Soeharto halts tryout of 5-day school week

Soeharto halts tryout of 5-day school week

JAKARTA (JP): Trial five-day school weeks in some elementary
and junior high schools will be abolished by the end of the year
as President Soeharto believes they pose overly heavy burden to
the students.

The President worries that the shorter week, with their
condensed curriculum and longer daily learning hours, will have
a negative impact on children's development in the long run.

The experiment, however, will continue at high school and
university levels as these students are generally physically and
mentally strong enough to endure the more rigorous scheduling.

Soeharto's message was conveyed on Saturday by Minister of
Education and Culture Wardiman Djojonegoro, who reported the
results to the president. The experimental school week was
intended primarily to enable students to spend more of their time
socializing.

The tryout, which followed the introduction of a five-day
working week for civil servants, met strong opposition from
Moslem leaders who feared that it would be unsuitable for Islamic
schools.

In many areas, students go to Islamic schools in the
afternoons after attending regular classes in public schools in
the morning. Moslem leaders in Java warned that the shorter
school weeks would threaten the very existence of many Moslem
schools.

The five-day school week is being tested at some public and
private schools on a strictly voluntary basis.

Wardiman quoted the President as saying that the five-day
school week was best tried out for senior high schools because
the students were physically and mentally more mature.

Burden

"A condensed curriculum would become a heavy burden for
students at the elementary and junior high schools and the
learning/teaching process wouldn't be optimum," he quoted the
President as saying.

Wardiman said a shorter school week would have been impossible
to implement in poor areas where children traditionally have to
help their parents earn a living.

In some areas, poor parents may not able to afford lunch for
their children at school, he said. This, he added, may spark
social jealousy if some of the students come from wealthy
families.

"It's also difficult to be practiced in remote areas where
students have to walk several kilometers to school," he said.
"The economic disparity among the population is a major problem."

President Soeharto, according to Wardiman, stressed that
Indonesia should, instead, focus on how to make the nine year
compulsory education a success.

The government this year extended the compulsory education
program from six to nine years for areas which already have
adequate facilities.

"The nine year compulsory education scheme has to be secured
in the first place," Soeharto was quoted as saying by Wardiman.
(pan)