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Education for development

Dr. Willi Toisuta

I want to share with you some of the concerns and thinking from some of the experiments I have been involved in the doing on Education, especially in the Indonesian context.

Education and development can be approached in several ways. If you separate education for development and education about development, you have two different interpretations and you can write two different text books.

In dealing with education about development, people talk about developmental education where the processes of development are discussed. But this position is standing outside, describing the process of development of "somewhere else", of "their problems". Usually "experts" and "self-appointed experts" talk about education in this way, making generalizations from theories, experiences from travel, and then they go home after a 3-day visit and write a book! But if you stay in a country for one year, you go home and "shut your mouth", because you are afraid of making mistakes all the way through.

Now in some countries, whether they like it or not, they cannot just talk about education about development. They have to plan education for development, with the whole effort and concentration related to "What do we really make out of education?" for the importance of the nation. When you make this kind of proclamation, all the development "experts" stand by with their criticism, recommendations, reports.

What, then, does this education for development mean in those countries who opt for it? The idea is to commit oneself through education in doing something towards the development of the country, which could mean economic, social and political involvement. Very closely related to this is what we can do and offer for the people, whether it be formal, non-formal, or

informal types of education to help them get better education, hopefully contributing to the social and economic development of the people. But sometimes these countries forget about other aspects other than education for manpower development, becoming very mechanical, thinking only in term of what kind of economic sectors need to be developed. Education in this instance is really planned for manpower development, producing persons, especially at the higher levels, to think mainly in these terms.

But who can really plan for occupations which are stable? In the development of science and technology, and research, you cannot rely for a long time on any one sort of occupation because the situation changes very quickly. For example, in engineering, we plan a computer with so many buttons to push, but when our graduates get out of the university, the buttons are reduced. Our graduates are used to fifty buttons, but in the market, there are only three left. So there are difficulties and problems; then, how do we tackle them to help in the betterment of the education of our people?

Let us look at some of the difficulties, which a country like Indonesia faces when it plans for education. Firstly, in a country like ours and other developing countries, the structure and practice of formal education is very institutionalized, and because of this there is a resistance to change. It is inefficient and inadequate and keeps producing more difficulties. But the reality is there. In many cases, the education system was inherited from the colonial power, being very strict and rigid, and really meant for the betterment of the colonial people. There was no experience on which the indigenous people could rely on because they were not on the same level educationally, especially in planning for education. The fact is that probably both the colonial powers and the people after independence lacked the kind of experience needed to plan the type of education necessary and equipped to handle today's dynamics of change. So the education that was set up became more entrenched and it is difficult to change it. Once education is planned, you have to give it time to operate, probably 5—10 years to see the results.

Another great difficulty is the failure to eradicate illiteracy. During Soekarno's time, we eliminated illiteracy by decree in a speech! We know this is impossible. There is also the problem of how to create relevant skills and motivation. There are a lot of imbalances between planning education in a vertical way – what is the balance for quantitative development?

balance between primary, secondary and higher education? How do you relate all these things?

On the horizontal level, there are also many problems like dropouts, the flow of education. Do we concentrate on general schools or vocational schools? The town or the rural areas first? A lot of criticism on Indonesian education is that it is urban-oriented. What does it mean to make it more rural-oriented? Urban-oriented education creates brain-drain from the villages to the cities. In Java, most of the 80 million people live in the rural places. Should education be planned in such a way that all these people stay in the rural areas where there is not enough land for them to work on, or do you plan for education where they all leave the rural areas resulting in the loss of manpower, and in turn creating a problem of urbanization. These are just some of the dilemmas, which we are faced with.

Then there is the very serious shortage of skilled manpower to deal with the ongoing process of education. But most of our effort in education is not just for economic growth, especially when we think of development in an integral way. The whole effort of education should be on how to promote social and cultural development, to help the individual fit into the community and environment; to arrive at a national identity; to obtain a better basis for one's life, not just arriving at a prosperous society, but one that is just and balanced. These are some of the thoughts of those involved in planning education for development. It is very important then to decide on the priorities of what is to be done in these situations. You cannot deal with all these problems in one go. What sort of things can you identify so that you can intervene in those critical aspects to move little by little towards a better education for the people?

Let us look at how Indonesia views all this. Can this be done? How do you do it? I will use some of my experiences to show what is being done.

One of the major strategies of education for development in Indonesia is how do we plan for better absorptive capacities i.e. increasing the intake rate of those wanting formal education. Why is this? It is because of the old population problem and also because Indonesia wants to play democracy in education, with the target that at the end of 1978, 80% of primary school age children are enrolled in schools. So everything is planned in that direction. As we near the end of this target, many more children in the villages are going to school. As a result, of this, especially at the start of 1976, we have begun to feel

the "big push" of primary school graduates coming into senior secondary. At the end of this year, we will have all these senior secondary graduates wanting university education. Of course, we can say, why do you have to plan education for everyone, especially higher education? This has to be seen in a certain cultural context where people still look to education as something, which can help them in many ways, to gain acceptability in the community, as a passport to a marriage, etc. These social aspirations push people to getting more and more education. Planners have to keep this in mind.

With the increase of the intake capacity of the schools, there is also the matter of qualitative expansion. When you give way to quantitative planning, you have the problems on the qualitative side, because the student-teacher ratio becomes very large; facilities are not sufficient. Before, one teacher taught 30 children, now the teacher teaches 50-60 children. To get more teachers takes time, and if you want good teachers, you have to have certain qualifications. You cannot just solve the teacher shortage so easily. So with increasing the intake, you have the problem of the distribution of quality. Then what kind of education is relevant to the country, keeping in mind urban-rural dimensions? We have to ask relevant for what? Relevant for the planning of the technocrats? Relevant in terms of people's needs? But how do you identify people's needs if you are living in a world of rapid technological change and you have to think of some kind of balance in education? Then there is the whole internal problem of inefficiency to make use of full capacity of the schools. The question is, can you act, can you really make it work?

I want to mention some of the things I have been involved in which show what can be done. This is a stimulation for me to continue to plan for education.

Let us state the first and second strategies, absorptive capacity and control of quality, and relate these to the planning of a teacher supply system that is efficient and is able to meet the demand for more education. Please note that I am not talking as a government official because we are a private university.

I think the Government has realized that it cannot solve the education problem innovatively by itself. The Government is asking people involved in education that if they know how to solve this problem, they should come out and show it. And the Government means it- not only talk.

The problem of producing teachers to meet the quantita-

tive demand and at the same time keeping in mind the quality cannot be done in a conventional way. There are many ways in doing this.

You broaden the base of recruitment by using a multi-entry and multi-exit system of teacher education. What does this mean for Indonesia? Within the Third Development Plan in the 5 years, there is a need of 150,000 new teachers for secondary schools, with qualification of at least 3 years university education (a bachelor of teaching). This means training 30,000 teachers per year, but the existing institutions for teacher training can only train 3,000-5,000 per year. Faced with this dilemma, the Government is talking about a crash course of 6 months to one year, much to the annoyance and offence to teacher training institutions, because this is "trespassing" on "their territory". But what are the alternatives?

We are trying to think of all kinds of alternatives and combinations such as a pre-service, in-service cycle as an integrated system where people can enter for a period of time, get some qualification, get into teaching, come into the system again. That is, a cycle where people train according to their own time, ways and planning of their lives. In the European system this is called recurrent education. It is happening here now, though it does not have the same name of recurrent education or multi-entry-multi-exit system.

Another dimension of this program is the system of child-teaches-child, for example in a primary school in Solo. This idea is quite current in Asia, like in the Philippines and Vietnam. This system is not adopted because of teacher shortage, but to share responsibility between teachers and students. The teacher teaches the basic principles, then the pupils take over the responsibility for teaching their little brothers and sisters, and continue this process with their parents. The program, is organized, on a module basis so that people can work according to their time, plans and life cycles. The module can be taken to the villages, to the rice fields, and do it there. It is unfortunate that they have adopted a Coca-cola slogan- "Education can be everywhere, anywhere, anytime; it's ready there!" The idea projected is that this is instant education as Coca-cola is instant. But this education is not planned like Coca-cola. It is planned out the concern to solve the education problem. Who is responsible for injecting this image is hard to know, but unfortunately, it has destroyed all the hard work put into this effort.

There are also programs like the "Eight-Package" Edu-

cation, all done in a module but based on packages. You finish one package at a time as a complete story.

Having planned education in all these different ways, we still feel there is no equal opportunity for education if done in these ways. We are 130 million people. The problem is gigantic, and you cannot solve it by just producing packages.

Now there is some planning for an Open University, as in England, where anyone can get a secondary education. You do not have to go to school, you enroll yourself in the local village related to the Department of Education. In higher education, the same idea is happening. Every year there are between 20,000-30,000 candidates rejected from entering universities. Many young people want higher education but they cannot get it because of lack of facilities.

In Satya Wacana, we are thinking on how to deal with the open university system. The plans are ready now. Last year we tried to develop communication between the free university in Europe and Satya Wacana to think about development problems. When I went to Amsterdam to talk about his, the itinerary was to visit people in Agriculture, Economics, etc. because that is the way universities operate. Of course, they talk about interdisciplinary activities, but to do it in the field with reference to one particular problem like poverty, probably very few have this kind of experience. If you want to be meaningful and contribute to this situation

In the Asia region, you have to break down this whole activity of compartmentalization. We have to solve our problems, which are integral from an integral approach, from an inter-disciplinary approach. But the universities are not ready to think this way. Barriers between disciplines, then, is a big headache. Development problems are such that we cannot wait for all the scientific research and analysis, while there is suffering and hunger ever present. So where is the point of entry? There are barriers between pre-conceptions. Many professionals received their training outside the country where the orientation is very different. How can you sit and analyze our problems in a foreign university? We have to continually clarify our pre-conceptions and different opinions. This is a challenge to our universities.

Now, what should we say about our working with the government? Is it collaboration, prostitution, conformity, etc? But, here is the problem- the people need education. There is the challenge- if you do not do

it in a responsible way, then someone else will do the planning. Whether it is a crash program or crash landing, schools cannot be left without teachers.

Now how do you get involved in this situation? One has to give one's best contribution, and because there is the opportunity to be involved, then one seizes the opportunity.

Willi Toisuta agreeing with Kumardas and Lo Lung Kwong?

An attempt at analysis of the geo-political set-up of plunge-in area