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Bambang Kaswanti Purwo: Disentangling the Indonesian language curriculum
Setiono Sugiharto When the 1984 curriculum for both junior and senior high schools was implemented nationwide, confusion abounded among Indonesian teachers
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span class="inline inline-left">Setiono Sugiharto When the 1984 curriculum for both junior and senior high schools was implemented nationwide, confusion abounded among Indonesian teachers.
They were in the dark about how the subject should be taught in light of a completely novel theory on
the study of language through context (technically known as pragmatics) that was mandated in the curriculum.
This uncertainty about how to apply the curriculum in the classroom lingered until the government’s endorsement of a new curriculum in 1994. This revision shares the same underlying philosophy with its predecessor, but bears a different name — communicative competence curriculum.
It was Bambang Kaswanti who painstakingly tried to enlighten school teachers and would-be teachers about teaching Indonesian in a pragmatic way through his publication Titian Kemahiran Bahasa: Sekolah Lanjutan Pertama (A Pathway to Language Proficiency) in 1994, a three-volume textbook for high schoolers.
Prior to penning these three volumes, Bambang had written a handbook for language teachers titled Pragmatik dan Pengajaran Bahasa: Menyibak Kurrikulum 1984 (Pragmatics and Language Teaching: Revealing the 1984 Curriculum), a book which attempts to demystify the least known notions of pragmatics and to present ways of designing teaching materials in keeping with the endorsed 1984 curriculum.
“When I trained high school teachers nationwide, I received an avalanche of questions regarding the application of the 1984 curriculum in classrooms. I felt many of my answers didn’t satisfy their curiosity, so I decided to ponder over teaching materials and to write textbooks for high schoolers that fit the curriculum,” Bambang recalled.
With the absence of practical Indonesian textbooks at that time, Bambang’s three-volume textbooks bridged the gap between what is prescribed in the content of the curriculum and the teachers’ knowledge about teaching the language based on pragmatics.
Now a professor of linguistics, Bambang said that initially most teachers weren’t upbeat that what was prescribed in the curriculum could be applied in a classroom environment. “At that time teachers were of the opinion that the teaching of real language use was a lofty ideal that couldn’t be realized through any teaching materials.”
“The textbooks I wrote were clear proof that pragmatics in the study of real language use can indeed be taught. I felt happy that the teachers, having used the books, got a clear picture of how Indonesian was taught under the curriculum, which emphasizes authentic language use,” he said.
Long fascinated by the minutiae of the structure of Indonesian, Bambang is, no doubt, one of the potent forces in the field of Indonesian linguistics. Many of his erudite works have won him plaudits from some of the world’s top linguists, including Talmi Givon, Masayoshi Shibatani and Bernard Comrie, and have been published by prestigious publishing companies, including John Benjamins.
He is also the co-author of the first edition of Tata Bahasa Baku Bahasa Indonesia (The Standard Grammar of the Indonesian Language) published in 1988 by Balai Pustaka. Under the tutelage of noted Dutch Indonesian language expert the late John W.M. Verhaar, Bambang completed his PhD at the University of Indonesia with a dissertation Deiksis in Bahasa Indonesia (Deixis in the Indonesian Language).
Afterward he guest lectured at various international universities, including the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, and Northern Illinois University.
His colleagues and students see Bambang not only as an astute linguist and a meticulous researcher, but also a down-to-earth classroom teacher who is fond of using a “student-friendly” approach to teaching language.
When asked about the role of Indonesian in becoming a supporting pillar of Indonesia’s local languages, Bambang argued that efforts to develop the national language should be concomitant to efforts to bolster the use of local languages.
“However, this was not the case as of the 82nd Youth Pledge we’ve just celebrated,” he lamented, pointing out that the formal policies of local language development tended to view the local languages as having a subservient role.
Bambang explained that the government campaign promoting the use of “good and correct” Indonesian, which was notorious during the New Order era, often brought negative consequences for the country’s local languages.
“With the Indonesian language declared as the national language, the language of education, public services, and mass media, we unwittingly restrict the room for using local languages as a means of communication among their speakers”, he said.
The call for urging people, especially young generations, to use Indonesian, according to Bambang, will cause local languages to be sidelined.
“Young people will find it not worth their time and less prestigious to speak in their native languages if we insist on them speaking Indonesian in all situations in life. We, however, should not disregard the fact that local languages or one’s native languages are the languages which are easier to acquire when one was brought up in a community speaking those languages. The more perfectly one masters his own native language, the easier it will be for him to learn other languages.
