Push quality in textbooks: Experts

Sari P. Setiogi, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Book publishers and educators agreed on Wednesday that the recent regulation that required textbooks to be used for at least five years was not feasible.

"Having the same textbook for five years might work for science, but definitely not for social sciences, which change rapidly day by day and the knowledge of the students might be limited," said chairman of the Indonesian Publishers Association (Ikapi), Makfudin Wirya Atmaja.

Meanwhile, education expert Ki Supriyoko said that the real issue was producing quality textbooks, not procuring textbooks every five years.

"Rather than regulating how many years textbooks will be used for in schools, the government should focus on producing quality textbooks," Ki said.

Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare Alwi Shihab announced earlier a decision to keep school textbooks for at least five years to avoid the possible commercialization of book procurement.

The government usually names several textbooks considered to be of good quality, both in terms of content and presentation.

Anticorruption activists have suggested that the selection process is riddled with corruption and collusion resulting in frequent changes of textbooks.

A 1988 report issued by the Asia-Pacific Cultural Center for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said that most publishing companies in the region were only interested in making money.

Ki said at the moment there were no other countries that regulate the textbooks used in schools.

"My research in the province of South Sulawesi revealed that among 2,000 children who had completed elementary school, about 30 children could not read well. How could they graduate from elementary school?" said Ki.

Separately, teacher Niken Suryatmini told The Jakarta Post that she also had problems with the poor quality of textbooks here.

"It would be better if the government issued general guidelines on achievement targets that should be reached by students after a certain level," said Niken.

"What happened in South Sulawesi (Ki's survey finding) should not happen again," she said.

At the moment, for the elementary school level, there are 12 titles of science textbooks, seven titles for mathematics and 21 titles for social sciences.

"It is confusing as we do not know which ones passed the government's selection with the categories 'very satisfactory', 'satisfactory' and 'quite satisfactory'. Meanwhile, we know some might only pass the selection process through bribes. It is very possible we select the 'wrong' books," said Niken.