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strong>June 15, p7

The objective of the national education, as stipulated in Chapter 3 of National Education System Law No. 20/2003 is to nurture students' potential to have faith in God, develop good character, live healthy lives and to be knowledgeable, creative, self-reliant, responsible and democratic citizens.

Keeping in mind Indonesia is a multilingual country, any change to the curriculum brings issues of multilingualism, multiculturalism and literacy developments into focus. (By A. Chaedar Alwasilah, Bandung)

Your comments:

Saying that the Indonesian language has the potential to become a language of science is hazardous.

Science is an international endeavor that needs permanent exchange between scientists.

For this, a common language is necessary and currently, that language is not Indonesian, nor Mandarin, nor Hindi, but English.

The research of scientists who write their articles in Indonesian will not be accessed by people from other countries.

So, they will not debate with them or receive constructive criticism, let alone be able to convince them; they will continue to be isolated.

It is no secret that Indonesia performs very poorly in sciences and that the very few good Indonesian scientists publish their work in English.

Sabar Paijo

It is difficult to implement the ideas in the article as our leaders focus much on English and Indonesia as medium of instruction in class.

Unfortunately, the phenomena happen throughout Indonesia.

Aries