Unfortunate for today's world, education is a perennial, it goes on year after year. Education was and, hopefully still is, a social staple intended to enlighten, to bring on greater social justice through social mobility. So why has many decades of so-called 'universal' education brought humankind, instead, to this brink, of priorities gone berserk? Is there any place left in this world where basic needs are still nominally priced, if not completely free?
Let me go back to the beginning. Someone close had called me, only just now, to have a chat and share his troubles. Just as a matter of interest, trouble is here defined by its territorial and social origin. It depends on where my friends are from. The handful of Londoners will have cheery news or when its bad its those very personal problems you share with the bestest of friends. In Malaysia we tend to exchange tales on politics, economics and state of the nation issues liberally laced with gossip and hearsay to give it better texture. My Thai friend e-mails me about going off to holiday with family living in the provinces where the air is fresh and invigorating. I haven't heard from the sole friend I have in the Philippines but I guess he is happy with what is occupying him at the moment. From Indonesia, however, the pains tend to be personal but very much to do with public policies.
Of course, social class too determine the way life is lived everywhere, including Indonesia. And speaking of education, the upper and middle classes there make it a point to send their children abroad. Even another ASEAN country will do because, I have been told, entry to the very best Indonesian universities are far too competitive. Furthermore, learning in English will give their children a head start in life.
That is, if you can afford the start, in the first place. And recently, quite unexpectedly with Reformasi, education in Indonesia has entered the era of free enterprise, meaning, schools now have economic fees. Schools mind you, not institutions of higher learning! The laws of demand and supply play a big role in determining the quantum of school fees in today's Indonesia. As a result many, mainly from the lower middle classes and below, falter, threatening to obliterate the future of a potentially huge pool of humanity. There is, of course, a reason for this: inadequate public funds. And by some tragic coincidence, Indonesia under its first directly elected president, SBY, has been beset with natural disasters the most horrific being the tsunami that devastated Aceh and North Sumatra on Boxing Day 2004, a few months after he took office. For the President it must have seemed like a baptism of fire not to be easily doused, incoming oceans notwithstanding.
Nonetheless, for all its domestic problems, Indonesia is a beautiful country with a beautiful people, gentle and warm, not yet properly arrived in the rapacious rat-race of capitalist exploitation. Of course, one hears horrendous stories of corruption and it is almost at the top of the world's list of nations blighted with corruption, but remember far too many Indonesians are either unemployed, barely employed or underemployed. Now what access do these people have to be corrupter and to become corrupt. That they have not all turned to crime is an indicator of a resilience to be reckoned with. Added to this are the multitudes employed in insipid jobs, corruption-wise that is. These are the majority. So please do not tarnish every Indonesian with the same brush for, in doing that we abandon the opportunity to find friendship and pleasure in this, one of the world's most soulful country: its culture rich, its art profound, its learning deep. Is it any wonder then that Indonesians are a proud people.
At the same time though they fall under the international category of poor countries because of low income per capita. Poverty and pride, therefore, rages in many forcing on them what are otherwise unpalatable choices. Their labour is exported into the most menial and harshest sectors of the economies of countries that can afford for their own population the choice of opting out from such terrible jobs. These jobs the migrant labour (euphemistically called TKI, tenaga kerja Indonesia) do at wages that are often below the norm -- but then again this is why they are referred to bluntly as "cheap labour" and are much sought after by foreign employers planning to lock in large margins of profit.
Many more, however, stay home to harness whatever means to life are at hand. It is amongst them that one discovers how low the cost of living can get to maintain very decent standards of life when one does not aspire to needless throwaway consumer items; and learn, how precious pride is to preserve, honour to keep and community to have.
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