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Inventing Schools to Create a Culture of Citizen Participation in Indonesia
By Marjie Suanda
Students at an unusual junior and senior high school in Indonesia are learning to debate and think critically, taking the knowledge they gain back home to poor rural villages where they participate in awareness-building and community development activities. These two schools have abolished the conventional educational system's rote learning, endless theory, and blind obedience to teachers, replacing it with "community-based civic education" that explores social, cultural and political issues relevant to students' everyday lives.
Photo by Freddy
Students at the Madrasah Tsanwiyah Bingkat junior high school
The schools provide a radically different model of education for Indonesia by combining formal teaching in the classroom with non-formal learning in the community. Since the high school opened in 1998, is beginning to replicate itself. Twelve graduates have established similar schools for elementary school age children in their own communities.
The schools were founded by Sudarno, an Indonesian educator. When the Madrasah Aliyah Bingkat high school was criticized by Indonesia's department of religion as an "NGO school," Sudarno was able to defend its methods and quality of education with concrete results.
The students participate in national examinations and have scored top grades. "The methodology we use helps the students gain understanding of what they learn and the ability to express that in their essay writing," Sudarno said.
"I really enjoy discussions and writing, because I think it's so important for us to be able to formulate our own opinions and learn to analyze situations," adds Eli Susanti, a 17-year-old student at Madrasah Aliyah Bingkat high school.
Puzzling Questions
As a boy, Sudarno (who like many Indonesians is known by just one name) grew up in the village of Bingkat in the southeastern part of the province of North Sumatra, Indonesia. One day, while listening to his mother through a slit in a bamboo screen, he heard her tell a visitor something he could not understand: "It would be best to write on the official papers that his father and I are already dead, and that we died in Java before 1965."
But why should he say his parents were dead? This was just one of a number of things about life in Bingkat that puzzled him.
Why did people snicker when they heard he was from the village of Bingkat? Why was he one of just a small handful of friends from his village who were allowed to stay in school through junior high school? What made his neighbors say, "Why waste money on school? He won't be able to get a decent job anyway!"
These questions and many more spun round in Sudarno's head on the day he set out on a dusty, dirt road, walking past miles of palm oil trees, heading for the town where he would live and pursue his secondary education. It would be almost ten years before the answers became clear to him.
Photo by Freddy
A view on the road through the palm oil tree plantations of Deli Serdang, North Sumatra
During this time, Sudarno learned that his village, like others throughout Indonesia, had been labeled a stronghold of communists and communist sympathizers by the government. Although the Indonesian Communist Party or PKI had been virtually wiped out in 1965-66, the stigma of this label consigned the residents of his village to second-class citizenship and it became a political trauma for the entire community, including the children and grandchildren of those alleged involved in the PKI.
When he finally understood how he and his fellow villagers had been labeled and condemned, Sudarno first felt anger and resentment towards his parents and their actions that had marked him forever. But then he remembered how, in contrast to other parents in his village, they had sacrificed all they owned – land and livestock – to educate their children.
"You must not be ignorant, like we were," his mother told him. Sudarno became determined to motivate other parents in his community to educate their children. He could not accept the fact that the bright youngsters of his village were being denied access to education due to
the outcome of a political struggle that took place years before they were born.
"In any struggle or confrontation, there will always be those who are the 'losers'," Sudarno said, dark eyes flashing with the passion of one who has known such trauma. "Education is the means to overcome the political trauma that they have experienced."
Sudarno was convinced that the only way to break this cycle of trauma and oppression was through education – but not the kind of schooling provided by the national education system. Public schools perpetuated an impassioned fear and hatred of anyone linked in any way to the PKI, which they characterized as the ultimate "boogey man" in school texts throughout the nation.
A Home to Thieves and Housemaids
The village of Bingkat lies in a region where the rich suma terra (black earth) attracted Dutch colonists to convert virgin forests into thousands of acres of tobacco, rubber and palm oil plantations. Many of the inhabitants of Bingkat and neighboring villages are not local Sumatran peoples, but descendants of immigrants from the island of Java who had been lured to work in Sumatra as contract coolies. They were never able to save enough from years of toil to return to their villages, and they eventually accepted the plantations as their home.
After Indonesia gained independence in 1945, the government and several private companies took control of these plantations but there was little change in the system of management. The workers remained extremely poor, controlled little land of their own and no sense of control over their own destiny.
During the 1950s and early '60s, about 96 percent of Bingkat's inhabitants participated public demonstrations for land reform or joined farmers' unions and organizations with connections to the PKI – which had resounding appeal to the disenfranchised citizens throughout Indonesia.
What happened next in Indonesia remains clouded by controversy. Following the mysterious capture and murder of six army generals in Indonesia's capital Jakarta in 1965, General Soeharto stepped in and relieved President Soekarno of his position. Thus began the 32-year-long, authoritarian "New Order Regime" that immediately blamed the PKI for the "attempted coup."
Thousands of citizens were slaughtered by the military or community vigilantes because they belonged to the PKI or affiliated organizations. Millions more were imprisoned for years by the New Order Regime without trial, and their identity cards and those of all their descendants were marked for life as "those involved." They were forbidden ever to become civil servants and were barred from a wide range of rights as citizens.
The aftermath of this national tragedy is still felt today, and there has never been any formal reconciliation. The New Order's most profound influence on Indonesian society may be the way it has used the education system to indoctrinate the nation's youth to see the PKI, and anyone linked to its activities, as evil, bloodthirsty beings bent on the destruction of the nation.
Schools introduced special subjects on moral education and history of the people's struggle to reinforce this message. This silenced and terrorized millions, and for decades the label PKI was hurled at anyone who seemed to lean to the left or spoke out against oppression.
All parents want the best for their children, but the people of Bingkat discouraged their children from pursuing an education. For many, finishing elementary school was enough.
"Why bother with school?" they would say. "You won't be able to get a job, certainly never as a civil servant (which includes teachers), and not even as a full-time plantation worker!" When the village's irrigation system did not flow regularly during the 1970s and '80s (another form of punishment), farming ceased to be a viable option and thus Bingkat became known as a home to thieves and housemaids.
Crushing Disappointment
Sudarno was a curious and active student. Having come from Bingkat, he knew that being able to pursue his education was a rare opportunity. He shared a small rented house with his older brother in a town 90 miles from Bingkat. It became a center for student discussions, writing and theater activities.
Sudarno was elated when he passed his college entrance exams. No one else from Bingkat was going to college! Sudarno's mother didn't encourage him to accept his appointment to the literature department of the national teachers' college, but he knew it was probably because she was worried about paying the fees.
Sudarno achieved high grades in his first two years of college and was awarded a prestigious scholarship from the central government. Numerous letters were required from local officials to process this scholarship, and in the end, Sudarno was rejected.
"I was totally crushed," he recalls, but finally he understood the reason. He was required to obtain a letter of "bersih lingkungan," which literally means to come from a clean environment – to never have been involved directly or indirectly with the PKI. He failed to get one because his parents had allegedly been members of organizations with PKI connections.
Sudarno was filled with anger and resentment and he almost gave up. Fortunately, a friend encouraged him to continue his studies and to support himself by working as part-time teacher and for citizen groups in Medan.
Feeling a keen sense of injustice – both for himself and for his family and friends – Sudarno returned to his village to try and change the fate that his village accepted. He arrived in Bingkat in 1988 equipped with a university degree and some teaching experience.
He spent some time interviewing the villagers and getting to know and understand their history. Learning what motivated his parents was the first step, and he engaged them in conversations about change: "Politics and regimes change, but what is important is to educate our children not to be easily tricked, and to be ready for change," he said.
Together with several citizens' group activists and accredited teachers from Medan, he invited some young people from the community who had completed their high school education but couldn't get jobs to help establish a new school. He wanted the community to see that "even though these are the children of the PKI, they can become teachers."
Taking Bold Steps
Sudarno knew that to survive this school must fit within Indonesia's formal education system so that it would be accepted by authorities and by the community itself. He created Madrasah Tsanawiyah Bingkat, an accredited form of Islamic junior high school.
Because it was a private school, it was allowed more freedom with its curriculum so long as it included religious studies. As principal of the new school, Sudarno took the bold step of deleting the gruesome, official version of the events of 1965 found in textbooks throughout the country in order to help his community overcome its political trauma.
Photos by Freddy
Students socializing after school
"The official curriculum requires that subjects such as Moral Education and History of the Struggle of the Indonesian People be taught, and a minimum grade level be attained to pass them," Sudarno noted. "However, both subjects included ample material describing in detail the unscrupulous and uncivilized methods of the PKI, and how men and women of the PKI had tortured and murdered the generals and danced around their bodies.
"The curriculum even called for students to role-play such historic events. Not only had I begun to question the verity of this history, but more important, I knew first-hand how psychologically damaging such lessons could be for young people who knew that their parents and families had been somehow linked to the PKI," he said, reflecting on his decision to eliminate such hurtful lessons. He took these steps in secret to avoid having authorities close down the school.
Sudarno introduced classes in social analysis to stimulate students to explore and think critically about the world in which they live. Other significant changes to the rigid Indonesian education system included allowing the students and teachers to meet together to formulate the rules of the school. They decided to lengthen the duration of classes to allow more discussions and to encourage activities outside of the classroom, such as action research involving the community.
Since the mid 1990s, Sudarno and the school's teachers have convened gatherings of parents and interested individuals from the Bingkat area every three to four months. They meet in the community center to discuss a wide range of social issues, and speakers are invited.
The primary focus of these discussions is the rights and responsibilities of citizens in the family, community and in governmental systems. The community has given strong support for this form of civic education.
Yayasan Pendidikan Bersama Masyarakat
Aliyah students monitor an election for village council members
Attendance at Madrasah Tsanawiyah Bingkat grew steadily because parents and community leaders were involved in the school's activities and the curriculum was tailored to the history and reality of the people of Bingkat. The school started in 1988 with 23 students in a small, unused building, and it soon outgrew this space.
Sudarno borrowed about $1,500 from the bank in 1990 to begin construction of building for the school on land in the village that his wife had inherited. By 1997, an overwhelming majority of students from Bingkat and the surrounding villages were continuing their education by advancing to junior high schools, and Madrasah Tsanawiyah Bingkat was serving more than 350 students from five villages in the region.
Creating a Community-Based School for Social Activism
The New Order regime ended in 1998 and Indonesia began moving towards democracy. Sudarno believed that his school had overcome the problem of motivating parents and children to appreciate the importance of education, and the political trauma of the past was beginning to ease. Yet, Indonesia's education system still employed methodologies designed for indoctrination.
Over the years, Sudarno and teachers from his school got involved in grassroots community organizations including an alliance of plantation laborers, networks of fishing communities, farmers' unions, and women's organizations. Through these affiliations they had met many young people for whom the materials and methods of traditional high school education held little relevance.
And many of the graduates of Madrasah Tsanawiyah Bingkat, having been raised on debates and discussions, were known to be outspoken and critical and thus were not always welcome in conventional high schools where endless theory, rote learning and blind obedience to one's teachers are the rule of the day.
Photo by Freddy
Students and teachers in front of their classrooms
"The teachers and I felt it was time to build a high school for students who are concerned about the social, cultural and political issues of their communities: a school for social activists," Sudarno said. "And we knew that in the methodology, materials, and practical activities, it would have to be different from any schools we knew."
With three friends who donated funds, Sudarno built another simple school building and established the Madrasah Aliyah Bingkat high school. The student body is composed of graduates of Madrasah Tsanawiyah Bingkat junior high school and children of activists in community-based organizations, many of whom cannot afford school fees. Sudarno and his colleagues were committed to creating a school that connects to the reality of the students' lives, while giving them skills to analyze and understand that reality.
At this time, Indonesia was in the throes of an economic crisis. A community recovery program donated funds to Madrasah Aliyah Bingkat for several scholarships and for sewing machines and agricultural tools that the students use in their practical skills classes.
The school was able to give students loans to start a small-scale business sewing tote bags that citizens' groups use in workshops and seminars. The school also received a donation of a one-and-a-quarter acre plot of land. The students grow their own rice and vegetables on it and are learning alternative farming techniques from skilled farmers and specialists from citizen groups.
Photos by Freddy
Students learn organic farming
"We study alternative farming techniques to reduce the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and we practice it directly in the field," said Mustanginah, an 18-year-old second-year student. "When I graduate, I plan to return to my village and continue this practice and teach others what I've learned here."
Some of the alternative farming techniques also were new to farmers in Bingkat. When they criticized the students, they responded with a series of workshops led by specialists in alternative farming to help spread the ideas to the farmers of Bingkat and neighboring communities. Such workshops have become a regular event.
The School that Humanizes
"This is a school that 'humanizes humans' because what is taught is relevant to the students' lives and the current reality," said Roslaini, the high school's principal and an activist in the Independent Women's Union of North Sumatra. "They are encouraged to take part in seminars and discussions held by citizen groups.
"Our students come from a variety of regions and backgrounds. The majority live at the school and with the community. They are highly motivated, but they come from families that are economically disadvantaged. We don't burden them with school fees or make them buy special uniforms. We encourage them to be creative in fulfilling their needs. On vacations, the students return to their hometown areas and undertake research and activities to stimulate consciousness-raising and community-building with their neighbors."
Basic dorms were built for the 60 percent of students who come from outside the district and a foster parent program was established. Some foster parents are teachers and activists from Medan and Jakarta who have donated money to help cover a student's costs.
"I discussed it with my husband and he agreed," said Mardiana Andi, a foster parent who was born and raised in Bingkat and has five elementary-school-age children of her own. "So we have a student who lives in with us, which makes us feel more connected to the school.
"The kids in this school learn to be more independent because they are given the freedom to question and form their own opinions. The school's activities often involve the whole community, from studying farming techniques to interviewing the elders of our village to learning about our history."
A Self-Propagating Model
Interest in this new model of education has spread through Indonesia's networks of community-based organizations. The schools are attracting students from organizations in five far-flung provinces in Sumatra, Java, and Sulawesi.
Sudarno expects to enroll students for the coming school year from a network of fishing communities with which he works in several provinces of Kalimantan. These organizations send rice to help feed the students during the school year. In return, the students feel a commitment and social responsibility to give back to their communities.
Yayasan Pendidikan Bersama Masyarakat
Madrasah Aliyah Bingkat students and members of the Bingkat community gather for a recreational activity
Graduates of the Madrasah Aliyah Bingkat high school are an important part of the strategy for spreading this form of "community-based civic education." Many of the students talk about wanting to motivate others to learn and not drop out of school.
A number of students from the two classes that have graduated from Madrasah Aliyah Bingkat thus far are continuing their studies at a university, and some have taken positions in the community-based organizations of their parents. Twelve alumni have established similar schools in their own communities for elementary-level students and four graduates now teach at Madrasah Aliyah Bingkat.
"The community of Bingkat is part of our non-formal education," said Purwanti a 16-year-old second-year student. "I plan to spread the ideas of our school to other villages, and I also hope that I can give back what I have gained here."
Creating a New Culture of Civic Participation
Today Sudarno, age 40, says he has sufficient confidence in the teachers and principals who are managing the day-to-day operations of the schools to spend his time traveling and sharing his ideas on education with various groups and community-based organizations. He says he can best use his energy by working outside the bureaucratic national education system where he can serve the marginalized and oppressed.
Photo by Freddy
Sudarno (right) talks with teachers of the Madrasah Aliyah junior high school
Sudarno also sees a need for his schools' educational principles in Indonesia's areas of conflict. He is working with a community of refugees who have fled the violent clashes between separatists and the military in Aceh. The refugees have fled to the edge of a national park that straddles the Aceh-North Sumatra border. Sudarno and five Madrasah Aliyah Bingkat graduates commute to the refugee encampments and live with them three days a week.
"We are working towards helping them overcome the trauma they have experienced and are assisting them to establish a junior high school in their new community, modeled after the Madrasah Tsanawiyah in Bingkat," Sudarno said. "Senior high school level students have gone to live and study at our Aliyah school."
Photos by Freddy
Sudarno discusses the importance of education with refugees from Aceh in a shelter in an open field used as a refugee center in Langkat, Deli Serang, North Sumatra in October 2000. "What I can offer, right now, are places in school for your sons and daughters, only that," he said. "We will not ask for school fees, and hopefully this will be a relief to you with all of the problems you are facing as refugees. These people, although ethnically Javanese, were born and raised in Aceh and were driven out of their villages without a chance to bring any of their belongings with them. Meanwhile, their children remain in Aceh because it is assumed that children are not violent or dangerous.
Sudarno sees that there is much more to be done, and he is eager to help other communities establish schools of their own. "These concepts of education should be applied in more schools throughout Indonesia so that the education practiced really develops aware and critical young citizens," said his colleague Roslaini. "But the methods and materials must be adapted to suit the situation in each region. What is equally important is that students should not be seen as objects, but their opinions and rights must be valued."
By changing the nature of education, Sudarno's schools are creating a new culture of civic participation. "This is a combination of formal and non-formal education: civic education," said Osmar Tanjung, a senior leader of a citizen group in Medan. "It's a huge leap from what we have had until now, and it really gives us hope for the democratization of Indonesia."
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