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.