Bilingual Education in Indonesia

The Making of the National Language Indonesia, where the Spices islands are located, used to be known as the Dutch East Indies. It was colonized for almost 350 years. The Malay language was already popular all over the archipelago, even before the Europeans came into the region. Malay was the lingua franca among the traders (Sneddon, 2003). The Malay peninsula, the Malacca strait and Malacca were the famous areas where there were a lot of trading posts and the popular route for traveling to Asia from Europe and vice versa. This is why there were many people learned Malay language and the reason it was understood in many parts of Indonesia. Moreover, the Malay was also used in the spread of modern religions such as Christianity and Islam. These two religions were introduced and spread throughout the region, mostly in Malay (Kaplan & Baldauf Jr., 2003). The Dutch learned very quickly the significance of Malay language when they first arrived in the region in the late 16th century and some attempts were made to understand the language. Malay was often chosen as the auxiliary language during Dutch colonization era in Indonesia, except in the 18thcentury when the trading business went down (Sneddon, 2003; Kaplan & Baldauf Jr, 2003). During this period the Dutch had more focus on Java, which led to the promotion of Javanese language as the common language. However, this effort met with little success. Schools were rare in Dutch East Indies. This situation changed a little bit in mid 19th century as the result of liberal reform forces in the Netherlands (Kaplan & Baldauf Jr., 2003). More primary schools were established, but mainly in Java and some more in Maluku (Mollucas), Minahasa and Timor. It was not until the 20th century the other parts of Indonesia were provided education. The regional language and/or Malay was the language of instruction in native and village schools (limited to primary level), while Dutch was used in schools for the Dutch, Christian and military children. Even though Malay was made an authorized language of the Peoples Council of the

Netherlands East Indies in 1918, the Dutch language was the most prestigious language because it was seen a symbol of status among the Indonesian elites and it gave the Indonesian people access to jobs and higher education. However, this situation soon changed as more Indonesians got into higher education, some went to universities in Holland, and they initiated the nationalist movement with an independent Indonesia as the main goal. They were fully aware that a common language was needed for unifying such rich sociolinguistic nation. Dutch language was out of option because despite of its advantages as being the most developed language spoken in the region, it was tied to the colonist. Moreover, only the elites knew how to speak Dutch but not the majority of the people (Alisjahbana, as cited in Kaplan & Bauldauf, 2003). The other logical option was Javanese or Sundanese. The rationale was simple. It was the language of the majority groups. It would be easier to implement, compared to other languages, because there were 42% of the people who had already spoken the language. This means that less effort was needed than to choose a minority language. However, it was not chosen mainly because its linguistic complexity. This complexity is tied into the Javanese culture, which is very hierarchical, with an aristocracy at the top and the mass of peasants at the bottom (Sneddon, 2003, p. 104). The next option was the Malay language. Despite being spoken by only 5 % of the whole population at the beginning of the 20th century, when Indonesian independence movement started to accelerate, Malay was the lingua franca of the region, because it was the widely used language in trading in the coastal and urban areas (Alisjahbana, Asher, & Nababan, as cited in Renandaya, 2004). However, regardless of having some high literature, Malay was the language that needed a lot of development to be able to function effectively in modern world. The Youth Congress in October 1928 was a significant landmark in Indonesias independence movement. The declaration of the representatives who came from all across archipelago sent a very strong message to the nationalist movement. The participants called for the unity of Indonesia by stating that they belong to one

country, one nation, and one national language, which is Indonesia. It was the first time the name Bahasa Indonesia (renamed from Malay language) appeared on the national movement stage and it was used soon after the Congress as a symbol of the integration of the whole Indonesia. This was a strong message that new Republic would use a national language, which is not the majority language, taking the risks of the amount of work needed to be done to develop the language to function effectively for modern communication. The World War II brought the Japanese into the region and in 1942 they defeated the Dutch and took over Indonesia. This era is of great significance to the language development because Japan encouraged the official usage of Bahasa Indonesia for official purposes such as for law and government communication with the people, thus banning Dutch language for public use. This also resulted in the translation many documents, including school textbooks from Dutch into Bahasa Indonesia. Bahasa Indonesia was used as the language of education at all levels (Sneddon, 2003, p. 111).

The lack of words or expressions to explain a lot of modern concepts led into the establishment of Komisi Bahasa (Language Commission). This commission then dealt with the creation of the terminology. It is also important to note that with the expansion of the newspapers in Indonesian language, the journalists also actively contributed into the coining of new terms. Following the Japanese defeat in World War II, Indonesia proclaimed its independence on August 17, 1945. It is stipulated in the constitution of the new Republic that Bahasa Indonesia is the state and official language. This shows the mandate for language unity. On the other hand there is an acknowledgement for language diversity as stated in the annotations of the constitution, article 36 regarding language. It says: Regional languages, which are well preserved by the people, such as the Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese and other languages, will be respected and

preserved by the state, since these languages are also part of the Indonesian culture. (Department of Information, the Republic of Indonesia, 1989)

Thus, the founding fathers of the new Republic mandated the unity of the whole Indonesia without eliminating the uniqueness of each culture, including the language. This is reflected in the national motto, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika(Unity in Diversity).

Bilingual education policy in Indonesia After the independence war for almost 5 years, Indonesia started to build its education system. The curriculum development has always been centralized since 1950. This includes the development of teachers guides, textbooks and other supporting materials (Kaplan & Baldauf Jr, 2003:95). All of these components are in Bahasa Indonesia.

In the bilingual education policy, Indonesia uses the transitional instructional strategy. As stipulated by the constitution, Bahasa Indonesia is the sole state official language. Thus, the language of instruction that must be used in schools is Bahasa Indonesia. However, given the situation that it was difficult to start straight into the Bahasa Indonesia, the regional languages may be used as the language of instruction during the first three years of the primary school. After that, students are expected to know be fluent in Indonesian language. This strategy has proven to be successfully implemented with no significant resistance throughout Indonesia. There is an accepted norm that everybody needs to learn Bahasa Indonesia and people are expected to be fluent in it.

In addition Bahasa Indonesia is also taught as the compulsory subject at all levels of education. Muclish (as cited in Renandya, 2004, chap. 6) reveals that primary school students learn Bahasa Indonesia for 5 to 5 hours in a week. In the secondary

schools, it is taught for 4 to 5 hours per week, except for the language stream, where students can study Bahasa Indonesia for 10 hours in a week. In college and universities, Bahasa Indonesia is a required subject, which should be taken for one or two semesters.

The regional language can be taught as a separate subject at the primary and secondary schools. However, it is not found as a regular practice for many regions in Indonesia. Partly, it is believed that the regional languages are still well spoken in the social interactions despite not being taught at school. The other reason might be related to the financial capability of most schools in Indonesia. The lack of teachers has been one of the main problems in the education system. The teaching of regional languages is not seen as the highest priority to deal with. In addition, there has not been a significant material and curriculum development for the teaching of regional languages.

Bilingual Implementation issues

The audacity to choose the minority language, spoken only by 5% of the population before the independence of Indonesia, entailed some implementation problems. First, the lack of qualified teachers to teach the language. Rubin (as cited in Kaplan & Baldauf Jr., 2003) says that one of the major issues is that many teachers are neither the native speakers nor having enough training to enable them to teach the formal Bahasa Indonesia. This issue, however, is not a major one now as the language has spread very fast to the entire region. Nevertheless, Rubin thinks that the better inservice training is still needed.

Another problem is that some students get a lot less exposure to the language since they live in the areas where the national language is not used in daily conversations at all, compared to the students who live in more ethnically mixed, such as in Jakarta and other big cities in Indonesia. The students who get less exposure, thus, have less

opportunity to use the language, which in turn may affect their academic achievement.

The revision of the language curriculum in 1984 and 1994 resulted in the adoption of the pragmatic approach in the teaching of Bahasa Indonesia. However, in the real classroom situations, most teachers still use the structural approach which many students consider monotonous and uninteresting. In addition, there are few resources that are usually provided for teachers to enable them to make more interesting lessons. As a result, Bahasa Indonesia is not seen as the most favorite subject for many Indonesian students. The issues of teaching methodology and learning resources, however, are not limited to the teaching of Bahasa Indonesia, but they are the main problems in the whole Indonesian education system.

Bilingual progress The Indonesian national language and bilingual education policy is believed to be a major success. Sneddon (2003) shows the following table.

Indonesia Year Speakers (millions, rounded) 1971 1980 1990 48 90 131

Total Population (millions, rounded) 118 146 157

% of population speaking Indonesian 41 62 83

From the census data, we can see that from 1971 to 1990 the number of speakers of Bahasa Indonesia went up more than twice as much, from 41% to 83%.

While the education system has been believed as the major factor of this success, there are other factors, which are also considered significant. Among others is the

increase in the literacy rate, which can be justified from the growing circulation of the print media. Alwi (as cited in Renandya, 2004) reports that the literacy rate went up during the period of 1980 to 1990, from 72% to 84%. Lowenberg (as cited in Renandya) shows that there was a 1,000% increase of the total circulation of magazines and newspapers from 1965 to late 1980s. One might argue that the real figures, nearly 11 million copies in the late 1980s, are small compared to the total population of Indonesia, but it is believed that the real numbers are a lot bigger. This is due to the common practice of sharing one issue of magazine and newspaper between several families and neighbors (Renandya, 2004).

Nababan (1991) also suggests that there is a direct relationship between the increase of the use of Bahasa Indonesia with the increased geographical mobility as a result of centralized civil and military service. In addition, he points out to the phenomena of increasing interethnic/interlingual marriages in Indonesia to be one of the factors of the increasing number of native speakers of Bahasa Indonesia.