As we commemorate the annual National Education Day of May 2, an important message of the annual hunting season is the high awareness of education in Indonesian families. Beyond the nine years of compulsory basic education, today’s parents and students want tertiary education — and even preschool for infants.

This has been the basis of the booming education industry, a business treading the fine line of idealism and profit. The age-old problem has been ensuring quality education for all, especially for the poor. This remains the national homework as we observe the 123rd anniversary of Ki Hajar Dewantara, the education hero.

In 2003, the UN Special Rapporteur for Education reported that accessibility was the main issue of Indonesia’s education. While the rich are spoilt with choices, the poor must be content with any school available — even those which require small children crossing rickety bridges over troubled water and braving currents, as we have seen in alarming media images.

The report of the rapporteur Katarina Tomasevski found 80 percent of teachers had parallel jobs, as quoted by a 2003 news website of the Voice of the Asia Pacific Human Rights Network.
 Today many teachers moonlight as motorcycle taxi drivers, vendors or even washer women for extra income. At least salaries for teachers who are civil servants have improved and thanks to regional autonomy, free education has become a political commodity to win over voters in many regencies. Though officials complain over strained budgets, at least voters have made politicians listen to issues that matter to them.

But what about quality?

Only the rich can afford schools that pay attention to a child’s well-being and specific talents. Meanwhile, Indonesia consistently ranks among the mediocre in regional and international education surveys — despite the occasional bright young stars excelling in global Olympiad competitions.

Yet a mere glance at our rampant corruption involving public figures, and our daily behavior on the streets and in the (few) queues, is evidence of how significant education is to our upbringing — at this rate, obviously not much.

Experts have long lamented the waste of resources in our uninteresting rote learning, while the average curriculum does not provide for creativity or even basic values of respect for others and honesty. Preventing students from cheating remains the main focus of the annual examinations. Even teachers’ involvement has been exposed, given the fear that failure to achieve 100 percent pass rates of will result in low enrollment in their schools.

The obsession over figures has long been criticized, similar to the rigid belief that students have to rank well in about a dozen subjects at each level, from elementary to senior high.

The ongoing program, Indonesia Vocational Education Strengthening (INVEST), a cooperation between the Education and Culture Ministry and the Asian Development Bank to improve dozens of vocational schools across the country, is just one step that shifts emphasis on general knowledge, which bores and burdens students, to a system that cares for their interests and talents.

Sure, less general knowledge may have been blamed on singer idol Justin Bieber’s ignorance of Indonesia; but a less crowded curriculum may give space to instill human values like respect for others, regardless of all the degrees earned — or bought — in university.

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