No cause for celebration
It is certainly symbolic of the lot that teachers in this country have to endure that yesterday -- Nov. 25, National Teachers' Day -- passed practically unnoticed by all but a very few. This is tragic, given the nation's need for better-trained and better-educated human resources in an increasingly competitive global environment.
Among teachers of the old generation, those who received their training under the Dutch colonial system, the caustic joke still goes around that their government ministry, the Ministry of National Education, could be more accurately named the Ministry of Teachers and Forced Labor -- or, in Dutch, the department of "Onderwijzers en Heerendiensten", a sarcastic reference to the department's old name of Onderwijs en Eeredienst (Education and Religious Worship) in the colonial period.
Of course, as social and political jokes normally go, that crack at the way teachers are still being treated at present -- after 57 years of independence -- is an exaggeration. Nevertheless, sad to say, it aptly illustrates the general unfairness and ill-treatment of teachers in general, especially those employed in government schools. Not only are salaries in the teaching profession generally among the lowest in government service, teacher's paychecks are often cut by unscrupulous provincial officials for a variety of reasons, real or invented. Often, they are also late in reaching their addresses, especially in remote areas of the country.
All this makes one wonder why this should be so. Until relatively recently, the teaching profession was held in high esteem by many of the hundreds of ethnic groups that inhabit this vast archipelago. Even in the early years of Indonesia's independence -- somewhere in the late 1940s and early 1950s -- teachers were held in high esteem and many young and talented Indonesians made it their ambition to become teachers after graduating from college.
How that old prestige lost its luster is not precisely known. It seems that the subject of the decline of the stature of the teaching profession lacks sufficient intellectual interest to warrant a study. Many observers, however, believe that the slide began somewhere in the late 1950s or early 1960s, to accelerate in the 1970s under the influence of society's increasingly materialistic outlook. As teachers' salaries failed to keep pace with the growing thirst for wealth among Indonesians, fewer and fewer young Indonesian university or college graduates felt attracted to the profession. This, in turn, led to a decline in quality and hence to a further loss of prestige. At this point it seems that the nation has not succeeded in finding a way to escape this spiral of decline.
Yet, Indonesia's future standing in the world lies in the hands of its teachers. Many Indonesians who recall how in the 1950s Malaysia relied on teachers it recruited from Indonesia to help build its modern education system, now note with concern how the tables have since been turned. In many fields of expertise, such as information technology, Malaysia is now far ahead of Indonesia.
What all this leads up to is that it is high time for Indonesia to make a real effort to catch up with other countries in this part of the world in developing a modern base of industry and technology. For that purpose enough qualified teachers must be provided to take on the task of training the human resources that are necessary. That, again, means improving the lot and the prestige of teachers to attract the best and the brightest of Indonesia's younger generation to the profession. In short, Indonesia must make every effort to find its way back to its old respected place in the world of education by stopping the downward slide and moving up the spiral once again.