Superschool
Superschool
Mochtar Buchori's "Viewpoint": Super schools making inroads into RI society (The Jakarta Post, Jan. 6, 1996) examines the emergence of "superschools" providing high quality education in Indonesia. I would like to add some observations from the point of view of an entrepreneur who has recently opened a superschool, catering to children aged one-and-a-half to six years.
I established the Bogor International Pre-School because there was no high quality preschool that my three-year-old daughter could attend in Bogor. The school is truly international, accepting both Indonesian and expatriate children. Without exception, all parents of children enrolled in the preschool are delighted with the school; after only four months of operation, tremendous progress can be seen in the English language ability of the non-English speaking children.
I don't agree that superschools are "elite". Superschools must be more expensive than regular schools because they have various facilities not found in regular schools and because they must pay much higher teaching salaries than regular schools.
The emergence of superschools, like any new economic activity, should be welcomed because they keep capital, that might otherwise go to an overseas school, in Indonesia. They pay taxes and fees to the government and provide quality employment opportunities. Furthermore, superschools, as opposed to super- duper schools, provide the option of quality education to that level of the middle class which could not afford an overseas education. Prior to the emergence of superschools, only expatriates had access to quality education in Indonesia; Indonesians had to leave the country to get it.
Mochtar Buchori guesses that superschools attract parents who want their children to be fluent in Indonesian and English by the end of their high school education.
In my experience, super preschools attract parents who wish to exploit the fact that children learn languages very easily in the preschool years.
In fact, superschools should produce fluently bilingual children before entrance into high school.
Mochtar Buchori tries to pinpoint the essential characteristics of a superschool and the basic difference in curriculum between the superschool and the regular school. In my opinion, the most important difference between the two types of schools is not in cost or in use of the English language, but in the approach to teaching and the learning process. The superschool teaches children to think and reason for themselves, to be creative and to question, using processes of experimentation and discovery, from preschool years on. The superschool instills love of the written as well as the spoken word, respect for others and their differences, understanding of the environment and its fragility, and much, much more.
I invite Mochtar Buchori to visit Bogor International Pre- School to observe at first hand a superschool in action.
NINA STOLTZ
Bogor International Pre-School
Bogor, West Java