Education to Enhance Intellectual Life
It is not too late to undergo fundamental reorientation. All depends on a serious and strong determination to build an education system that enhances the intelligence of the younger generation of Indonesian reformers.
In the Preamble of the 1945 Constitution, our founding fathers formulated the most important responsibilities of the government on the ground: to promote public welfare, enhance the nation’s intellectual life and participate in contributing to order and peace in the world.
The first two responsibilities are obviously fundamental to the government’s role and contributions in the global constellation, especially in executing independent and active foreign policy.
We have watched nations achieve remarkable levels of welfare and progress, thanks to their education systems that elevate intelligence and respect for human dignity. Most nations have attained high standards of living without having abundant natural resources, but instead through the accumulation of social capital by developing quality human resources.
The fruits of accredited, quality-oriented and consistent learning are strong character and high integrity, which in turn encourage the development of nations and states with high civility and justice, as well as support for sustainable progress.
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From historical records, the determination and manifestation of promoting education for indigenous peoples can be traced back to two outstanding institutions of the past. The first was Perguruan Taman Siswa, which was founded by Ki Hadjar Dewantara in 1922. The learning process at this school aimed to build self-reliance and later, to nurture the spirit of personal freedoms as an embryonic movement towards independence.
The famous motto of Taman Siswa, “ing ngarso sung tulodho, ing madyo mangun karso, tut wuri handayani” (setting examples to lead, motivate from within, support progress from behind), advocates mutual strengthening and empowering cooperation. As one of the three founders of Indische Partij (Indies Party), Dewantara inculcated the egalitarian principle that rejected exclusivism and individualism in education, and even changed his aristocratic name, Raden Mas Suwardi Suryaningrat, when he returned from the Netherlands, where he had been exiled in 1913-1919 for providing education for all to break down primordial, discriminatory and feudal divisions during his time.
The second was Indonesisch Nederlandse School (INS; Dutch-Indonesian School) Kayu Tanam in West Sumatra, which was established in 1926. INS Kayu Tanam founder Mohamad Syafei prioritized education that was tailored to the needs of its students and the people. INS Kayu Tanam readied youths as agents of change by instilling confidence, initiative and individual capabilities in them, as well as by educating the people to aspire toward independence (Setya Raharja, 2008).
The substance of education is the optimal cultivation and stimulation of autonomous activity to produce autonomous individuals.
The establishment of these two schools was inseparable from their founders’ profound awareness of the colonizers’ discriminatory treatment of indigenous people, at the same time serving as a clever strategy to deal with the Ethical Policy for education, irrigation and transmigration, which was basically used to support the interests of the Dutch and their cronies. Instead of providing school graduates as cheap workers to fill low-ranking posts in the colonial government and foreign companies, Perguruan Taman Siswa and INS Kayu Tanam fostered their students to become independent individuals, without referring to the formal occupations made available and needed by the Dutch East Indies administration.
From these national education figures’ farsighted philosophy, performance and vision, we can draw a valuable lesson on the substance of education for developing and managing ingenuity among young people. The substance of education is the optimal cultivation and stimulation of autonomous activity to produce autonomous individuals.
Ignoring this substance will lead to various quandaries and invite different mechanisms unsuited to the natural instinct of humans as beings that learn, who should be allowed the freedom to develop their autonomy and talents. In this context, the message of national hero Tan Malaka is relevant: The aim of education is to hone intelligence, strengthen determination and refine emotion.
Educational achievements
It should be admitted that our educational achievements are still far from satisfactory. Universal indicators like the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) that rates 15-year-old students’ capabilities in literacy, mathematics and science show us hovering in the low rankings during 2000-2018.
Likewise, literacy and numeracy rates among people aged 16-65 in the 2018 Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), which was limited to Jakarta, also showed a worrying fact. We were at the lowest level, left far behind other countries. The OECD will hold the same survey this year, and our ranking is expected to worsen as a result of the pandemic.
This gloomy picture indicates slow response to the low quality of our education that should be seen as a sign of danger and a threat to the nation’s advancement. It also reflects an inaccurate policy direction for enhancing the nation’s intellectual life, which should pivot on rationality, character, and local resources and wisdoms.
These low educational achievements show up on the national manpower map. Over 43 percent of workers had average education of junior high school and lower. Parallel to this, a low rate of independence was detected from the ratio of entrepreneurs to the total population that reached just 3.47 percent, with Indonesia ranking 74th out of 137 countries on the 2019 Global Entrepreneurship Index.
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In the global competition that requires innovation-driven growth, we are clearly lagging far behind. The total number of lecturers or researchers with doctoral degrees is less than 40,000. Just compare this with China and India, which have almost 1 million doctorates, most of who have specializations in basic, applied and technological sciences. The majority of our doctorates’ backgrounds are in religion and law.
This condition is congruent with the quality of higher education institutes (PTs) in Indonesia. Referring to Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings 2022 that ranks the top 1,300 institutions in the world, 16 Indonesian institutions appear in the rankings, but only four rank among the top 250-500 institutions: Gadjah Mada University, University of Indonesia, Bandung Institute of Technology, and Airlangga University.
All the data and facts now face three major challenges on the national and global scale, which are Industry 4.0, management of our demographic bonus, and growing and connected awareness over building a green economy. These challenges that are highly important in determining the nation’s civilization demand an appropriate strategy that involves all stakeholders.
Multidimensional poverty
We are also still afflicted with structural and multidimensional poverty. The first stems from an ecosystem that is not impartial and does not ensure equal treatment of economic players. Complicated and expensive regulations have not yet been reduced significantly. Among the other indicators are a high incremental capital output ratio and hampered efforts to strengthen 64 million micro, small and medium enterprises.
Economic rent is ongoing and corruption remains high. Uncontrolled liberalization favors only a small number of players that possess extraordinary capacity in assuming market hegemony. Inequity in national asset management, which remains in the hands of the few, serves as undeniable proof of structural poverty and regulations that stink of collusion.
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> Acceleration of Education Technology
The disparity in asset management and distribution requires an immediate response, because in the end, it will determine the success or failure in escaping from the middle income trap. The state’s helplessness in overcoming this chronic and structural problem will invite the latent danger of social tension and hamper the growth of a new middle class, which are sorely needed to increase national production capacity, investments and sustainable growth.
Structural poverty has spread to another type of poverty, multidimensional poverty, which is swelling. Several studies confirm that the level of multidimensional poverty is far higher than relative or absolute poverty. The acute deprivation of poor people’s access to the three basic rights of education, health care and decent living standards, needs policies and concrete actions to prevent increasing the prevalence of malnutrition that is expanding the population of stunted children and various other indicators of backwardness, which have a major aggregate impact on the Human Development Index.
Reduction of significance
The above essentially leads us to return to the basics by reviewing the objectives of the establishment of the nation and state as stipulated in the Preamble of the 1945 Constitution. Fragmented interests, social-political segregation and disoriented values need to be ended promptly in order to commit to realizing the nation’s aspirations, their priorities already designated by the nation’s founding fathers.
Over the post-Reform period, we have wasted many opportunities to consolidate all the nation’s forces towards focusing on the main goals of the state. The recurrence of collusion, corruption and nepotism (KKN) on a more serious scale, which has turned into oligarchy and orchestrates valueless political and economic systems, has led to the entropy or reduced significance of the national horizons.
The impacts of poor comprehension and implementation of the aspirations of independence has not only pushed back the national strategic goals but also placed a great burden on the people and coming generations. It is not too late to undergo fundamental reorientation. All depends highly on a serious and strong determination to build an education system that enhances the intelligence of the younger generation of Indonesian reformers.
Suwidi Tono
Suwidi Tono, Coordinator, “Menjadi Indonesia” Forum
This article was translated by Aris Prawira.
