Least Educated

Aug 30th, 2006, in Society, by Patung

The standard of education in Indonesia comes in for some criticism.

Writing in the Asia Times journalist Bill Guerin suggests that Indonesia is the least educated country in Asia. The facts of the case:

0.03% of workers have tertiary qualifications.
61% of 12-15 years olds do not go on to attend secondary school.
80% of Indonesians have only primary school education

Combine the problems of a large pool of unemployed (unemployable?) young men, with only basic education, and the de-industrialisation caused by the pull-out of foreign investment since the late ’90’s, and there is likely a recipe for social and political instability. Lots of young men with little to do are likely to prove fertile recruitment materials for extremist groups.

Read Indonesia behind the learning curve.

3 Comments on “Least Educated”

Rasyad A. Parinduri says:

August 31, 2006 at 12:17 pm

Education in Indonesia is bad, all right. But certainly Indonesians are not “the least educated country in Asia”, as you seem to suggest. See here for example http://devdata.worldbank.org/edstats/cd2.asp

Choose Indonesia, and select EAP and SAS as comparators. Then select some indicators like Adult literacy rate, Gross enrollment ratio, Progression to secondary school, School life expectancy.

See also here http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/indicators.cfm?x=7&y=2&z=1

All three statistics you quoted above — they are all wrong.
http://www.bps.go.id/sector/socwel/table2.shtml
http://devdata.worldbank.org/edstats/ThematicDataOnEducation/CountryData/total_age15.xls
http://devdata.worldbank.org/edstats/ThematicDataOnEducation/CountryData/total_age25.xls
Riccardo says:

August 31, 2006 at 1:30 pm

It’s not about the numbers anyway, it’s about the quality, or serious lack thereof, in the state schools in RI. Thank the New Order boys for that. Pre-1965, RI’s schools and curriculum, even though overly nationalist-oriented, was of high quality. Pak harto stopped all that and successfully created a mass system to dumb down the population — and it worked very, very well — and even though he’s out of power the same system is intact.

We should be thankful that there are so many that DID NOT become victims of these schools ..
Rasyad A. Parinduri says:

August 31, 2006 at 2:48 pm

It’s not ONLY about numbers, I agree with you about that, Riccardo.

But, numbers are also important. If one doesn’t get his/her facts right, he/she may be end up with the wrong conclusions.

Here are a few posts on education I have in my blog, just in case you are interested http://del.icio.us/sarapanekonomi/education

Least Educated

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