Despite the public outcry over this policy, the ministry seems adamant that it will continue to allow the operation of the schools.

Many education experts have alerted us to the fact that the operation of schools with the label international not only undermines the spirit of national education, but also further widens the gap between the affluent and the poor. Their warning should not be taken as an exaggeration, owing to the fact that the politics of national education seems to have lost its orientation.

Swept away by the wave of globalization, our national education is forced to swing to the other extreme by bowing to the discourse on modernity to the virtual exclusion of our national identity.

Under this discourse on modernity, powerful nations often exert a considerable influence in shaping the perceptions of what constitutes reality, which is often manifested in different tangible forms, one being the use of language.  

Such is the case where we are now celebrating the craze of the use of the English language or, to borrow American linguist Stephen Krashen’s term, “English fever” in our education landscape.

There is a growing tendency among both the elite classes and society at large to consider everything with an international-sounding name as a panacea for our troubling education system, which has long been marred with never-ending unnecessary and often counter-productive disputes.

While there is no question that as a nation in the pursuit of modernity we need to be progressive in our efforts to advance our education system, we must not allow ourselves to become enmeshed and disoriented in this globalized world.

A word of wisdom by noted Indonesian education expert Mochtar Buchori is relevant here. He once asserted that the perspective of progressivism is needed to complement the perspective of conservatism, but cautiously warned a blind adherence to progressivism can lead to disorientation.

The boom of local schools — both state-funded and private — claiming to use an international curriculum may indicate that we have leapt far away from conservatism to progressivism without being cognizant of where we actually are and what educational vision we are adopting.

Our elite classes and the public’s knowledge about RSBI and SBI, likely due to a lack of a clear vision, is limited to the use of English as a medium of instruction in the classroom, the use of highly-advanced technological equipment to support learning, schools equipped with modern facilities, and the adoption of curricula and assessment instruments from advanced countries. As a means that can facilitate and accelerate teaching and learning process, we ineluctably need all of these.  

However, what we fail to understand is that some of these supporting factors are the product of a cultural determination — which may be ecologically unfriendly to our context — rather than the product of our own creation.  Education in general, and schools in particular should never take place in a social vacuum, because their existence shapes and is shaped by the society in which they operate. To counterbalance the possible negative impact of the schools with an international label operating in the local context, we need to place these schools in a broader sociological context, which helps provide a useful framework against which any educational practice can be assessed.  

The writer is an associate professor at Atma Jaya Catholic University, Jakarta. He is chief editor of Indonesian Journal of English Language Teaching and can be contacted at setiono.sugiharto@atmajaya.ac.id

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