Teaching illiterates brings delight

By Prapti Widinugraheni

JAKARTA (JP): Who says people lacking formal education -- or drop-outs at least -- are less civilized than their more well- read counterparts? Only tutors, presumably, say it is often more pleasurable teaching the above rather than teaching an average school student.

Haryadi, a young senior high school teacher and volunteer tutor at the Miftahul Jannah Foundation, says his "students" at the foundation "are more polite and not as demanding as school students."

The reason for this, he believes, is because the foundation, located in a cozy home in the middle of an East Jakarta kampung, not only teaches the most basic reading and writing skills to the local people, but also handicraft skills and religious lessons such as Koran reading.

The Miftahul Jannah Foundation is among the many groups spread across the country which are helping the government in implementing its ambitious nine-year compulsory education program aimed at reducing the country's illiteracy.

Under the Kelompok Belajar Paket A, or Kejar Paket A, and Kejar Paket B programs, it is the goodwill of foundations like Miftahul Jannah, and tutors like Haryadi, that determines the success of the government's ambitious plans.

The Kejar Paket A (A-Package Study Group) program was launched in 1984, when the government introduced the six-year compulsory education program for children between the ages of six and 12 years old.

The programs, implemented by volunteer tutors, were created to fill in the urgent demand for more elementary schools.

The completion of several sub-packages of Paket A allows a warga belajar or "studying citizen," to earn a certificate equivalent to that of an elementary school graduate.

Nine years

This year, the government extended the compulsory schooling scheme to nine years, to cover the three years in junior high school in addition to the six years in primary school. To complement the extended compulsory education program, the government introduced, Kejar Paket B.

Foundations like Miftahul Jannah integrate the compulsory education program with other social and religious services, thus achieving two goals at the same time.

This year it won the award for the most successful Kejar Paket A program for the Jakarta provincial level.

"Each study session is followed by a session of Koran reading, which has proven effective in strengthening their faith," Haryadi said, acknowledging the good behavior of his teenage students.

Coming from the lower end of society's economic scale, his students are elementary school graduates who had either dropped out of junior high school or did not continue their studies after finishing elementary school.

Neli, his co-worker for the Paket A program, pointed out that the keyword for tutors is patience. This is understandable, given that most of the Paket A students are women whose ages range from 17 to 70 years of age.

"Teaching them is often a tough job...but I've noticed that those with a strong will are most likely to progress," said Ana, her colleague.

Most Paket A students come from the low income bracket. The women are wives of daily-paid hard laborers, fruit or vegetable sellers and other such jobs with income barely sufficient to cover the family's basic needs.

"Our classes are not always full, because our students often have family matters to attend to," said Ana.

The tutors acknowledge they know most of their students personally because they live in and around the neighborhood.

"It's quite easy to know their situations at home, because in many cases a mother studies at our Paket A program while the child is a Paket B student," Haryadi said, explaining his relationship with his students.

Illiteracy

Since the government announced the six-year, and later the nine-year, compulsory education program, Indonesia has succeeded in reducing its illiteracy rate from 31.4 million (39 percent of the total population) in 1971, to 30 million (29 percent) in 1980 and to 21.5 million (16 percent) in 1990, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics.

UNESCO's 1993 statistical yearbook ranks Indonesia sixth on the list of countries with the largest number of illiterate population, with 20,899,440 illiterate people aged 15 and above, or 11.6 percent of the population.

Statistics also provide another startling fact -- that the majority of the illiterates live in urban areas and not in rural areas.

According to Abdul Manaf in his article Perkembangan Penduduk Buta Huruf di Indonesia (The Development of the Illiterate Population in Indonesia), the main reason for this is urbanization, which tends to bring illiterate rural people to the city, as well as what he considered a "degradation" where those who became literate experienced a set-back and become illiterate once more.

Soedijarto, the Director General for External Education at the Ministry of Education and Culture, said fluctuations in the rate of illiteracy were likely to occur because there is still a high number of drop-outs from the first and second grades of elementary schools.

"Failing to recognize and provide the correct support for these drop-outs may lead to a another rise in the illiteracy rate, " he said.

In the 1991/1992 school year alone, drop-outs from elementary school first graders reached 114,300 students (two percent) and 76,500 students (1.5 percent) of second graders, he said.

Despite the success of several tutoring groups and foundations, Soedijarto admitted other obstacles lay ahead, haunting the success of the compulsory education plan.

These obstacles include the limited number of volunteers willing to tutor students, limited facilities, the difficulty to motivate people into attending classes, geographical difficulties which prevent the program from penetrating the country's remote areas and the lack of accurate data on the causes of illiteracy at the village, sub-district and district levels.

Soedijarto said the government is currently striving to establish more local libraries at the village level and step up cooperation with other government institutions as well as prominent public and religious figures.

"Starting this year, we will also provide Rp 15,000 (US$7) per month for tutors as an incentive," he said.

In the past, voluntary tutors were not rewarded. With the new ruling, the ministry hopes the Rp 15,000 reward will attract more people to become tutors.