Provinces' good science students

It was a great surprise to read news of the brilliant achievement of the Indonesian Physics Olympiad Team (TOFI), consisting of eight senior high school students, which unexpectedly emerged as top winner in the fourth Asian Physics Olympiad (APhOIV) held in Bangkok, Thailand, from April 20 through April 29 (Kompas, May 2).

The Indonesian team won six gold medals and two honorable- mention awards. Among the winners of gold medals were students from two state high schools -- from Yogyakarta and Denpasar, Bali, and four from private high schools, one each from Regina Pacis, Bogor; Xaverius I, Palembang; Taruna Nusantara, Magelang and Sedes Sapiantiae, Semarang.

The two winners of honorable-mention awards (an award recognizing future winning potential) were from Jambi and Surabaya.

Apart from winning gold medals, other awards of distinction were won: the Special Prize for Most Creative Solution in Experiments, won by Rangga Perdana of Taruna Nusantara private high school of Magelang; the Best Result in Theory, won by Widagdo Setiawan from a state high school in Denpasar, Bali and the Best Result in Experiments, won by Bernard Ricardo of Regina Pacis private high school of Bogor (Kompas, May 2).

A remarkable feature in this context was the absence of cities like Jakarta, as the nation's capital, and Bandung as the renown education center -- not represented by successful contestants from high schools there.

At this point, Kompas, in its editorial of May 3, remarked that our sense of pride in the victory of the students was all the greater because the high schools whence the winners hailed were from the provinces. This attested to the potential of outer regions to be represented by talented students in international competition in specific branches of basic science, given an opportunity and proper guidance and training.

S. SUHAEDI, Jakarta