

The principal and teachers were entirely sympathetic to the
plight of families with children at the school. However, the
decision to raise school fees was not theirs, but had been taken
by the foundation which provided the funds to set up the school.
The school is effectively controlled by members of the
foundation, who run it as though it were a business. The
principal recommended that the parents met with the foundation
board to discuss the matter directly.

The meeting took place and demonstrated starkly that an almost
unbridgeable gap exists between parents and members of the
foundation over the most appropriate response to present economic
difficulties. The teachers are caught between professional
loyalty and their paymasters. Wisdom is needed to find a solution
that can serve the interest of all parties concerned.

There are two lessons that can be taken from this story.
First, schools must strike a healthy balance between idealism and
commercialism if they are to become respectable and durable
educational institutions. A private school can be run neither as
a business enterprise nor a charity alone, but must combine
elements of both.

Second, the most important question to ask in the depth of
this crisis is whether we each want to merely save our own
respective skins, or if we sincerely want to emerge into better
times as a whole and unified nation, wiser and bearing greater
dignity.