Foreign language study on the decline in city schools

Foreign language study on the decline in city schools

JAKARTA (JP): More than 100 qualified German language teachers
in Jakarta's senior high schools are teaching everything but
German, an officer of the city's education and culture office
said yesterday.

Henny Liestiana of the city's office, who chaired a conference
on German language teaching yesterday, said the teachers were now
teaching subjects like sociology and history even though they may
not have mastered them.

She said the cause of the problem was that since the
introduction of the 1994 education curriculum there have not
enough students willing to take a second foreign language at
school.

According to the new curriculum, students in social science
departments no longer have to take a second foreign language.

The only students required to take a second foreign language
are those in language departments, she said.

And the ministry requires that at least 12 students must
indicate they want to study languages before a school can set up
a language department.

Henny said that it was difficult to get these numbers.

"Most students are not interested in languages," she said.

Many people wrongly assumed that there was no future for
students who chose languages, she said.

"In fact, mastering other languages is essential in the global
era."

Henny said that of 527 senior high schools in Jakarta only 50
had a language department.

Henny was speaking yesterday at a press conference on "German
Language in the Global Era" put on by the Goethe Institute
Jakarta in Central Jakarta.

The head of the institute's language teaching section, Henning
Schroedter-Albers, said Indonesia had about 200 German
entrepreneurs, factories, institutions, all needing employees who
speak German.

Schroedter-Albers said that to promote interest in the
language, the institute had awarded scholarships to senior high
school teachers, had trained German language lecturers from 10
teacher training institutes throughout the country, and run short
courses in three universities.

It also provided student scholarships, he said.

In 1997, 80 Indonesian postgraduate students are studying in
Germany through the German Academic Exchange Service. (ind)