No tax on knowledge

No tax on knowledge

"Education is crucial to ensuring Indonesia's ability to survive in an era of international competition in the next century." There is no denying the truth of this statement made by President Soeharto in a seminar on education in Magelang, Central Java, the other day.

It does seem a bit ironic that at the same time as the head of state is acknowledging the importance of education, intellectuals and publishers here are crying out against and fighting the periodic raising of the prices of newsprint, which started last month. That the price hikes for newsprint will increase book prices, and undoubtedly have a significant impact on education, is beyond question.

As some educators have pointed out, the rise in book prices will surely threaten the reading habits of our children, which in the last several years have been deteriorating to such an extent that many intellectuals have raised the alarm about the possibility that coming generations will be progressively less "literate" and "creative".

The growing influence of television on our children over the last several years is alarming enough because, as many educators have warned, television tends to make children more "passive". On the other hand, it is commonly believed that books will facilitate imagination and creativity, thus having a more positive influence.

Hence, one can imagine what may happen if the book prices go higher and even higher, which can be expected if the current policy of adjusting the newsprint price every three months prevails. Surely, we will suddenly find out that books belong among luxury goods, which millions of our lower income people could not possibly afford.

Another irony is that the newsprint price hike has not caused as major a public outcry as occurred when the cement price went up a few months back. The concerned people now lashing out at the newsprint price hikes are mostly publishers, educators and intellectuals, who are well aware of the policy's overall impact.

And it is obvious that the government is not as jumpy as when the cement price increased. The ruling political group, Golkar, has yet to set up a special team to study the newsprint price rises, and there has been no "order" yet from anyone high up to lower the newsprint price.

We suspect that the perception that newsprint is of lower strategic status than cement in terms of national development is behind all of this.

We are of the opinion that if the current notion regarding newsprint as something unimportant continues, then we are in the danger of falling into cultural and educational impoverishment. In the long run this will be much more dangerous than failing to reach the construction target set for housing. For without proper education we will certainly never reach the dream of becoming a just and prosperous society as our Constitution stipulates.

Another thing, for the last several years we have repeatedly announced with fanfare that we will turn ourselves into an industrial country by the next decade and in line with that we will "seize" the necessary knowledge from developed countries in order to master science and technology. But, while we acknowledge the importance of education and human resources in reaching those goals, we seem to forget to adjust and synchronize our policy to achieving those ultimate targets.

The fact that we regard "newsprint as less important than cement", for instance, is a reflection of faulty logic. Hence, we should remember and follow the policy of "no tax on knowledge" that many developed countries and some developing countries exercise.

We understand that in the present age of economic liberalization, everything will be determined by the market. But, because we are far behind those developed countries in many fields, if we really want to catch up with their educational standards, we will have to take drastic measures. For example, we should not only exempt materials, which may help to improve our education, including newsprint and import books, from taxes, but also should provide subsidies and other necessary encouragement.

More than a hundred years ago, the noted English poet, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, once said "Show me your books and then I'll tell you who you are." We are afraid that if nothing is done to halt the rising of the newsprint price, then many of us will have no books to show. It is very hard to imagine, what kind of nation we will be then.