The high school national exam results are in. Three out of ten junior high school students in Jakarta failed their national exams. Across the country only three provinces have schools with pupils that pass the exams. There are even 561 schools in Indonesia where the pass rate is zero percent, i.e. not a single pupil sitting the exam managed to get the minimum mark to pass the exams. Moreover, it is not as if the country has a high standard of education to begin with. Those who pass the exams are not necessarily bright or equipped with the right education needed in today’s world.
The question is, do we even have enough educated educators to give our children the education they need? As a matter of fact, do we have enough educated people around to make good policies in this country at all? How could we expect to have well educated children when many of our lawmakers and those in position of power are badly in need of education themselves?
The thing is fifty percent of the Indonesia’s population entering the work force only finishes elementary school, with the others pocketing at the most a high school certificate. A minuscule number attain a university degree. And we haven’t even talked about the actual quality of the schools, the teachers and the quality of the curriculum we subject the children to.
The Indonesian government has slated 20% of the state budget for education. So far however, there has been nothing to show for it other than fiddling with teachers’ salaries and benefits. Indeed, for the past decade ministers of education have been tinkering with national education policies that far from bringing the dream of making education a basic right for every child in this country any closer, only confuses everyone involved, from the student, the teacher, the parents and the schools.
If anything educational institutes have become highly commercialized over the years and out of reach for the ordinary low-middle class income Indonesian family. While a handful of young Indonesians from elite schools can excel at international competitions, the majority of our students receive well below average standard of education that will not prepare them for any employment other than the most basic and menial.
Thus, while Indonesia is blessed with a golden demographic where the majority of her population is of productive age, our human capital largely consists of unskilled and uneducated workforce unable to make a significant contribution to increase the country’s growth and quality of life.
This does not bode well for the state of our democracy and the country’s future.
Unfortunately democracy being what it is, favours the rule of the majority. However, if the majority of the population is uneducated, what we have is not necessarily the Vox Dei of the Vox Populi, but the voice of the pitifully disempowered, unenlightened and the easily manipulated.
While it is to be expected that a certain amount of dirt, greed and money would colour our democracy, as they do in any country, combined with stupidity and small-mindedness however, it makes our government and politics the domain of the hardened cynics who enjoy exploiting the simple plebs and the tenacious, power-hungry individuals whose self-serving or party interests are as huge as their national interests are minuscule.
Those in the minority who enter politics with strong idealism and dreams of fixing the country’s woes would have to work hard and have unlimited reserve of energy and unflagging optimism to rise above the inexorable pull of money, corruption and power games that have always been the hallmark of politics. Others with a bit of intelligence and critical faculty prefer to stay away from politics all together rather than be compromised.
In a world of the Machiavellians, the Cynics, the Obtuse and the Parochials playing out their passion play before the hoi polloi, is it any wonder then that a highly educated person of competence, integrity and professionalism like our Minister of Finance Sri Mulyani, would sooner or later, find herself out of synch?
Here is someone who obviously knows what she is doing and doing it very well, having to be accountable to a cacophonous caucus whose response to the logics and cogent arguments put before them is a constant cry of ‘off with her head!’ I wouldn’t be surprised if sometimes she feels somewhat like Alice in Wonderland, holding incomprehensible conversations with odd creatures who seem to follow their own illogical little rules in their own little world.
And a little world it is indeed that is occupied by the majority of our legislators. Certainly too little for Sri Mulyani whose calibre is undoubtedly global and where her skills and expertise are widely recognized and now, obviously needed. She is moving to the World Bank. No doubt she would excel in her job. But the World Bank’s gain is Indonesia’s loss.
If there is a lesson to be learned from all this, is that we need to acknowledge this loss so that we learn to appreciate what is of real value when it comes to choosing the people to run the country. We cannot keep exporting the best of our brains just because the majority of our politicians fail to understand what the country truly needs: Good, honest and hard working people to bring Indonesia to the next level in the world stage and not drag her down to the level of incompetence and petty mindedness.
(Desi Anwar: First published in The Jakarta Globe)
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