Schooling Makarim: What the Future Holds for Indonesia’s Education (and Its Minister)
Upon his appointment as the new Minister of Education and Culture of Indonesia, Nadiem Makarim has been a topic of heated public discussion. This writing aims to offer a generic, and frankly unpretentious preview of what is to come for the education system in Indonesia under the leadership of the former CEO from the standpoint of one of its subjects, a high school student.
Early in the morning of Wednesday, October 23, the elected President of Indonesia, Joko Widodo had announced the final composition of the new ‘Indonesia Maju’ cabinet for his second term in office. In direct response of the news, debates sparked in the Indonesian society on the president’s choices, with some being more controversial than others. One name stood out in particular. Nadiem Anwar Makarim, the founder and former CEO of Indonesia’s online transportation service giant, Gojek was chosen to become the new Minister of Education and Culture, replacing Muhadjir Effendy who now holds the position of Coordinating Minister of Human Development and Culture. Despite optimistic views surrounding the new hope that a young, intelligent, and well-established minister could possibly contribute, despondence have also risen at just the same level of prevalence, labeling the decision as improper to put him in the field of education, which may in turn add more pandemonium for the next 5 years to the already broken system.
One strong argument to back this claim up has been how his experience and education had not been sufficient or fitting for his appointment as the minister of education. Before the actual statement from the president, rumors had spread over the list of names for candidacy in the cabinet, with some names not making it to the final draft. Nadiem, however, was one of those that had his name listed, but for another position. He was said to potentially act as the Head of the Creative Economy Agency (BEKRAF). This the turned out to be hugely mistaken as, not only did he not get appointed as the Head of BEKRAF, the government agency itself was dismissed and placed under the Ministry of Tourism. This position would have been very befitting for the technocrat, as his experience in the field of business is not to be questioned, and he surely knows the ins and outs of the creative industry. His years of building a startup from the ground up to becoming one of Asia’s first Decacorns reflects how his mastery of the global business trend could play strategic roles in shaping Indonesia’s creative industry’s atmosphere and enrapture growth in this new era of connectivity and disruption.
Another important aspect to look at is his education background. In this case, the pros are just as strong as the cons. It is not a secret anymore that Nadiem was raised in an actively moving family, resulting in his early years of schooling being completed interchangeably between Jakarta and Singapore. After graduating from high school in the neighboring country, he then continued his college degree in Brown University majoring in international relations. 3 years after graduating from the Rhode Island-based college, he enrolled for a M.B.A. degree at Harvard Business School, another one of the Ivy Leagues. The fact that he spent the majority of his education in top institutions abroad has been used both for and against him. On the one side, being part of classes filled with some of the brightest minds in the States (and probably even the world) is a great benefit, as it means that he had enough exposure to people from many parts of the globe and with world-renown faculties who are the go to persons in their respective fields. But on the contrary, this also means that he did not have enough exposure to Indonesia’s education system and all of its problems, at least compared to his predecessors. As the saying goes, one can’t solve the problem if they know nothing about how it came to be. The fear here is not that he does not have the comprehension to fix Indonesia’s school system, but if he even knows what he is dealing with in the first place.
The Nadiem Makarim Vision
For this year’s commemoration of the National Teacher’s Day on November 25, the Ministry of Education posted a video of the new minister’s speech addressing teachers across the nation. What made the speech very interesting is the sound message that it tried to deliver. Eccentrically, instead of merely reverberating the notion of gratitude for role that teachers have played in shaping the future generations, he elaborated on the reality faced by so many educators across the country. He mentioned how, although teachers have very noble intentions to assist their students to the fullest capacity, they are always met with endless obstacles, from administrative works that they must undertake to burdening bureaucracies which limit capability of their students to fully explore themselves. This breakthrough of his invited mostly positive feedback as it is deemed to be a promising sign to start his career in the ministry. His pragmatic look upon the problem many teachers and students across the archipelago signals his commitment to change the culture that have rooted in the national education, although he clearly stated that he can’t make any gratifying promises that might not even be put into realization in the end.
It may as well be hypocritical to say that there is an authentic ‘Nadiem Makarim vision’. Because even the minister himself had stated that he had not created his own vision, and instead his task is to interpret and put the president’s visions into reality through the mechanisms that he and his peers in the ministry formulate. In continuity to this, he had come up with 5 points to his working master plan, those being character building, deregulation and de-bureaucratization, increasing innovation and investment, job creation, and technology utilization. These points might not come as surprising to be formed by someone of his background. The years of working as a businessman had, in one way or another, shaped his outlook on the Indonesian education. Nadiem’s plans might sound very great at a glance, but there is quite a strong opposing factor too. For instance, one point that he had reiterated for many times has been the need for a link and match between the education system and industry. This brings the contention on how to some, his perceptibly industrialist look on education revolves too much around preparing students to become part of the working class as opposed to opening the possibility for them to become what they wish to be, such as professionals and academicians that have in recent years seen more traction. It is considered insufficient for him to overstate the importance of preparing youths to work for the industry of tomorrow. Instead, we should focus on making them industry leaders of today.
The Bare Truth: How Far Fetched is the Dream?
When it comes to the problems of the Indonesian education system, many opinions could come up from many different perspectives. Most may already know for sure that the biggest problem in current practice emerges from the uneven dispersion of resources and opportunities. Take an easy comparison between teaching processes in different parts of the country. In big cities like those in Java, teachers can easily deliver the materials to their students with adequate facilities, such as curricular materials and practicum tools. Compare that to those in the outer parts of the country, and one can find that teachers in Eastern-most parts of Indonesia could hardly get their hands on prerequisite resources to even deliver their lessons due to logistical problems. This situation will ultimately result in an also uneven quality of human resources. This is not to account the hardships teachers have to face when it comes to bureaucratic matters. Handling students to get into order is one thing, dealing with the ever-changing policies and curriculum in education is another. Those are obvious issues that in principle underlie the practical implementation of education.
As a student, we are served with a very frigid system that limits our intellectual freedom. To make it more easier to digest, here’s a viral video by Prince Ea that criticized how the school system has not changed for more than a century now and is ‘intellectually abusive’. It is indeed true that the problems mentioned in the video are universal, and not only in Indonesia. But remember that some countries have tried to break away from forcing their students to live through relentless compulsion. Our neighboring country where Nadiem had earned his high school diploma from, Singapore, is one good example of how education is applied as a method of eliminating inequality in the society by understanding the very basic needs of their students. One can say that in Singapore, students are academically forced to pass very high standards, sometimes resulting in high stress level, and that is not entirely wrong. But the key to their success lies primarily in their approach to teaching. The classes in Singaporean schools are focused on teaching students specific problem-solving skills and subjects, teaching them how to think, instead of what to think. That could not be found in Indonesia, at least not in many schools with strict government controls over the things that should and should not be taught.
From the eyes of a student, the school system we have forces youths to comply and survive through 12 years of routine which prepares them to become commodities in the labor market. Take the higher secondary level of education as an example. When students get admitted to high school, they are usually given the opportunity to choose between 2 or 3 majors, natural sciences, social sciences, and sometimes linguistics. The problem with this comes later during the years they spend. Many students will find the subjects they have to pass (like physics and biology for natural sciences majors) to be very hard and ended with either bad marks, or the easiest way to ace the test, cheating. The worst part of this is that they normally can’t choose to change majors during high school. Only later during university admissions exams can they take the other major’s test, but this clearly gives additional burdens for the students to study twice for the national exams and university admissions exams at the same time. This absence of flexibility are found in most Indonesian schools, with the exceptions of private international institutions that usually use foreign education methods, such as the ones from Singapore and Europe. These schools allow for the students to take classes from a wide array of study area, from basic ones like mathematics and languages to more focused and unique ones like philosophy and entrepreneurship, and students always have the option to change their subjects the next academic term or year. The downsides of these schools are that their certifications don’t usually get recognized by tertiary education institutions (except if the students choose to enroll in a specialized national class), and they often very expensive for many, meaning that it would be highly inaccessible.
A Future We Ultimately Want
The real question is now raised, what is it that we actually want as students to happen in Indonesia? I may not speak for everybody, but from what I have observed through my surroundings is that there needs to be a change, not in terms of curriculum or facility, but mentality. There is the need for every stake holder, be it the students, teachers, and even parents, to understand that the aim of education is to prepare the young people for the future. The main focus of education should not be on reaching good grades, but on educating the values and way of thinking required for students to be able to solve real world problems in the future. We may not be parred with world leaders in education like Finland or Singapore for the next couple of years, but we should strive to always advance in our holistic conception that education should be used to foster the creativity of the students and encompass their very needs, and not just as a tool to prepare the future working class. There are many ways to reach this objective, but as aforementioned, flexibility is the key to become more adaptive to the always changing demands of the global world now.
The Indonesian education system is far from perfect, let alone being the best in the world, but it is not doomed. There is still chance for this country to fix what had been left for us from the colonial era. The spark of hope will be lit up as long as there is a will to change what is wrong. For Nadiem Makarim, this is both a challenge and a grand opportunity for him to prove that his appointment by the president was not a grave mistake, and that he can utilize the years of his education abroad to bring the essential lessons of those countries’ successes in educating the world’s greatest minds to refurbish this vessel called Indonesia for it to set sail into a greater future.
