Give kids education they deserve

Give kids education they deserve

By Johannes Simbolon

What can you expect from a teacher who receives only Rp 25,000 (US$11.30) per month? The following story reveals the grim situation of two primary schools in a village, near Bogor, two hours' drive from Jakarta. It shows that Indonesia's program of compulsory education for elementary school children has yet to benefit every part of the country.

BOGOR, West Java (JP): It was just another morning in Nanggung village, Jasinga district, Bogor regency. Simply another day for Pak Ujang (not his real name), 51, a Bahasa Indonesia teacher at the Koleang II primary school.

In front of him were about 60 children. The kids actually belong to two separate classes, Class 1 and Class 2, but due to a lack of space they sit in one classroom with two blackboards: one for Class 1, the other for Class 2.

"siapa nama orang itu. pak alex namanya. datang dari mana dia. dari Ambon... (what's the name of that man. his name is mr. alex. comes from where, he. from Ambon)," Pak Ujang wrote on the board.

It was full of mistakes. There were no question marks, no capital letters. He read it out aloud, and Class 1 repeated. The Class 2 students occupying the two rows of desks on the right looked on as spectators.

"Ambon is located in the country of Maluku, which is far away from the country of Java," he told the children in Sundanese vernacular.

Again mistakes. He used the term "country" instead of "island" for Maluku and Java.

Ujang graduated from a rural primary school in the 1950s. He has served as the school's warden for many years, after being asked by the school principal, Oman, to help teach the children because of a shortage of teachers.

A few minutes later he stepped across to Class 2 and read aloud from a longer and more serious text. It was Class 1's turn now to attentively watch their seniors. After a while, Ujang moved back to the "classroom" of the junior pupils before returning again to the seniors. That's the way he teaches them.

If Koleang II primary school was in Irian Jaya or Kalimantan, its circumstances would not be surprising. There have been many reports about the lack of educational necessities in such remote areas. As it happens, the school is only a two-hour drive from Jakarta.

Nanggung village, which borders the state-owned Jasinga rubber plantation, has a population of about 3,000 people. There are plenty of grim stories there that might open our eyes to the standard of education received by some, perhaps many, Indonesian children in the midst of the current national euphoria over the claim that the Indonesian compulsory elementary school program is a success.

Shortcomings

Besides Ujang and the principal Oman, the school's 150 pupils have only Sahamah, 21, a graduate of a local aliyah (Islamic high school), who teaches on the basis of a monthly Rp 25,000 (US$11.30) honorarium from the children's parents; and Suryani, in her 30s, the only formally trained teacher. Teaching part-time and replacing any of the school's four staff in case of sickness or absence for other reasons, is Teti Susilawati, 24, a charming midwife assigned by the government to supervise the village's puskesmas (community health center).

"I teach classes 5 and 6. They sit in one classroom and I move from one blackboard to the other (like Ujang)," she told The Jakarta Post.

She was recently asked by Bogor Regent Eddy Yoso Martadipura to help with teaching at the school on a purely voluntary basis. Eddy made the suggestion after paying a visit to the school and being moved by the conditions he observed there. For Teti, the part-time job is not new because, when she was as a student at a high school for paramedics, she used to help her mother teach at the primary school in her home village of Sukajaya in the Cigudeg district, Bogor regency. Her mother was then the school's only teacher.

The Koleang II primary school used to have enough teachers. However, one by one they have returned to their hometowns. Under a government regulation teachers, who are government employees, are allowed to move after they have completed a five-year stint in a place assigned to them by the government. Sahamah and Suryani are staying because they have bonds with the village. Sahamah is native of Nanggung and Suryani is married to one of the locals.

To the teachers, the lack of instructors is not a cause of despair or apathy. Instead, it has moved them to become more dedicated and to expend more and more energy on their work.

"I have an acute stomach illness now as do many fellows," said Tahmid H. Harun, principal of the Koleang VI primary school in the neighboring village of Lebak Dangdur. Tahmid, who hails from Ternate, Maluku, admitted that he regularly taught three classes simultaneously, whenever one of his teaching staff was sick.

Tahmid is one of more than 4,000 high school graduates "imported" from Maluku in 1977 by the then governor of West Java, Aang Kunaefi, to fill vacancies in many primary schools in the Bogor, Sukabumi and Cianjur regencies.

Lack of teachers is one problem. Another problem is the poor facilities. Before the regent's visit last month, the four classrooms of Koleang II had broken floors, revealing soil here and there, and broken bamboo-plaited ceilings through which water poured in whenever it rained. The regent immediately pledged Rp 15 million for restoration work.

Time has taught the villagers a lesson: Trust yourself! A government-paid contractor from town built the school's first classrooms in the early 1980s. The buildings collapsed within one year. The villagers built the new ones on their own. Despite the broken floors and ceilings, they are still standing. Now, with the money from the regent, the villagers insist they will carry out the repair work themselves.

The Koleang VI school had very similar experiences.

"Look at this," a sad Tahmid said, pointing to the floor of one classroom, which was covered with gray powder. "The government-appointed contractor from town fixed the cement floor on a Rp 7.5 million budget. In one month, the whole floor has turned to dust, affecting the children's health."

"It would have been better if they (the government and the contractor) had kept Rp 2.5 million of the funds for themselves and let us do the work with the rest of the budget," he mumbled.

Drop out

Despite all the difficulties, the teachers still cherish the dream that their pupils will make progress and succeed in life. To their disappointment, many of the children quit school or do not continue with their studies at a higher level. Of the 30-or- so children who join the first grade each year, only about 10 remain after six years and fewer still continue to junior high school.

Before a junior high school was built two years ago in Koleang village, about five kilometers from Nanggung, the number of Koleang II primary school graduates who went on to junior high school was even smaller. The children used to have to walk 10 kilometers to Jasinga, the district's capital, to attend junior high school. As there are no buses connecting the village and the small town and the townspeople refused to give the children lodging, the only alternative to walking was to go by ojek (motorbike taxi) which cost Rp 3,000 ($1.30) per trip. That was simply unaffordable for the villagers, who earn between Rp 2,500 and Rp 5,000 ($1.10 and 2.20) per day from sapping rubber trees and digging rocks.

The new junior high school in Koleang village was expected to encourage students to continue their studies after primary school. However, the number of dropouts remains high. The children quit school because of a combination of poverty, on one hand, and the ignorance of their parents about the importance of education on the other.

"There are many cases where the parents withdraw their children from school because they cannot afford the so-called counseling, supervision and development fee of Rp 600 (34 US cents) per month. We then exempt them from the fees. But they are ashamed of sending their children back to school," said Tahmid.

Primary school tuition fees were abolished in 1984 with the introduction of the compulsory primary school program. The pupils do not have to pay the BP3 (counseling, supervision and development) fees which are meant to cover, among other things, teachers' honoraria and the purchase of school equipment, such as chalk.

Given the degree of poverty, any donation, however negligible, is a boon to them.

"Recently we received 3,000 exercise books from the Yamaha motorbike company. All the parents were happy. Each kid received 15 books," said Omon, pointing to the children, each of which was carrying the slim "Yamaha" books.

Some of the children who drop out of school end up helping their parents with their work, but most of them are working in textiles or printing home industries in urban centers as big as Jakarta, earning a salary of about Rp 7,500 ($3.40) per week

"Every month, there are Chinese coming here from Jakarta to recruit the kids. We can't stop them because the parents gladly accept them and they always come in the company of the villagers who serve as manpower brokers," said Amir Husen, chief of Nanggung village.

Given all that, it is not surprising that after 50 years of Indonesian independence, only one of the natives of Nanggung village and the surrounding area has graduated from university.