T

he demands of the globalized world require new approaches to education to prepare future generations. The government has experimented with several ways of boosting the quality of human resources through education: the teacher certification program, the teacher competence assessment, the education and training of professional teacher programs (PLPG) and the establishment of international pilot project state-run schools (RSBI).

More recently, two important, yet controversial programs are curriculum revamps and national exams (UN). These, too, have been done in the hope that quality education can be attained.

Nevertheless, all of these government-sponsored programs have been carried out in rather hasty and incoherent ways, lacking the necessary sound educational system planning and academic rationalism. Thus the claim that they are likely to produce beneficial effects to the attainment of quality education is a reductio ad absurdum.

Take, for example, the case of teacher certification program. Recent reports from the World Bank revealed that certification has no positive effects on the learning achievements of students, suggesting that certified teachers make no difference from uncertified teachers in improving teaching and learning systems.

Similarly, the effectiveness of the PLGP and the teacher competence assessment have never been readily apparent in classroom practice. The expected positive learning products under the RSBI remain unclear. The soon-to-be implemented 2013 curriculum has been severely challenged, and the validity of the UN as a standardized test instrument called into question.

All the failures and fiascoes experienced by our educational education system result from our shortsightedness in treating education as a linear rather than as a discursive activity, and as an activity independent of other disciplines rather than closely related to them. Also, they reflect the incompatibility of political intervention in the educational realm.

After all, these failures, repeated over time, suggest several things.

First, there is ignorance on the part of the government that education should not supposedly be intruded with political interests of certain groups of people.

Second, the government alone cannot handle the complexities and convolutions of the changing nature of education. Finally, educational practices need to be contextualized in a broader context to include such a discipline as sociology, hence educational sociology. Strategic educational policies then should be based on the integration of these two perspectives, if the expected outcomes are to be felt.

From the social-educational perspectives, given that education never takes place in a social vacuum and that it reflects the existing social structure and social order, non-governmental agencies and private institutions alike should oblige to take part in maintaining and even improving this structure and order through corporate social responsibility (CSR).

Corporate concern

It has been convincingly argued that social structures through educational practices can only be effectively strengthened provided that education is treated as a wider social movement, going beyond the boundary of school contexts. This means that educational practices can be initiated and carried out by everyone concerned about education, be they individuals, groups of people or organizations. On the face of it, the CSR programs aimed at augmenting the quality human resources through education (both formal and informal) are highly relevant, and should therefore be supported.

A case in point is Adaro Energy Tbk., one of the largest coal mining and energy companies, which carries out its sustainable CSR programs on education through various activities, such as the enrichment of science subjects for school learners, the strengthening of early childhood education, school improvement programs, the development of educational infrastructures such as libraries and other school facilities, and scholarship programs for disadvantaged children.

The presence of such programs amid the government's half-hearted support to education in the country is surely commendable. As the manifestation of a corporate social concern, the programs are of paramount importance and have far-reaching implications for the enhancement of quality human resources.

This is especially true when strategic educational policies made by the government no longer side with the needy, but have now become a mere commodity privileging only certain groups of people, while sidelining others.

The social forces through the CSR programs on education certainly have powerful effects to diminish, if not to eliminate, class barriers created by the government's educational policy.

In addition to their potential to mitigate socio-economic barriers, the programs have the advantage of being focused on the target. That is, they are often directed to the needs of the local and specific groups of people. Adaro's CSR programs, for examples, have been designed to fit the programs and policies planned by the regional government and to accommodate the inputs from related stakeholders.

In so doing, not only are the programs relevant to the enhancement of the regional potential, but they are also meaningful to the regions.

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