Sun, 05/17/2009 1:37 PM | Discover
Economics students at the University of Indonesia are encouraged to take on a co-curricular program during their course of study. Last semester, I set about to find out more about its Informal Education program for elementary school children.
I chose the program because, at high school, I had been involved in teaching children from fishermen families in Tanjung Priok, North Jakarta, and children from a village in Wonogiri as part of a trip to Central Java.
The informal school run by UI's Economics Faculty aims to raise awareness and enlist the support of students in teaching children from underprivileged families living around the Depok campus.
The program started in 1968 when the faculty was still located at Salemba, Central Jakarta, with students teaching children from schools on Jl. Kenari and other areas around Salemba.
The informal school ceased activity when the university moved to Depok, until the Faculty Senate revived it in the mid 1990s.
At present, the faculty has a partnership with the SD 12 and SD 14 elementary schools.
In the program, student teachers engage children in hands-on activities, bringing to life material from the school curriculum. This approach makes learning fun and easy to understand. The children also find it exciting to pay their visits to the faculty building every Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon for the extra lessons.
The program also provides scholarships and organizes excursions to places of educational interest.
Before I decided to join in the program, I observed a class of sixth graders taught by my seniors. I was captivated by their eagerness to learn new things. On the next day, on my way to campus, I met some of the students crossing the road hand in hand and they greeted me: "Kak *older sister*, will you be teaching us next semester?" I knew then that I wanted to be a part of the program.
Nobel Prize winner and renowned economist Amartya Sen says that a country's growth is indicated by the expansion of people's capabilities. Sen credited his educational attitudes largely to his school years at Santiniketan, the progressive co-educational school set up by Rabindranath Tagore in rural West Bengal, India. The school fostered curiosity rather than competitive excellence and sought to foster students' understanding of the communities within and around the school campus. It was also at Santiniketan that Sen became involved in running evening schools for children in neighboring villages.
This same spirit of development is at work in UI's Non-Formal Education program. The program has grasped the fact that the fundamental purpose of economics is to understand the resources and potential of a country, both human and natural, so that people can have a better life.
When I sat side by side with Citra, Riska, Nurul and Romi - my first group of enthusiastic sixth graders - I realized that such a program could be the key to the first two of the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, set to be achieved by 2015.
The first goal is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, while the second is to achieve universal primary education. All Indonesian children need education if they are to rise above the poverty line.
Economist Sri-Edi Swasono writes that the expansion of people's capability creates freedom, which fosters self-esteem and a sense of responsibility. It creates a multifaceted freedom: Free from dependency, enslavement, debts, illiteracy and so much more.
The creativity of these children, who are in my care for a just few hours every week, not only speaks of the potential of Indonesian children but of educational institutions as well.
When universities take part in educating children, they are taking part in nation building. A better life for all means a partnership at all levels of society, joining hands across our beautiful archipelago and across the world.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Classrooms brought closer to children in remote areas
For the last eight years, students of state-run elementary school SD Negeri Cibutun at Simpenan district in Sukabumi regency, West Java, have been forced to study in makeshift classrooms built voluntarily by local residents.
The makeshift classrooms were built to help facilitate long-distance teaching and learning activities so students did not have to walk 7 kilometers to reach their permanent school building.
Cibeas hamlet in Kertajaya village - where the makeshift school was located - is one of the remote areas, about 80 kilometers from the city of Sukabumi. Most of its residents live in the hills and use Pelabuhan Ratu beach as their front yards.
A member of the long-distance teaching and learning committee, Nano Ginsang, said an agreement to build the makeshift school was reached in 2001.
"Initially all students in Cibeas hamlet were forced to study at SD Negeri Cibutun, which was only accessible by walking along small and meandering paths along the edge of the shore," he said.
"Because storms frequently hit the hamlet, especially during the rainy season, many parents who were worried about their children's safety demanded the long-distance teaching and learning activities be held here," he said.
Nano said at least 102 students were now attending the long-distance school, which was also used to accommodate students of state junior high school SMP Negeri 1 Simpenan.
Because the SMP students' permanent school is also located further away, it is convenient for them to join the long-distance school activities. Eleven teachers were hired to teach both the elementary and junior high school students - 10 are volunteers and one is a contractor.
"With the help of the National Community Empowerment Program *PNPM Generasi*, we were able to build three classrooms, now used by sixth-, fifth- and first-graders. The second-, third- and fourth-graders are still using the old makeshift building, so we hope the government will give us more funding so we can build three other classrooms and a teachers' room," Nano said.
A PNPM Generasi officer in Sukabumi, Dedi Rustandi, said since 2007, his office had channeled funds amounting to Rp 2.12 billion to repair 50 classrooms in 37 elementary schools in Sukabumi. Another Rp 1.17 billion was also disbursed to repair 28 classrooms in 26 SMPs in the regency, he said.
"The construction of the three classrooms in Cibeas was just completed last March, Dedi said.
Meanwhile, secretary of Sukabumi Education Office Maman Abdurahman said out of 1,300 elementary schools in Sukabumi, 1,050 were damaged and needed immediate repair. And out of the 188 junior high schools, 20 percent were badly damaged, he said.
Soenoe Widjajanti, a PNPM Generasi management consultant, explained the government had hired the PNPM to implement the Healthy and Smart generation program to help speed up three of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), namely providing universal basic education, lowering labor mortality rate and improving mothers' health.
Soenoe said under the program, the government provided the community with grants to cooperate with facilitators and health and education service providers.
Since 2007, the Healthy and Smart Generation program has been implemented in 22 regencies in three provinces, namely West Java, East Java, East Nusa Tenggara, North Sulawesi and Gorontalo.
In 2007 alone, the program was implemented in 129 districts in 20 regencies in the five provinces, and in 2008 in 176 districts in 22 regencies, while the location for the implementation of the program this year has not been decided yet, Soenoe added.
The makeshift classrooms were built to help facilitate long-distance teaching and learning activities so students did not have to walk 7 kilometers to reach their permanent school building.
Cibeas hamlet in Kertajaya village - where the makeshift school was located - is one of the remote areas, about 80 kilometers from the city of Sukabumi. Most of its residents live in the hills and use Pelabuhan Ratu beach as their front yards.
A member of the long-distance teaching and learning committee, Nano Ginsang, said an agreement to build the makeshift school was reached in 2001.
"Initially all students in Cibeas hamlet were forced to study at SD Negeri Cibutun, which was only accessible by walking along small and meandering paths along the edge of the shore," he said.
"Because storms frequently hit the hamlet, especially during the rainy season, many parents who were worried about their children's safety demanded the long-distance teaching and learning activities be held here," he said.
Nano said at least 102 students were now attending the long-distance school, which was also used to accommodate students of state junior high school SMP Negeri 1 Simpenan.
Because the SMP students' permanent school is also located further away, it is convenient for them to join the long-distance school activities. Eleven teachers were hired to teach both the elementary and junior high school students - 10 are volunteers and one is a contractor.
"With the help of the National Community Empowerment Program *PNPM Generasi*, we were able to build three classrooms, now used by sixth-, fifth- and first-graders. The second-, third- and fourth-graders are still using the old makeshift building, so we hope the government will give us more funding so we can build three other classrooms and a teachers' room," Nano said.
A PNPM Generasi officer in Sukabumi, Dedi Rustandi, said since 2007, his office had channeled funds amounting to Rp 2.12 billion to repair 50 classrooms in 37 elementary schools in Sukabumi. Another Rp 1.17 billion was also disbursed to repair 28 classrooms in 26 SMPs in the regency, he said.
"The construction of the three classrooms in Cibeas was just completed last March, Dedi said.
Meanwhile, secretary of Sukabumi Education Office Maman Abdurahman said out of 1,300 elementary schools in Sukabumi, 1,050 were damaged and needed immediate repair. And out of the 188 junior high schools, 20 percent were badly damaged, he said.
Soenoe Widjajanti, a PNPM Generasi management consultant, explained the government had hired the PNPM to implement the Healthy and Smart generation program to help speed up three of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), namely providing universal basic education, lowering labor mortality rate and improving mothers' health.
Soenoe said under the program, the government provided the community with grants to cooperate with facilitators and health and education service providers.
Since 2007, the Healthy and Smart Generation program has been implemented in 22 regencies in three provinces, namely West Java, East Java, East Nusa Tenggara, North Sulawesi and Gorontalo.
In 2007 alone, the program was implemented in 129 districts in 20 regencies in the five provinces, and in 2008 in 176 districts in 22 regencies, while the location for the implementation of the program this year has not been decided yet, Soenoe added.
`SLANG' ENRICHES INDONESIAN LANGUAGE, DICTIONARY
Wednesday, May 27, 2009 2:18 AM
Lebay, parno or even mak nyuss are some Indonesian words that you will not find yet in a formal Indonesian dictionary, but many use those in daily conversations.
Those words refer to Indonesian street language for exaggerating, paranoid and yummy, and here media is playing an important role in familiarizing such words.
Professor of Indonesian literature Harimurti Kridalaksana said that such things naturally occurred in the community, either in the archipelago or across the universe.
"It's fine using such words as long as we know when and where we use them. Who knows those words can be put in formal dictionary someday," said the professor from University of Indonesia during a break of a seminar on language and nationalism in his campus.
But formal Indonesian must have always been used when someone wanted to write a scientific writing or maybe talked to an elderly, Harimurti added.
The seminar was part of the commemoration of the first use of Indonesian on May 2 at UI's Faculty of Cultural Science.
Harimurti said many still thought that Indonesian as the nation's language was made official in Youth Pledge (Sumpah Pemuda) on October 28, 1928, but it was actually born during the first Youth Congress on May 2, 1926.
"It was the formal introduction of the national language on that Youth Pledge, the result of the second Youth Congress," said Anhar Gonggong, a historian of UI who was also a speaker at the seminar.
May 2 is also a commemoration of National Education Day.
Besides celebrating the birth of Indonesian language, the event also saw the launching of Harimurti's journal on the journey of the language until it was officially announced as a national language on Youth Pledge.
Anhar cited that besides becoming a self-identity, the language had also become a unitary tool during the pre-independence era as it became a symbol of nationalism.
"But now, despite the emergence of new words in the community, it will not deter one's nationalism. It doesn't base on language anymore," he said.
However, he said, the poor use of language by leaders during a non-text speech could give a bad influence to people.
"If we notice there are many elites who speak messily. This is not good as people are watching them and probably imitate them. This can lead to a language demolition," he said.
All in all, Harimurti suggested anyone to have as many as readings as they could as it would help one's language ability.
"Reading is a passive ability, but in some way it will affect people's active ability, which is speaking. Usually, people who read a lot have high verbal capability," he said, adding that reading habit should then be extremely encouraged.
Lebay, parno or even mak nyuss are some Indonesian words that you will not find yet in a formal Indonesian dictionary, but many use those in daily conversations.
Those words refer to Indonesian street language for exaggerating, paranoid and yummy, and here media is playing an important role in familiarizing such words.
Professor of Indonesian literature Harimurti Kridalaksana said that such things naturally occurred in the community, either in the archipelago or across the universe.
"It's fine using such words as long as we know when and where we use them. Who knows those words can be put in formal dictionary someday," said the professor from University of Indonesia during a break of a seminar on language and nationalism in his campus.
But formal Indonesian must have always been used when someone wanted to write a scientific writing or maybe talked to an elderly, Harimurti added.
The seminar was part of the commemoration of the first use of Indonesian on May 2 at UI's Faculty of Cultural Science.
Harimurti said many still thought that Indonesian as the nation's language was made official in Youth Pledge (Sumpah Pemuda) on October 28, 1928, but it was actually born during the first Youth Congress on May 2, 1926.
"It was the formal introduction of the national language on that Youth Pledge, the result of the second Youth Congress," said Anhar Gonggong, a historian of UI who was also a speaker at the seminar.
May 2 is also a commemoration of National Education Day.
Besides celebrating the birth of Indonesian language, the event also saw the launching of Harimurti's journal on the journey of the language until it was officially announced as a national language on Youth Pledge.
Anhar cited that besides becoming a self-identity, the language had also become a unitary tool during the pre-independence era as it became a symbol of nationalism.
"But now, despite the emergence of new words in the community, it will not deter one's nationalism. It doesn't base on language anymore," he said.
However, he said, the poor use of language by leaders during a non-text speech could give a bad influence to people.
"If we notice there are many elites who speak messily. This is not good as people are watching them and probably imitate them. This can lead to a language demolition," he said.
All in all, Harimurti suggested anyone to have as many as readings as they could as it would help one's language ability.
"Reading is a passive ability, but in some way it will affect people's active ability, which is speaking. Usually, people who read a lot have high verbal capability," he said, adding that reading habit should then be extremely encouraged.
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