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strong>March 26, p7

When I first arrived in Sydney, an Australian colleague asked me: '€œWill Indonesia invade Australia?'€ I was unsure how much that friend knew about Indonesia or whether he liked nasi goreng (fried rice), which was popularized on a TV advertisement. Perhaps Australians are familiar with the word goreng as they often see it on the noodle shelf when shopping.

Many young Aussies are now able to pronounce many Indonesian phrases, and even former prime minister Julia Gillard said Indonesian was one of the main languages that Australians were encouraged to learn, equally important as the more widely spoken Mandarin. (By Yan Mulyana, Tokyo)

Your comments:

It is true that Indonesian students need more encouragement to pursue critical ways of thinking and writing. But the present system inhibits coherent thought, as it glamorizes religious and nationalistic myths, while curbing scientific curiosity. It fosters suspicion of both art, with its diverse perspectives on the human spirit, and science, with its insistence on reason and evidence over superstition and prophecy.

Ironically, the author praises actor Russell Crowe at the very moment that his most recent performance, in the film Noah, has been banned for defying Islam'€™s claimed monopoly on the portrayal of characters in Jewish mythology.

Coincidentally, the Noah legend is used to bolster Stephen Oppenheimer'€™s largely mythical '€œSunda land as Eden'€ idea, which the author here admires as plausible science.

He describes the theory that civilizations in the Indus Valley, Mesopotamia and Egypt were built on ideas imported from Indonesia as '€œembryonic'€. '€œFar-fetched fantasy'€ would be more accurate.

When the tribes ancestral to modern Indonesians arrived from Taiwan about 4,000 years ago, the peoples of the Mesopotamian region had already developed great inventions like beer, writing, wheeled carts, canals, arch bridges, metal welding and brick ovens. Ancient Egyptians gave us anesthesia with cannabis and opium, phonetic writing, glassmaking, dams, rivets, plywood and plaster. The Indus Valley civilization possessed enclosed harbors, water filters, flushing toilets and standardized measuring systems.

Where is the evidence that tribes at that time in Indonesia even knew of such technology, let alone invented it?

The author'€™s idea that national progress depends on the revival of a long-lost '€œexpansive'€ character is ludicrous. Progress for Madagascar does not depend on the rediscovery by its inhabitants of the '€œexpansive character'€ that allegedly inspired their ancestors to cross the Indian Ocean.

To compete with Singapore, Taiwan or Japan in terms of prosperity, what Indonesia needs first is education that focuses less on religious indoctrination and more on free inquiry, creativity and scientific '€” not myth-based '€” understanding.

John Hargreaves

Character education was promoted in America at several religion-based private educational institutes a few decades ago.

Research has shown it has minimal or no benefits, mainly perhaps because of the lack of definition of its objectives. It was generally discontinued as a mainstream education option.

Jasam