LITERACY IN INDONESIA

Peter H. Lowenberg

1. INTRODUCTION

In 1945, when Indonesia declared its independence from the colonial

regime of the Netherlands, only one Indonesian in twenty could read and
write (Napitupulu 1980). Just 35 years later, in 1980, almost three-
quarters of the Indonesian population aged ten years or older were literate
(Nababan 1983). This paper will examine the sociolinguistic and historical
context in which this dramatic increase in literacy has occurred, focusing
in particular on the crucial role played by Bahasa Indonesia, the national
language. Current efforts to extend literacy further among the population
through non-formal education programs and to expand reading and writing
skills in the school system will also be discussed.

2. THE LANGUAGES OF INDONESIA

Indonesia consists of over 13,000 islands, 900 of which are inhabited

by more than 300 ethnic groups comprising a total population of 146.7
million (Peacock 1973, Soedijarto, et at. 1980; see also Vreeland, et at.
1975, Nababan 1982). Estimates of the number of regional vernacular
languages in current use range from 250 to 500, depending on criteria em-
ployed to distinguish languages from dialects; in 1972 Indonesia's
National Language Institute officially listed 418 distinct languages. Except
in the easternmost province of Irian Jaya (the western half of the island of
New Guinea), these languages are generally related through the Malayo-
Polynesian language family, but few of them are mutually intelligible
(Stevens 1973, Vreeland, et at. 1975, Nababan 1983).

The majority of these languages are used in the sparsely populated

eastern islands by at most a few thousand speakers each. However, several
languages on the more populous islands to the west have many more speakers,
including:
Javanese in Central and East Java (58.8 million);
Sundanese in West Java (22.3 million);
Madurese in Madura and East Java (7.0 million);
Minangkabau in West Sumatra (3.7 million);
Batak in North Central Sumatra (3.1 million);
Balinese in Bali (2.9 million); and
Bugis/Makassar in South Sulawesi (2.8 million)
(1980 census data in Nababan 1983; see also Peacock 1973, Vreeland, et at.
1975, Abas 1978, Nababan 1979). In addition, a significant number of
Indonesia's three million Chinese, who reside mainly in the seaports and
124
 LITERACY IN INDONESIA 125

larger cities, use Hokkien, Hakka, and Cantonese (Nababan 1979; 1982).

130 130

Vreeland, N., et at. 1975. Area handbook for Indonesia. 3rd ed. Washington,
DC: American University. [DA Pam 550-39.]

The speakers of these diverse regional and ethnic languages, connected

since pre-history by inter-island trade, have for over 1,000 years shared
a common lingua franca, Malay. During the Netherlands' colonization of
present-day Indonesia (1600-1942), although Dutch was the main language of
the colony, Malay was the second official language for local administration
and inter-ethnic communication. As an ethnically neutral indigenous
language, Malay also became the language of opposition to the Dutch colonial
regime, culiminating in its adoption by nationalists in 1928 as Bahasa
Indonesia, "the Indonesian Language." The Japanese occupied Indonesia from
1942 to 1945 and used Bahasa Indonesia as the official language of the
islands for law, administration, education, science, and industry. Hence,
when Indonesia proclaimed its independence in 1945, Bahasa Indonesia had
become the primary pan-Indonesian language and, with virtually no opposition,
was declared Indonesia's single national and official language (Alisjahbana
1976, Abas 1978, Asmah 1982, Diah 1982). l

Under Indonesia's current language policy, adopted in 1976, Bahasa

Indonesia remains the national and official language; it is the symbol of
national identity and unity, the language of law and government adminis-
tration, the medium of instruction in education, and a tool for national
planning and for the development of science, technology, and national
culture. In complementary distribution with Bahasa Indonesia, the regional
languages are maintained for intra-regional communication and to preserve
and develop local culture (Nababan 1979; 1982, Diah 1982).
126 PETER H. LOWENBERG

3. LANGUAGE ATTITUDES AND USE

3.1. Bahasa Indonesia

Since independence, popular acceptance of Bahasa Indonesia has continued,

largely due to its central role as a vehicle and symbol of the nationalist
movement and its ethnically neutral status in not being the first language of
any prominent ethnic group (Tanner 1967, Abas 1978, Nababan 1980, Diah 1982).
In conjunction with this general acceptance, proficiency in Bahasa Indonesia
is becoming increasingly widespread. In the 1971 census, 48,275,000
Indonesians, or 40.7 per cent of Indonesia's population, reported that they
spoke Bahasa Indonesia. By 1980, this total had climbed to over 90,000,000,
or 61 per cent of the population (Nababan 1982; 1983).

The institution most often credited for this increased proficiency in

the national language is the educational system, where the majority of
Indonesians first learn and then use Bahasa Indonesia. As stipulated in the
national language policy, Bahasa Indonesia is the medium of instruction at
all levels of education, with the exception that the regional vernaculars may
be used as the medium of instruction during the first three years of
elementary school while Bahasa Indonesia is learned as a second language.
Moreover, Bahasa Indonesia is the major subject of instruction in the primary
schools and is also taught throughout junior and senior high school.
(Aanenson 1979 and Nababan 1982 describe the core curriculum offered at each
level of instruction according to 1975 guidelines from the national Depart-
ment of Education and Culture. Soedijarto, et at. 1980 discuss public vs.
private and secular vs. religious schools within the educational system.)

Another factor responsible for increasing proficiency in and use of

Bahasa Indonesia has been the broadcast media. In accordance with the
national language policy, all radio and television programming except that
specifically promoting local culture is transmitted in Bahasa Indonesia from
regional government stations to almost 20,000,000 radios and 2,000,000
television receivers throughout the country (Douglas 1970, Vreeland, et at.
1975, Europa Yearbook, 1982).

A third major reason for the increasing use of Bahasa Indonesia has been
urbanization. Migration to the cities has tended to bring together millions
of Indonesians from different language backgrounds in new neighborhoods, at
work, and in the marketplace—domains where Bahasa Indonesia is generally
used for inter-ethnic communication. In addition, Bahasa Indonesia is
increasingly being adopted as a language of the home among urban married
couples speaking different mother tongues. In these families, children tend
to speak Bahasa Indonesia as their first language (Tanner 1967, Nababan
1979; 1982; 1983).

3.2. Maintenance of the vernaculars

Despite this increasing use of Bahasa Indonesia, most Indonesians still

speak regional vernaculars as languages of identity (Nababan 1982; 1983).
In general, Bahasa Indonesia, especially among the 89 per cent of the popu-
lation who live outside the cities (Diah 1982), is confined to topics re-
lated to a modern state and culture, including education, business, govern-
ment, the mass media, and such modern art forms as movies, novels, and
 LITERACY IN INDONESIA 127

contemporary drama. The regional languages are still the code for ceremonies
in the villages, such as weddings and installations of village heads; for
traditional art forms, including singing, drama, and literature; and for
interaction with family and elders. Thus, Bahasa Indonesia and the vernacu-
lars are not in competition; they have distinct domains and, in certain
contexts, mixing and switching are not uncommon (Tanner 1967, Abas 1978,
Nababan 1979; see Kachru 1982a for a discussion of mixing and switching).

4. THE WRITTEN TRADITION

The first evidence of writing in the Indonesian archipelago consists of

fifth century A.D. stone engravings in Sanskrit, the language brought by
Hindu priests from India in the early centuries of the Christian era. Soon
afterward, writing systems based on Devanagari and other Indian scripts began
to appear in Malay and the regional languages used on Java, Bali, Sumatra,
and present-day Sulawesi. The development of these scripts led to the first
indigenous literatures, the Royal Chronicles, written in the Hindu courts of
Java and Sumatra (von Humboldt 1971, Gonda 1973, Alisjahbana 1976, Abas
1978, Nababan 1979, Asmah 1982).

With the large-scale conversion of Indonesia to Islam between the

thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, Arabic writing developed into the
Jawi and Pegon scripts for Malay and Javanese, respectively. These scripts
were used for both religious and secular matters, including the translation
of Arabic literature and the composing of original literature in Malay and
Javanese (Jones 1981, Asmah 1982).

The institutionalized Romanization of Indonesian languages came with

the adoption by the Dutch colonial government of Malay as a second official
language in 1865. In 1901, the Dutch scholar C. A. van Ophuijsen published a
standardized Latin-alphabet spelling system for Malay, along with an ex-
tensive wordlist implementing this system. In 1920, the government estab-
lished a literature bureau, the Balai Pustaka, to provide popular reading
material in Malay and several regional languages for Indonesians who were
literate in the new spelling system. Concurrently, a native journalistic
press in Malay began to flourish after 1900. The rise of the independence
movement in the 1920's and 1930's produced a genre of nationalist writing
which became the foundation for several schools of modern literature in
Bahasa Indonesia. The Japanese occupation-government established the first
of several language planning commissions and agencies, continuing to the
present-day National Center for Language Development, which have extended
the earlier Dutch efforts at standardizing Malay/Bahasa Indonesia. Since
1960, these Indonesian agencies have met regularly with language planners
from Malaysia to further standardize the Malay language in the two countries;
one achievement of these efforts has been a unified Latin-alphabet Melindo
spelling system, adopted in 1972. The Latin alphabet has also been applied
in a standardized manner to several of the major regional vernaculars,
including Javanese (Vandenbosch 1933, Anderson 1966, Hoffman 1973,
Alisjahbana 1976, Rubin, et al. 1977, Abas 1978, Perez, Santiago, and Liem
1978, Asmah 1982).
128 PETER H. LOWENBERG

5. THE SPREAD OF LITERACY

5.1. Literacy prior to independence

Despite this long tradition of writing, literacy in Indonesia has until

recently been accessible only to the elites. Under the Hindu kingdoms, read-
ing and writing were limited to the court nobility, whose children were
instructed in holy writings by special gurus living in remote areas
(Soedijarto, et at. 1980). With the advent of Islam, members of the non-
aristocratic social strata began to learn the Arabic alphabet in new centers
for Islamic study called pesantren, which still flourish today. However, of
those who studied in the pesantren, only children of the rising bourgeoisie—
traders and more affluent landowners—tended to become sufficiently literate
in Arabic writing to use the Jawi and Pegon scripts (Jones 1981, Naipaul
1981).

During the latter part of the colonial period, the Dutch government
provided Dutch-language education at the primary, secondary, and ultimately
at the university levels for the children of the Eurasian and Indonesian
urban elites. Beginning in the nineteenth century, a limited number of
elementary schools with Malay and several regional languages as the medium
of instruction were established for the non-elites (Vandenbosch 1933, Wilson
1975, Alisjahbana 1976, Nababan 1979). However, this education was far from
universal. In 1900, there were a total of only 1500 schools in the Dutch
East Indies, or one school for every 24,000 inhabitants. Thus, by the end
of the colonial era, most Indonesians were still illiterate. In the 1930
census, the last official census prior to World War II, only 6.4 per cent of
the non-European and non-Eurasian population (10.8 per cent of the males and
2.2 per cent of the females) were literate in any language, with literacy
defined as the ability "to write a note to an acquaintance on an ordinary
subject, no matter in which language or with which characters" (Jones 1976:
40).

After capturing Indonesia in 1942, the Japanese attempted to provide

Malay-medium schooling and literacy instruction throughout the islands.
However, they experienced little more success than the Dutch had (Thomas
1970), and when Indonesia proclaimed its independence in 1945, no more than
five per cent of the population were literate in the Latin alphabet
(Napitupulu 1980).

5.2. Literacy since independence

Since independence, several nationwide programs have been undertaken to

eradicate illiteracy (Soedijarto, et at. 1980). In most of these plans, the
major vehicle has been the educational system, particularly at the elementary
level, where basic instruction in literacy skills occurs. Though the 1975
national curriculum does not assign a specific period of class time for the
teaching of reading and writing, these skills are usually taught from the
first grade during the eight hours per week allotted to language instruction
throughout primary school (Nababan 1983).

In the cities and other areas where Bahasa Indonesia is widely spoken
in the community, beginning classes in reading are generally taught in
Bahasa Indonesia, using materials developed and distributed by the Department
 LITERACY IN INDONESIA 129

of Education and Culture. In other regions where, as noted above, the

regional vernacular functions as the medium of instruction for the first two
to three years of school, literacy skills are initially taught in the
vernacular before switching to Bahasa Indonesia. Preparation of reading
materials in local languages is, however, left entirely to the provincial and
local school authorities. On the more populated islands, Latin-alphabet
literacy materials have been produced in at least twelve regional languages.
However, such materials are not universally available, and in many primary
schools where a vernacular is the medium of instruction, basic reading and
writing are taught in Bahasa Indonesia (Nababan 1982; 1983).

The impact of this in-school instruction in literacy skills has been

reflected in increasing literacy rates among the population in direct pro-
portion to rising primary school enrollments since independence. In 1945,
when the Japanese withdrew from Indonesia, only 20.7 per cent of all
elementary school age (7-12 years) Indonesians were enrolled in school. By
1980, this percentage had increased dramatically to 85 per cent (Diah 1982;
Soedijarto, et at. 1980 give a late 1970's figure of only 75 per cent, which
is still a significant increase over 1945). Concurrently, whereas in 1951
still fewer than nine per cent of the population could read and write in any
language (Thomas 1977), the data in Table 1 reveal progressive increases in
percentages of the Indonesian population found to be literate in the censuses
of 1961, 1971, and 1980.

Table 1
Percentage of Population Literate: 1961-1980

Year of Census Age Group Total Male Female

1961 15+ 39 .0 52 .8 26 .1
1971 10+ 56 .6 69 .5 44.6
1980 10+ 72 .1 80 .5 63 .8

(Sources: UNESCO 1974; 1977, Nababan 1983)

Literates in the 1971 census (and presumably in the 1961 and 1980 censuses as
well) were those "who could both read and write simple sentences in any kind
of letter or character. Persons who could read but not write were 'illiter-
ate'" (Jones 1976:42; cf., Douglas 1970, Aanenson 1979, Napitupulu 1980,
Jones 1981, Nababan 1983. Thomas 1966; 1970 discusses discrepancies in
literacy statistics in Indonesia, depending on which government agencies
compile and report these statistics.).

6. LITERACY THROUGH NON-FORMAL EDUCATION

Despite the large numbers of children currently attending elementary

schools, only fifty per cent of the pupils who enter the first grade reach
the fourth grade and only thirty-five per cent complete all six years
(Diah 1982; cf., Pearse 1979 and Saefullah 1979 concerning drop-out rates
130 PETER H. LOWENBERG

from elementary schools in East and West Java, respectively). A major reason
for this high rate of attrition is the expense of school fees, which although
officially abolished in all primary schools since 1978, persist in "unof-
ficial" status to impose a significant financial burden on most families
(Beeby 1979). Since a "rudimentary" level of literacy is not achieved until
the completion of 3.5 years of schooling (Pearse 1979), many elementary
school students do not remain in school long enough to learn to read and
write effectively. In addition, as demonstrated in Table 1 above and Table
2 from the 1971 census, literacy rates decline among women and residents of
rural areas—sectors of the population which still have least access to the
school system.

Table 2
Percentage of Population Literate: 1971

Urban/Rural and Male/Female for Age 15+

Total Male Female

Urban Population 76.7 87.6 66.1

Rural Population 52.2 65.5 40.1

(Source: UNESCO 1977)

For these Indonesians who have not acquired literacy through the con-
ventional school system, the Department of Education and Culture has, since
1951, provided a series of literacy projects as part of a larger on-going
program in non-formal education—"organized learning opportunities outside
the regular school room" (Soedijarto, et at. 1980; cf., Jenkins 1978,
Kindervatter 1979, Thomas and Postlethwaite 1980). The major current non-
formal literacy program, initiated in 1977 and assisted by UNICEF, UNESCO,
and the World Bank, is targeted for Indonesians 10 to 45 years old and is
organized according to one acronymic meaning of its name KEJAR (from
kelompok belajar, or "learning group"). With the slogan "each one teach
ten," these learning groups consist of an average of ten people from a
village instructed by one literate person from the same village who acts as
their "tutor." Most of the tutors have graduated from primary school and
some have completed junior high school. The members of each group deter-
mine where and when classes will be held, generally meeting three or four
times weekly during evening hours in the members' homes. Administration
and evaluation of the program and distribution of teaching materials occur
through a chain of command from the national down through the village level,
where "monitors," usually primary school teachers or secondary school
graduates, each supervise five to ten learning groups and their tutors
(Napltupulu 1980, UNESCO 1981).

The objectives of the KEJAR program are "functional literacy"—literacy

in the Latin alphabet and proficiency in Bahasa Indonesia to such a degree
as to permit the writing of letters and the reading of newspapers, maga-
zines, and other publications on a variety of practical topics, and numeracy
 LITERACY IN INDONESIA 131

in Arabic numerals for such tasks as measuring land areas and calculating
loan interest (Napitupulu 1980, Nababan 1983). With these goals in mind,
Package A, a series of 100 twenty-four to forty-page pamphlets, has been pro-
duced in Bahasa Indonesia by the national Directorate of Community Education
as a core curriculum for instruction nationwide. The first twenty pamphlets,
designed for use with a tutor in the learning groups, increase sequentially
in complexity of syntactic structures, text types, and arithmetic tasks. The
first three of these, pamphlets Al through A3, introduce the Latin alphabet
and Arabic numerals using "structural, analytic, and synthetic (SAS) methods,"
in which simple sentences in Bahasa Indonesia are presented describing an
illustration (such as "father's green trousers"); these sentences are analyzed
into words, the words into syllables, and the syllables into graphemes, and
these constituents are then re-synthesized into the original sentences. The
teaching technique employed is the "look-say" method, in which students repeat
what they hear the tutor say as they read, after which the tutor explains each
sentence in the local vernacular. In addition, for each page of text, there
is a sheet of tracing paper inserted which students can use to develop
their skill in printing and in writing numerals (Department of Education and
Culture 1979; 1981, UNESCO 1981, Nababan 1983).

Pamphlets A4 through A10 contain more advanced integrated lessons in

reading and writing Bahasa Indonesia and in arithmetic without the above SAS
methods or the tracing paper. Pamphlets All through A20 provide follow-up
materials for literacy practice, each pamphlet focusing on a particular
activity of immediate utility to most rural families, using such topics as
"Home Garden" and "Let's Save." The remaining eighty pamphlets, divided into
two levels of difficulty, serve as a self-study "popular library" for
students who have attained basic literacy in the learning groups through the
first twenty pamphlets. Each of these more advanced pamphlets covers one of
a wide range of topics from such household skills as "Food Conservation" and
"Raising Rabbits" to more abstract subjects such as "Religions and Faith in
Indonesia" (Department of Education and Culture 1979, Napitupulu 1980).

In 1981, four years after the KEJAR program began, 60,000 learning
groups were functioning throughout Indonesia, the majority in Java. With an
average of ten members per group, the total number of Indonesians currently
participating is but a small fraction of the almost thirty million Indo-
nesians who are still illiterate. However, the governors of all twenty-
seven provinces of Indonesia are now providing budgets for the production
and distribution of the Package A materials, indicating that the program will
continue to expand (Napitupulu 1980, Nababan 1983).

To date, the impact of the KEJAR program on literacy rates among its
target population remains unknown. Similarly, no large-scale evaluation of
the program's implementation has been completed. Nevertheless, a field test
of the first five pamphlets of Package A in the six provinces where they were
being used in 1980 produced the following recommendations (Napitupulu 1980,
UNESCO 1981):

(1) Prior to beginning the materials in Package A, tutors should teach

the Latin alphabet using a limited number of words from the local
vernacular so that learners need not master a new language and
symbol system simultaneously.
132 PETER H. LOWENBERG

(2) From the first lessons, cursive writing should be taught in

addition to printing in order to instill in the students a sense
of pride and confidence and an incentive to use writing in their
own communication.
(3) The content of reading lessons should be more immediately relevant
to the specific regions in which they are being used through the
printing of supplementary texts in each region. Each province
currently using Package A now has a "micro-mobile printing unit"
for this purpose.

7. EXPANSION OF LITERACY SKILLS

Efforts to develop literacy beyond the basic level reported in census

data occur primarily in the school system through expansion of reading and
writing skills in Bahasa Indonesia, additional instruction in the regional
vernaculars, and the teaching of foreign languages.

7.1. Bahasa Indonesia

As noted earlier, mandatory instruction in the national language con-

tinues throughout primary and secondary schooling. However, the rate of
progress in literacy development beyond basic skills is constrained by
several factors. One of these is the exceedingly high dropout rate, mention-
ed above. Those who stay in school are confronted with a critical shortage
of textbooks, especially in the face of Indonesia's rapid population growth
(Soedijarto, et at. 1980). Surveys conducted in the early 197O's revealed
that in the less developed provinces, an average of forty per cent of the
sixth graders had no textbooks; in elementary schools in some towns and
small cities, no students questioned had any books (Beeby 1979). In the past
decade, the Department of Education and Culture, with international
assistance, has undertaken massive national programs to write and publish
textbooks and library materials in Bahasa Indonesia for use in elementary
through tertiary institutions. Nonetheless, in most schools there is still
a chronic shortage of reading materials (Thomas 1977, Soedijarto, et at.
1980, Diah 1982, Nababan 1982; 1983).

Outside of the school system, there is a similar dearth of reading

materials, particularly in rural areas. As Nababan comments, "the reading
habit is still in a developmental stage in Indonesia" (1983:43). For
example, in 1976, the combined nationwide circulation of Indonesia's fifty
leading daily newspapers, most of which appear in Bahasa Indonesia, was only
2,358,000 (United Nations 1981), a figure well below the total needed for a
minimum of one copy per ten inhabitants recommended by UNESCO (1961). Book
publication, other than textbooks, in all languages is low due to limited
financial resources among both publishers and potential consumers and to a
general "lack of reading interest" (Diah 1982:90). To generate more interest
in the writing, publishing, and reading of books, the government has estab-
lished a National Council for Book Development, which has as one of its
projects a "Books Enter Villages" program (Diah 1982).

With regard to writing skills, many educators complain that students

receive insufficient training and practice in writing, largely because few
 LITERACY IN INDONESIA 133

teachers of languages and other subjects give writing assignments or collect

and correct the assignments that they do give (Beeby 1979, Nababan 1982).
This situation results from the population boom, which has led to average
classroom sizes of up to fifty pupils in many elementary and secondary
schools (Nababan 1982); the generally low salaries which force most teachers
to work in two or more schools daily (Thomas 1977), and, in rural areas,
teachers1 own lack of competence in writing (Diah 1982).

7.2. The vernaculars

In addition to providing for the above mentioned use of the vernaculars

as a transitional medium of instruction in the elementary schools, the
national curriculum guidelines of 1975 encourage the schools to assist in
the maintenance of the regional languages by offering them as subjects of
instruction. Hence, where teaching materials and qualified teachers are
available, the vernaculars are taught as subjects for two or three hours per
week throughout primary school and junior and senior high school. Decisions
as to which languages will be taught, syllabus content, and materials
preparation are made at the provincial level, based on the national syllabus
for Bahasa Indonesia and guidelines that have been developed at a series of
national seminars since 1976. To date, vernacular languages are regularly
taught in only eight provinces, six of which have set syllabi. While most
instruction appears to use the Latin alphabet, some high schools on Java and
Bali teach Javanese and Balinese, respectively, in traditional Indian-based
scripts, as noted earlier (Aanenson 1979, Nababan 1982; 1983).

At present, little information is available as to the results of these

classes in the vernaculars. In general, literacy instruction in the regional
languages appears to suffer from a lack of trained teachers and a shortage of
reading materials, both in and outside of the schools (Nababan 1983). For
example, Quinn (1983) reports that the five major periodicals in Javanese
have a relatively stable combined circulation of only 140,000.

7.3. English

Arabic, German, and French are frequently taught in secondary schools

where instructors and teaching materials are available (Nababan 1979).
However, since independence, English has been adopted as Indonesia's "first
foreign language" (Sadtono 1976:35) due to its status as the predominant
international language for science, technology, commerce, and communication
(Tanner 1967, Douglas 1970, Nababan 1982; cf., Kachru 1982b, forthcoming
regarding the prestige and functions of English as a world language; cf.,
Stevens 1973, Nababan 1979 for a discussion of the impact of English borrow-
ings on the lexicon of Bahasa Indonesia). As the only mandatory foreign
language in the school system, English is taught throughout Indonesia four
hours per week in junior high school and three to seven hours per week in
senior high school, depending on students' specialization and year in school
(Quinn 1975, Sadtono 1976, Aanenson 1979, Nababan 1982). The primary focus
of this instruction is on reading in English as a "library language" in
order to give students access to knowledge originating in other countries
and adequate preparation for university study, where up to 75 per cent of
the scientific and technical books are still available only in English
(British Council 1975). At the university level, additional instruction is
given one to two hours per week for a minimum of one year in "aplikasi"
134 PETER H. LOWENBERG

English (English for Special Purposes) focusing on students' areas of

specialization (Nababan 1982).

The present national curriculum objectives for English include a reading

vocabulary of 4,000 words by the end of senior high school (Nababan 1982).
However, a 1975 study revealed that after six years of formal instruction in
English, senior high school graduates had an average reading vocabulary of
only 1,000 words, and no more than five per cent could read even simple books
in English (Quinn 1975). Reasons often cited for disappointing levels of
reading ability in English are insufficient English proficiency of English
instructors and, again, a shortage of textbooks and other English-language
publications (Quinn 1975, Sadtono 1976).

8. CONCLUSIONS

Since independence, due largely to the success of the language policy

and the expansion of its elementary school system, Indonesia has made en-
couraging progress in the eradication of illiteracy. The popular acceptance
throughout the country of Bahasa Indonesia as the national and official
language has made possible the preparation, publication, and distribution of
uniform literacy materials in one language for use nationwide despite the
fact that most Indonesians speak any of several hundred regional vernaculars
as their mother tongue. As the educational system has grown to accommodate
most Indonesian children through the initial years of primary school, the
percentage of Indonesians with at least a rudimentary ability to read and
write has increased dramatically. The development of non-formal literacy
programs to reach the out-of-school population promises to further augment
Indonesia's literacy rates.

As a result of this literacy training both in and out of the schools,

the Directorate of Community Education of the Department of Education and
Culture now forecasts that all Indonesians between the ages of 15 and 54
will be literate by the year 2,000 (unpublished data from the Directorate
of Community Education, Jakarta, 1983). The challenge for Indonesia now is
to maintain and expand these basic literacy skills through the increased
publication and distribution of textbooks and other reading materials and
through improved training and working conditions for Indonesians responsible
for postliteracy instruction.

NOTE
Since Indonesia's independence, Malay has also been adopted as the
national and official language of Malaysia, where it is called Bahasa
Malaysia, and of Brunei. In Singapore, it is the national language and one
of four official languages. Differences in the varieties of Malay spoken
and written in these countries are slightly greater than the differences
between British and American English, but these varieties are all mutually
comprehensible (Stevens 1973). Combined, these varieties of Malay are used
by almost 150 million people in Southeast Asia, making Malay the sixth
 LITERACY IN INDONESIA 135

most widely-spoken language in the world (Alisjahbana 1977).

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abas, H. 1978. Bahasa Indonesia as a unifying language of wider communi-
cation: A historical and sociolinguistic perspective. Manila: Ateneo
de Manila University-Philippine Normal College Consortium. Ph.D. diss.

This extensive (500-page) analysis of Bahasa Indonesia examines the

spread and current functions and status of the language from three
perspectives: its historical development through the stages of lingua
franca, colonial language, national language, and language of wider
communication (with Malaysia); language planning processes of ortho-
graphic, syntactic, and lexical standardization and modernization,
and the role of Bahasa Indonesia in Indonesian society in terms of its
sociological and psychological impact and current and projected numbers
of speakers. In addition to providing an excellent summary of applied
linguistic research on Bahasa Indonesia to date, this study furnishes
a wealth of statistical data; a lengthy bibliography of sources in
Bahasa Indonesia, English, and other Western languages, and, in an
appendix, the complete texts of several documents from Indonesian
language planning agencies over the past 50 years.

Beeby, C. E. 1979. Assessment of Indonesian education: A guide in planning.

Wellington, New Zealand: Oxford University Press.

This study is an outgrowth of Indonesia's National Assessment of Edu-

cation Project, conducted by the Department of Education and Culture
between 1969 and 1972, to which the author was a Ford Foundation con-
sultant. The book consists of three main sections:
(1) "The Background"—general information regarding Indonesia and its
school system;
(2) "The Assessment"—a summary of data concerning primary and second-
ary schools collected during the National Assessment Project;
(3) "The Future"—a discussion of the current political and social
objectives of education in Indonesia and plans for qualitative
changes in the school system to complement its rapid expansion.
Though not accorded an individual chapter, in-school literacy
programs and various factors influencing their design, imple-
mentation, and results are discussed throughout the book.

Diah, M. 1982. National language policy and the writing curriculum in

Indonesia. Urbana: University of Illinois. Ph.D. diss.

This study examines and evaluates the teaching in Indonesian high

schools of post-literacy skills in Bahasa Indonesia in the context of
several factors influencing the design and implementation of the writing
curriculum. These factors include the national language policy; the
goals, structure, and rapid expansion of the educational system; the
136 PETER H. LOWENBERG

training, status, and working conditions of teachers, and the literacy

traditions and current attitudes toward writing in Indonesia. The
study is based on publications from primary and secondary sources and
on an interview questionnaire administered to a small sample of
Indonesian educators with regard to the teaching of writing and the
above factors.

Nababan, P. W. J. 1982. Indonesia. In R. B. Noss (ed.) Language teaching

issues in multilingual environments in Southeast Asia. Singapore:
Regional Language Centre. 1-47. [RELC Anthology Series No. 10.]

Like the other studies in this volume, which concern Malaysia, the
Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, this chapter consists of three
major sections: a socioiinguistic description of the use and status
of the national, vernacular, and foreign languages; the national policy
regarding the roles of these languages in education, and the imple-
mentation of this policy in the school system. Included are data con-
cerning proficiency in these various types of languages among the
Indonesian population as a function of sex, age, and residence in urban
vs. rural areas; a detailed analysis of Bahasa Indonesia and thirty-one
vernaculars according to numbers of speakers and language functions
(e.g., religion, medium or subject of instruction in education, written
communication); sample curricula and language teaching syllabi from all
levels of education, and a discussion of innovations currently being
implemented in the areas of instructional materials, teaching methods,
testing, and evaluation.

Nababan, P. W. J. 1983. The teaching of the mother tongue in Indonesian

secondary schools. Faculty of Languages and Arts, IKIP, Jakarta Timur,
Indone s ia. Mimeo.

The main focus of this paper is on issues related to the teaching of the
vernaculars as subjects of instruction in the secondary schools, includ-
ing the status of the vernaculars in the curriculum; the objectives,
instructional materials, and methods used in teaching the vernaculars,
and the training of vernacular language teachers. Substantial inform-
ation is also presented on the roles of Bahasa Indonesia and the vernacu-
lars as media and subjects of instruction throughout the formal and non-
formal education systems. Considerable discussion is devoted to current
levels of literacy in the population, as reflected in the 1980 census,
and to literacy instruction in the elementary schools and the KEJAR
program.

Soedijarto, et al. 1980. Indonesia. In T. N. Postlethwaite and R. M. Thomas

(eds.) Schooling in the ASEAN region. Oxford: Pergamon Press. 48-96.

This chapter, by seven prominent Indonesian educators and one of the

volume's editors, provides an excellent twenty-page introduction to the
socioiinguistic context and history of education in Indonesia, followed
by detailed analyses of formal and non-formal education in the 1970's
and current plans to improve the over-all educational system. Literacy
is discussed repeatedly from the standpoints of Indonesia's history and
current social and political concerns.
 LITERACY IN INDONESIA 137

UNESCO Regional Office for Education in Asia and the Pacific. 1981. Literacy
curriculum and materials development: Portfolio of literacy materials.
Bangkok: UNESCO. [Series I: Four monographs.]

This portfolio, focusing primarily on adult literacy through non-formal

education, resulted from the Regional Literacy Workshop of the above
UNESCO office, held in Udaipur, India, 29 November-20 December, 1979.
In attendance were representatives from literacy programs in Afghanistan,
Bangladesh, Burma, India, Indonesia, Laos, Nepal, Pakistan, Papua New
Guinea, the Philippines, Thailand, and Viet Nam. The portfolio consists
of separate monographs on Curriculum Development, Development of
Motivational Materials, Development of Instructional Materials, and
Development of Follow-up Materials including Media Materials. The con-
tents of each monograph are based on working papers, sample curricula,
and materials presented and developed during the workshop and on the
"Draft Final Report of the Workshop." Also included in the first mono-
graph is a short report on the "Proceedings and Methods" of the workshop.
Discussion of each of a wide variety of topics includes both summary
analyses of all reports submitted and selected excerpts from individual
country presentations. Each monograph also contains substantial infor-
mation on non-formal literacy programs in Indonesia, particularly con-
cerning the KEJAR program and the Package A materials.

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