Terrorism, the environment and national cultural heritage were among the topics addressed by 36 elementary school students during an English-language speaking contest in Tangerang on Friday.
Despite their age, the students demonstrated not only their proficiency in English, but impressive public speaking skills.
The competition, was hosted by the Tunas Bangsa School in Bintaro, South Tangerang, and featured representatives from 10 national plus schools.
A participant from Budi Mulia Elementary School, Azhar Kurniawan, who chose Batik as Indonesia's Heritage as his speech topic, criticised Malaysia's claiming batik as its own cultural heritage.
"Malaysia has its own culture and therefore it need not claim its neighbor's cultural heritage as its own. So, let's maintain batik as our ancestral legacy and protect it so other nations cannot to steal it," Azhar said in his speech.
"I like batik because of its uniqueness," he added.
Another contestant, Reynaldo Antonius Putra, from Santa Ursula Elementary School highlighted the environmental woes the world is facing.
Reynaldo attributed the environmental damage to illegal logging coupled with extensive conversion of forests into plantations by using fire to clear the land. Forest clearance also leads to another problem: haze.
"I call on everyone to protect the earth by planting trees. We can all do it *protect the earth* starting at home," Reynaldo said. The use of unrecyclable plastic, he said, jeopardizes the environment, and he urged supermarkets, stores and traders at traditional markets to shift to paper instead of plastic bags.
"Paper bags or boxes are the best choice to save our environment because they are recyclable," he added.
Tracy Annabella from Tunas Bangsa School, took on the tough issue of terrorism, saying the death of Southeast Asia's most wanted terror suspect, Noordin M. Top, did not guarantee terror attacks would stop.
"Terrorists are dangerous, and therefore we must stay alert to possible terror attacks by Noordin's followers," she said.
Robert Bala, the school principal, said the topics picked for the speech contest were taken from widely discussed current issues. He said this year's topics were meant to raise student's awareness of crucial issues, like the nation's cultural heritage, so students could learn to have a sense of belonging and in turn come to realize what to do to protect it.
