Poverty snags education

Poverty snags education

By Yassir Nasanius

JAKARTA (JP): The virus currently ailing Indonesia has
apparently spread beyond politics, our morals and the economy.

The minister of religious affairs inferred that the crisis has
also spread to the world of education. (Kompas, Jan. 11). He said
today's classrooms lack an atmosphere of learning. He called for
reforms to the education system, particularly the quality of
teachers. At present, he said, the country badly needs teachers
who can set an example for their students.

Again and again teachers are seen as the main culprit for the
decline of education. Teachers are, many people believe, the key
to the success or failure of the education system -- that is, if
the performance of teachers improves or worsens, so does the
quality of education itself. Without losing sight of the central
role teachers have in education, it is, however, unfair to put
all the blame on them for the deteriorating education system.
There are, at least, two other factors contributing to the
decline in quality of this country's education: widespread
poverty, and the way our society values education.

Education is loaded against the poor in most developing
countries, including Indonesia. Here this is apparent in the
government funding for education, which stacks the deck against
the poor. Poor people generally have less access to education and
even when they do have access, they are more likely to fail
academically.

In Indonesia schools are not evenly distributed among the big
cities, the slums, and rural areas. Underdeveloped areas in the
city and rural areas have fewer schools, and the existing ones
tend to be lacking in staff and facilities. Many rural schools
have only one teacher, and a single class taking in all age
groups.

The squatter areas of the big cities are not better off.
Schools are scarcer and of lower quality than in the "official"
cities; no wonder the students from these schools are often
involved in brawls. Schools in big cities which are equipped with
computers and language laboratories are just a dream for students
living in the slums or rural areas. Teachers, like all other
professionals, prefer to live in cities where all the benefits of
what they consider to be "civilization" are found.

Children of poor families who do manage to attend school, are
still much more likely to leave prematurely. This is because a
poor student's performance is handicapped by his parent's
poverty. They will be more susceptible to disease and will lose
more study time through absence. When their parents, older
siblings, or relatives are ill, they will usually be the ones
required to replace them to work the land or earn money by
selling newspapers on the streets.

School fees are also prohibitive for the poor. Poor families
in this time of economic crisis are more likely to spend their
little money on food rather than continuing to send their
children to school. Nowadays, schools are not very different from
other businesses -- one is more like to receive better service if
one pays more. As a consequence, because they cannot afford the
"better" schools, the poor can only send their children to
schools providing minimal staff and facilities.

The way a society values education also correlates with the
quality of education received. Take Japan, for example. One thing
that the Japanese take great pride in is their human resources,
which have propelled the country to be one of the most developed
nations in the world. How can Japan produce such talented people?

Nobody would deny the fact that education plays the biggest
role here. How highly do the Japanese value education? One way to
tell how much a society values something is to see how it chooses
to spend on it.

Japanese teachers are in the top 10 percent of the country's
wage earners. Because the Japanese reward school teachers with
both high pay and high prestige, each teaching opening in this
country is met by a barrage of eager, bright, and highly
qualified applicants. The same applies to other developed
countries. In the U.S., there are many cases in which the
official salary of a school headmaster is higher than that of,
for example, a town's mayor.

What about Indonesia -- do we reward school teaching with high
pay and high prestige? In the past, although lowly-paid, being a
teacher carried high prestige; teachers were respected members of
society and therefore there used to be plenty of dedicated and
qualified teachers.

Nowadays, in the eyes of many, the teaching profession neither
carries prestige nor gives high pay. As a result, a teaching
career is often one of the last options for many people. It is no
secret that many are forced to become teachers after failing to
lay their hands on better-paid jobs.

This is the situation to be found in university schools of
education, where many professors have long lamented the lack of
ability and motivation in their teacher trainees. A great number
of students actually have no intention of becoming a teacher when
they graduate. It would not be a surprise if eager and qualified
teachers became extinct creatures in Indonesia in the future.
This can even be expected unless something drastic is done with
the reward system for the teaching profession.

That low pay and low prestige correlate with the poor per
formance of many teachers may be understandable. As explained by
Abraham Maslow, a psychologist, there are two distinct categories
of human needs: the basic, or maintenance needs, and growth
needs.

The maintenance needs are biological and physiological
requirements such as food, water, sleep, security, self esteem,
and so on. The growth needs are related to the fulfillment of
individual potential. Maslow considered that if the maintenance
needs were not met, then it would be difficult, or even
impossible, for a person to fulfill the growth needs. How can the
great majority of teachers in our country develop their full
potential if they still have a hard time fulfilling their basic
needs?

As the two factors discussed above seem to be sine qua nons
for our education system to function properly in producing
capable and talented graduates, it is imperative that the
government, together with all parties concerned with education,
find ways of empowering the poor -- giving them better access to
education.

Measures should also be taken to improve the rewards for those
who voluntarily dedicate their lives to educating our children to
become capable, functioning members of society.

The writer is a teaching staff member of the English Depart
ment, School of Education, Atma Jaya Catholic University,
Jakarta.