Most Indonesian schools struggling with bilingual education issue

Most Indonesian schools struggling with bilingual education issue

Eric E. Hallett, Jakarta

In previous articles, Alex Tubagus and Jan Dormer addressed
issues about bilingual education predominately within the domain
of National Plus schools or their equivalent. This provides an
extremely useful perspective of one segment of the education
market, but fails to recognize that most schools offering
bilingual instruction in Indonesia fall far short of the National
Plus level and are struggling with entirely different challenges.

These mostly private and local schools have no native speaking
teachers, let alone poorly qualified ones. They have no long-term
strategy for teaching in English. Their teachers are embarrassed
when corrected by students as the teachers attempt to provide
simple instruction in English. Yet, all of these schools have a
mandate from their stakeholders (administrators, parents,
universities) -- use English in the classroom or lose your
students to schools that do.

This leaves the door wide open in schools across the nation to
what Jan Dormer describes as "highly damaging" bilingual
education. Teachers overextend themselves linguistically and use
improper grammar and sentence structure which confuses the
students. Precious classroom time is used to incorrectly
translate vocabulary without proper supporting materials.
Students learn a random mix-and-match of academic words and terms
without learning the accompanying language skills to express
those words in discussions. And the list goes on.

The problems challenging schools at the National Plus level
are worthy of debate and our consideration. I am suggesting,
however, that another important issue on the bilingual agenda for
Indonesia be considered as well. That is, the simple fact that
most Indonesian schools are headed for disaster with their
bilingual programs because a "survival of the fittest"
environment is forcing them to undertake instruction that is
beyond their capability. They simply cannot implement a sound,
balanced bilingual curriculum without adequate resources and
properly trained teachers, which they do not have.

As educators we often look to well-developed, successful
bilingual programs in developed countries as role models of
success and how things should be done in Indonesia. However, we
must not forget that these types of programs are also partially
or completely subsidized by local and national government
funding, or financed by well-to-do parents and corporations in
societies with high per-capita income. The same access to
resources for providing quality bilingual education is just not
available to most parents and students in Indonesia.

In a previous article I argued that government standardization
of bilingual education would help alleviate some of the problems
that schools are facing and help level the playing field. This
argument assumes that government funding would also be available
to help schools adhere to required criteria for program
standardization. My assumption may be somewhat overambitious
given the ongoing inability of the Indonesian government to
adequately finance many programs that are needed in areas like
education and social welfare.

With high-cost, quick fix solutions from the government beyond
reach at the moment, ambitious educators are considering
alternative ways to provide bilingual education in schools which
are not able to afford the salaries of native-speaking teachers
and costly, imported curriculum. They are embracing a more long-
term outlook for implementing bilingual instruction which
includes the training of existing teachers with limited language
skills and the progressive development of a local bilingual
curriculum over time.

There are going to have to be compromises in how we approach
bilingual education if Indonesia wants to keep pace with the rest
of the world, and if bilingual education in Indonesia is to be
made available to the majority of the population.

For example, these alternative seeking educators must
necessarily allow Bahasa Indonesia and English to co-exist in the
same classroom and be used to discuss the same topics as teachers
work their way toward higher levels of fluency. Unlike some
"immersion" models of instruction that suggest using only one
language at a time in the class, this approach allows both
teacher and student to increase their understanding of a topic in
two languages while accommodating their shortcomings in English
fluency at the same time.

School administrators and parents are going to have to drop
their expectations about the levels of English used in the
classroom and encourage teachers to begin using simple, directive
English to begin with as they improve their conversational skills
and vocabulary over the long-term.

Eventually, these types of compromises will provide a way for
the majority of Indonesian schools using English in the classroom
to play catch-up with their more resourceful National Plus
counterparts. Unique challenges require unique solutions, even if
the solutions are not ideal.

The cost to Indonesian society of isolating bilingual
education in one resource-laden segment of the education market
is too great. We need to also address the challenge of providing
instruction in English to a broader range of students who attend
less privileged, but equally important schools. Without this
widening of our focus these schools are indeed going to find
themselves once again unable to provide good educational value
which will contribute to the ever increasing gap between socio-
economic groups in Indonesia.

The writer is the Principal Consultant and Adviser to IPECS
Consulting Indonesia, a communications consultancy specializing
in bilingual education. He can be reached at ipecs@cbn.net.id.