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