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This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

THE CASE OF THE VILLAGE OF HARAPAN:
A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF A VILLAGE IN CENTRAL
JAVA, INDONESIA FOR EDUCATIONAL PLANNING
AND VILLAGE DEVELOPMENT

presented by

Tarwotj 0
has been accepted towards fulfillment

of the requirements for

Datew ‘

0-7639

 

 

 

ABSTRACT

THE CASE OF THE VILLAGE OF HARAPAN:
A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF A VILLAGE IN CENTRAL
JAVA, INDONESIA FOR EDUCATIONAL PLANNING
AND VILLAGE DEVELOPMENT

BY

Tarwotjo

This is a preliminary case study of a remote
.Javanese village in which the relationship of the public
(elementary school to the Villagers is given particular
attention. The study contains a description of the vil-
lage, its people, their traditional socialization patterns,
and the public elementary school. In conclusion, a theory
of village development and educational planning is pre-
sented.

The data for this study have been collected mostly
through interviewing and observation. The writer did use
some additional quantitative methods in conducting his
fieldwork, but he feels these were not very successful.
The languages used while conducting the fieldwork were
primarily Javanese in the villages, Indonesian in the
urban areas, a little English and, as any other field-
worker in the Indonesian setting, it was necessary for

him to read some Dutch, especially in tracing information

Tarwotjo

about the ruined Hindu Javanese temples found in the vil-
lage of Harapan and surrounding areas.

Two of the limitations of a preliminary study of
this sort are as follows: (1) Geographically, it does not
pretend to be representative of rural areas in Indonesia
or even in Central Java; (2) Socio-culturally, the data
presented herein represent only one of the many variations
in the rural Javanese setting.

This thesis is organized into three parts. PART I
is concerned with technical information about why the study
was initiated, what is to be covered, and how the data were
collected. In addition, a brief review of related studies
is given. PART II contains a summary of the findings of
the fieldwork, including a description of the village, its
people, their traditional socialization patterns and its
public elementary school. Here the writer has tried to
discuss one specific Village in considerable detail, in
order to show the complex relationship between village life
and the outside world. After seeing the position of the
public elementary school today within the village being
studied, in PART III, the writer attempted to analyze
theories of village development and educational planning.
And, using the case of this particular village as an exam-
ple, the writer examined the role that the village school

might potentially play in fostering rural development.

 

Tarwotjo

The data collected in Harapan seem to suggest cer-
tuain areas in which interaction between school and community
i4; needed. The school could serve the community in facili-
txrting a transition between the traditional rural way of
llife and a modern, urbanized, existence. Education would
lae essential in promoting improved standards of sanitation,
loirth control techniques, new entrepreneurial ventures, and
identification with the modern Indonesian nation. Cur-
ricula should be developed that relate to the real economic
needs of the villagers.

In short, the data suggested that one of the pos-
sibilities in setting up educational planning in this case
for the majority of the people perhaps should be reached
by the use of educators in the Village setting to enhance
the attainment of modernization goals for Indonesian vil-

lages, which is still neglected at the present stage of

development.

THE CASE OF THE VILLAGE OF HARAPAN:
A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF A VILLAGE IN CENTRAL
JAVA, INDONESIA FOR EDUCATIONAL PLANNING

AND VILLAGE DEVELOPMENT

BY

Tarwotjo

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

College of Education

1971

@ Copyright by
TARWO'I‘JO
l9 7 l

 

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As with any other dissertation, this is the result
of a relatively long endeavor, a process in which many
individuals were involved. The study extended far beyond
the boundaries of a single institution or country; the
individuals involved were guided by a common interest, the
scientific one. Although there are still weaknesses here
and there in this thesis, it represents the realization of
an almost impossible dream for me to have done the field-
work as I wished; it would never have been achieved without
the encouragement and help of many.

This test case was sponsored by: The Government
of the Republic of Indonesia, especially Mr. Mashoeri, the
Minister of Education and Culture; Dr. Soedjatmoko, the
Indonesian Ambassador to the United States; Mr. Soepojo,
the Secretary General of the Department of Education and
Culture; Major General Moenadi, the Governor Head of
Central Java; Mr. Koesnadi, the Director of Higher Educa-
tion; Brigadier General Charris Soehoed and Mr. Hercutanto,
the former and the present Cultural Attachees at the
Indonesian Embassy to the United States; Dr. Setijadi, the
Director of the National Assessment of Education Project;

Mr. Slamet II, the Chief Representative of the Department

of Education and Culture in Central Java; Mr. Moeljono and
Mr. Sastrodimoeljo and their staff members; the officials
and the people in the subdistricts of Ambangredjo and of
Weleri and of the village of Harapan; and

The Government of the United States of America,
expecially Mrs. I. Hvoslef, Miss L. A. Doyle, Professor
Liddle, and Professor Lawton, the Chiefs of the Agency
for International Development in Washington, D. C. and in
Djakarta, and in Jogjakarta; at

Michigan State University, especially Professors
O. D. Meaders, C. S. Brembeck, A. B. Hudson, and H. L. Case,
the Director and members of my Guidance Committee in the
College of Education and the Department of Anthropology;
and

Other professors, officials, elementary school
teachers and individuals, especially Professor M. M. Miller
in Colombia, South America; Professors G. Axinn, John and
Ruth Useem at Michigan State University; Professor
F. L. Cooley, Professor Selosoemardjan, Mr. Slamet I, and
Brigadier General Soedharto S. in Djakarta; Lieut. Colonel
Kristanto and Mr. Kristijarso in Semarang; Mr. Manggasri
in Karawang; Mr. Tjitrasoedjana in Tjilatjap; and Mr.
Soehardjo at Ambangredjo.

For their help and that of others I have failed to
mention here, allow me to express my deep thankfulness and

appreciation.

iv

Special thanks to Mrs. Judith M. Hudson for her
spontaneous help in editing the manuscript and improving
my English with great patience in the rush of her busy
daily life.

And last but not least, to my wife, Endang, and
my sons, Edi and Wahju, who were to be left home most of
the time during the years between 1968 and 1971, I really

thank them for their courage and support and sacrifice.

East Lansing, March 1971.

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

CHAPTER

I.

II.

III.

PART II.

PART I. BACKGROUND FOR THE STUDY

THE NEED FOR VILLAGE STUDIES IN EDUCATIONAL

PLANNING O O O O O O O O O O I O O O O O

A General View of Early Educational
Planning in Indonesia . . . . . . . . .
Why is a Rural Study in Depth Needed? . .
Traditional and Progress in the Javanese
Setting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Economics and Education . . . . . . . . .
Integrated Educational Planning:
Education for What? . . . . . . . . . .
The Values of the Indonesian Nation:
Pantjasila and the 1945 Constitution .
The Organization of the Study . . . . . .
Methodology and Procedures . . . . . . .
The Specific Location of the Study . . .
The Limitation of the Study . . . . . . .

REVIEW OF RELATED STUDIES . . . . . . . . .

Studies in rural economics in Indonesia
Boeke versus the others

Looking for pragmatic solution

Previous study in a single village

The writer's interest

The ecclogical approach in education

THE VILLAGE OF HARAPAN . . . . . . . . . .

Location 0 O O O O O O O O O O O O I O O 0
Climate O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0
Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

vi

THE CASE OF THE VILLAGE OF HARAPAN

Page

ll
l4

l6
l7
l9
19
26
29

30

38

39
39

CHAPTER

IV.

V.

Isolation . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Administrative Apparatus . . . . .
Settlement Pattern . . . . . . . . . .
Houses . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Population . . . . . . . . .
The Agricultural Cycle . . . . . . . .
Land Holdings and Property . . . . . .
Per-Capita Income . . . . . . . . . . .
Markets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Transportation . . . . . . . . . . . .
Communications . . . . . . . . . . . .
Institutions . . . . . . . . . . . .

THE PEOPLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Appearance . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Language . . . . . . . . . . . .
Village Solidarity . . . . . . . . . .
Village Orientation Groups . . . . . .
Abangan, Santri, and Prijaji
The Ethnic-Bound Group, The Religion-
Oriented Group, and the Indonesian-
Image Group
Economics and the Orientation Groups .

TRADITIONAL SOCIALIZATION IN HARAPAN . .

Infancy and childhood
Division of labor
Hindu-Javanese vlaues
The concept of "Perwiro"
The traditional place of Javanese
women
The concept of "silently watching"
The "Wajang" performance
Three channels for Harapan children
to observe appropriate ethical
standards

The loss of "Wajang" values at Harapan

Traditional Islamic education
Rukun Iman
Rukun Islam
The population's actual involvement
with Islam
Guru Ngadji instruction
Two kinds of Madrassah

vii

85

93

CHAPTER Page

VI. THE SCHOOL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
The Building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
The Teachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
The School Routine . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Curriculum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
The Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
An Analysis of the School' 5 Problems . . . 119

The Villagers' Attitudes Toward The
Teachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Village Leaders and Teachers . . . . . . . 122
VII. THE VILLAGE AND THE SUBDISTRICT . . . . . . . 126
The Subdistrict and its Population . . . . 126
Subsistence and Per-Capita Income . . . . . 129
Plantations . . . . . 129

The Roles of the Chinese and Citizens
from Chinese and Arab Origins in the

Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
The Government as a Factor in the Economy . 132
The Population of Ambangredjo Town and

the Orientation Groups . . . . 132
Education in Ambangredjo Subdistrict . . . 134
Government Civil Servants . . . . . . . 135
Development Potential . . . . . . . . . . . 137

PART III. A THEORY OF VILLAGE DEVELOPMENT
AND EDUCATIONAL PLANNING

VIII. SCHOOL AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES . . . . . . 140

The History of Education in Indonesia . . . 141
Dutch-built schools
Christian missionary schools
Islamic education
The Taman Siswa school
Education under the Japanese
Indonesian public schools
Educational Quality in Indonesia's
Schools Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

viii

CHAPTER Page
Ix. SCHOOL-BASED STRATEGIES IN INDONESIA . . . . 152

The National Assessment of Education
Project . . . . 153
The Case of the Village of Pesisir Urang . 158
Location
Climate
Landscape
The administrative apparatus
Settlement pattern
Houses
Population
Economy
Communications
Orientation groups in Pesisir Urang
Institutions
The school
The Prospect for A School—Based Strategy

in the Village of Harapan . . . . . . . . 172
X. ECONOMIC THEORIES IN DEVELOPMENT PLANNING . . 176
Boeke's Dualism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
The Writings of Clifford Geertz . . . . . . 182
Owen's Plan for Economic Development . . . 185
Benjamin Higgins . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
W. W. Rostow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Gunnar Myrdal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Raul Prebisch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Departmental Strategies: From the Top

Down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
XI. COMMUNITY-BASED STRATEGIES OF DEVELOPMENT . . 206
The Comilla Program in East Pakistan . . . 208
Development in Japan . . 211

The Prospect for a Community-based. Strategy
in the Village of Harapan . . . . . . . . 212

XII. ONE CONCLUSION: THE NEED FOR ENTREPRENEURIAL
EDUCATORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

ll.

12.

LIST OF TABLES

GROSS PRODUCT OF HARAPAN VILLAGE . . . . . .

GROSS PRODUCT OF AMBANGREDJO SUBDISTRICT

HARAPAN SCHOOL BY GRADE AND SEX . . . . . .
A COMPARISON OF VILLAGE LEADERS . . . . .

AMBANGREDJO POPULATION BY AGE, SEX AND
ETHNIC ORIGIN . . . . . . . . . . . . .

AMBANGREDJO TOTAL POPULATION BY YEAR . . . .
SCHOOLS IN AMBANGREDJO SUBDISTRICT . . . . .

ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS, STUDENTS AND TEACHERS
IN INDONESIA, 1877-1970 . . . . . . . . .

SECONDARY AND COLLEGE EDUCATIONAL STATISTICS

ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS AND KINDERGARTENS IN
CENTRAL JAVA, 1970 . . . . . . . . . . .

CHILDREN IN PESISIR URANG'S ELEMENTARY
SCHOOL NO. 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

CHILDREN IN PESISIR URANG'S ELEMENTARY
SCHOOL NO. 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Page

57

58

119

123

127
128

134

146

147

147

170

171

THE VILLAGE OF HARAPAN

scale 1 : 50,000
=1 . 1
km -oa.

 

the village of Ardi hodiOE/I, N

 

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bridge 'C ,’ S
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A: , The Legend
,/ ----- river
E 1’ 00000 stony road
I
00‘ 1’ & trail
/£a°%/ /I’ A the dukuhan of Ekasari

B the dukuhan of Dwisari
' C the dukuhan of Trisari
” D the dukuhan of Tjatursari
the regency Of Temanggung I the house of the Lurah
‘3 the house of the Bekel
E'warung (coffee shop)
mm pasar (market)

CIIJelementary school (New
location)

[Etlruined Hindu—Javanese
temples

xi

INT RODUCT ION

This dissertation is a preliminary case study of a
remote Javanese village in which the relationship of the
public elementary school to the villagers is given partic-
ular attention. The study contains a description of the
village, its people, their traditional socialization pat-
terns, and the public elementary school. In conclusion, a
theory of village development and educational planning is
presented.

Should we question just how remote was the village
described herein, let us trace the writer's first trip
there, since in Indonesia today mileage alone is not always
significant, given the present stage of transportation and
communications. The writer left Djakarta, the capital of
Indonesia in West Java, on Friday, January 2, 1970, driving
eastward by car. Many bridges were being repaired, and the
roads were relatively narrow, although the number of cars
were increasing each year. As night fell, the road became
completely dark; there were no electric street lights
anywhere between the two towns. Night buses connecting
Djakarta with the cities of Tjirebon, Semarang, Surakarta,
Jogjakarta, and Surabaja, competed against each other,

presenting considerable hazards to the unwary driver. The

relatively cool night grew darker and darker. Along the
way, the writer stopped three times at coffee Shops or to
buy gasoline; by 3:00 a.m. the next morning, he had reached
Semarang, the provincial capital of Central Java.

After three days consulting appropriate government
officials in Semarang and then in Kendal, the regency
capital, some 27 kilometers to the west of Semarang, on
Wednesday, January 7th, the writer traveled west again to
the small subdistrict trading town of Weleri, 46 kilometers
west of Semarang. Here, he turned southward, to the high—

1 about 18 kilometers

land subdistrict of "Ambangredjo"
from Weleri. Local people must wait hours for public
transportation between Weleri and Ambangredjo; the vehicles
are not buses, but old Dodge or Chevrolet trucks. After
seeing the officials in Ambangredjo and making necessary
preparations, on the 14th of January the writer began
walking, climbing up, following dirt roads or paths which
were very slippery, since it was raining at the time. He
reached the village being studied, which is about 18 kilo—
meters from Ambangredjo, in five hour's time. Although by
another road the village was only a two-hour drive, no one
had access to cars or trucks. The term remote used here,
then, means just that: there was no transportation other

than by foot between Ambangredjo and this village, the

most remote in the entire subdistrict.

 

lQuotation marks indicate pseudonyms.

PART I

Y
D
U
T
S
E
H
T
R
O
F
D
N
w
R
G
w
A
B

 

 

CHAPTER I

THE NEED FOR VILLAGE STUDIES

IN EDUCATIONAL PLANNING

Intelligent educational planning for rural condi-
tions demands a good understanding of the actual conditions
in the areas where schools exist. The situation in
Indonesia is no exception to this generalization. In 1960,
as the youngest official in the central office of the
Elementary Education Division at the Ministry of Education
and Culture, this writer began to see gaps between what
was being taught in colleges at that time and the realities
being faced by officials, between national educational
planning and the facts of village life that he saw on
visits to some of the islands, and between political
speeches and a scientific approach to educational problems.
These experiences made him interested, on the one hand, in
educational planning; on the other hand, he saw a need to
develop policies that were relevant to the diverse rural
settings found throughout the Indonesian archipelago. In
order to become qualified, the writer was strongly moti-
vated to complete a Doctorandus (Drs.) degree in education

from the Universitas Kristen Indonesia in Djakarta,

received in early 1961. His master's degree in rural
education was conferred at the end of 1962 by Kansas State
Teachers College, and in 1968 he began studies as a Ph. D.
candidate in Comparative and International Education at
Michigan State University.

A General View of Early Educational
Planning in Indonesia

 

 

In the first years of any newly independent coun—
try such as Indonesia, nation-building assumes great
importance. Thus, from its beginnings as an independent
country, Indonesian national policy focused on fostering
a new national consciousness through its educational
planning. One of the early acts of the Indonesian govern-
ment, during the armed revolution from 1945-1950, was to
turn its attention toward education. While the central
government was still exiled in Jogjakarta, the newly found-
ed Ministry of Education and Culture drafted a national
educational policy which was signed into law in 1950.

(The provisions of this law will be discussed in detail in
PART III.)

Under the new government, hundreds of colleges and
thousands of secondary and elementary school buildings
were erected by the government in cooperation with local
people, irregardless of the availability of teachers and

supplies, the establishment of relevant curricula, or the

 

organization of effective administrative facilities. The
new Indonesian nation could not afford to delay educational
development any longer, after having been restricted in the
past for more than 350 years by first the colonial Dutch
and then the occupying Japanese governments. At this time,
also, college graduates were desperately needed as teachers
at college and high school levels or in official government
posts. In the first years of the new nation, many people
without college degrees served in such capacities, the
writer among them, when he worked in the Ministry of Educa-
tion and Culture in 1960-1961, concentrating on elementary
education.

Most educational policies that have been introduced
in Indonesia have been initiated by the central government;
such plans have been implemented from the top-down. Some
high officials did begin to realize that the quality of
educational planning was especially important at the ele-
mentary level. As early as 1953, they were already
thinking about compulsory education,2 about the concept of
community schools inspired by those in Flint, Michigan and
and Kotabato, Philippines, and about campaigns to eradicate

illiteracy.

 

2See M. Hutasoit, Compulsory Education in Indonesia:

 

Studies on Compulsory Education No. 15 (Paris: UNESCO,
1954).

 

Among Indonesia's educational pioneers were such
men as Mr. Slamet I, Mr. Hutasoit, Mr. Slamet II, Mr.
Sutarman, Mr. Tartib, and Mr. Sadarjun; some had been
instrumental in founding the Ministry of Education and
Culture itself. These officials, who are all retired now,
visited almost all the provinces in Indonesia, including
many rural areas in different islands and among various
ethnic groups. In his new job in 1960, this writer saw
the many brochures and plans these men had prepared, es-
pecially with regard to elementary education for both
children and adults in the rural areas. However, the
political situation was too unstable even as late as 1966
for a truly professional approach to emerge. Also, in
these early plans, rural areas with their local schools
were still viewed by outsiders who made their observations
from vantage points far above the rural setting. In this
study, therefore, the writer has tried to see, from the
inside, some of the problems existing in a single village

setting.

Why is a Rural Study in Depth Needed?

Some anthropological fieldwork has been done in
Indonesian rural areas, on different islands and among

various ethnic groups.3 Thus far, none of these studies

 

3For short summaries of post-WOrld War II fieldwork
in Indonesia, see Koentjaraningrat (ed.), Villages in
Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967).

 

has been specifically related to educational planning or
to the economic problems that must be shouldered by both
the nation and the individual in Indonesia today. Nor have
the findings of these various anthropological studies been
integrated into a coherent village development program.
Village development relies upon a number of academic dis-
ciplines, but both anthropology and economics have great
relevance to the success of any rural development scheme.
Economic anthropology4 is even a subdiscipline within the
field of anthropology; this writer has tried to integrate
some of its techniques and approaches into what is basi-
cally a plan for educational development. Since similar
field research has never been attempted in the history of
Indonesian education, the writer feels that a study of a
specific community in depth should aid our understanding
of the villagers, their setting, and the economic problems
they face. These materials, in turn, should help us to
formulate educational planning that can be meaningful to
the villagers.

The term "educational planning" should be under-
stood as only one integral part of overall long-range
development planning. Educational schemes should not be

separated from other development planning in the village

 

4See George Dalton (ed.), Primitive, Archaic and
Modern Economics: Essays of Karl Polanyi (New York:
Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1968).

 

 

setting, as has often happened when the administrative
bureaucracies of several government departments have pene—
trated to an unprepared village, where the necessary
preconditions have not been established. The approach to
be used in this study, then, is not only a View from the
school to the surrounding community. Rather than a scheme
generated from either the top down or the bottom up,
emphasis is placed on the need for a meeting or a dialogue
between both levels.

The vast majority of Indonesia's 120 million inhab—
itants live in villages today. Thus it seems evident that
any type of national development must be concentrated upon
rural schemes, and in order to increase the effectiveness
of any development plans, we must understand the villager
in his own setting.

Only recently have villagers begun to think about
developing their home villages. Village officials gradually
are learning what should be done to develop their villages,
but they do not yet know how to do this scientifically.
They have recently realized that their land is very small,
and throughout Java, already overcrowded with illiterate,
traditionally oriented followers, not greatly different
from those ancestors who helped build Java's past glories.
These village officials need help, but only from someone
who can treat them with understanding. The villagers must

learn not only how to survive economically in terms of

10

subsistence, but also how to participate in the world
economy, a right that has been denied them for centuries.

For this reason, Wyn F. Owen, from the University
of Colorado, was right in suggesting that any Indonesian
development program based on a strategy of agrarian econ-
omy should treat both the subsistence sector and what he
calls the "commercial sector."5 Owen, an agricultural
economist, wrote as follows after having studied the
Indonesian situation:

There is much to be said for providing specialized
education in the science and arts of agriculture for
a substantial number of the farm youth in the com-
mercial farming sector to prepare them for assuming
the management of farm enterprises in subsequent
generations. However, this emphasis on the education
of children in the subsistence sector obviously has
very little merit. In this case the task is to pro-
vide education relevant to the non-farming economic
activities wherein alone is to be found the principal
long-run economic opportunity for these young people.
In any event, to the extent that they must continue
to find part of their livelihood in the cultivation
of subsistence plots, the type of education appro—
priate thereto is a world removed from that which has
as its objective the production of an efficient com—
mercial farm manager.

The present writer would like to suggest here that
the strategy of Indonesian educational planning, especially

for those living in the overcrowded island of Java, should

 

5Why F. Owen, "Structural Planning in Densely

Populated Countries: an Introduction with Applications to
Indonesia," in The Malayan Economic Review: XIV (April,
1969), pp. 97-114.

 

61bid., p. 112.

ll

follow Owen's ideas; these ideas will be discussed in more
detail in PART III.

As a beginning, then, local educational planning
needs a rural study in depth to provide information which
in turn may be used to help create a model for meaningful
development. In this way, perhaps-educational goals can
be altered so that gradually young people no longer become
strangers to their home villages which they have deserted
after graduating from school, or lost in large urban
centers where they desperately strive to find jobs or to
continue their education still further.

Tradition and Progress in
tHe Javanese Setting

 

 

Some general comments about the Javanese and Java-
nese villagers in particular may help clarify the problems
that confront any national development planner in Java.

Historically Java's villagers have been ordered
about by colonial officials; they have been treated as
inferiors by Hindu-Javanese overlords, and by Dutch and
Japanese alike. Among the rural peoples, this has resulted

in what the Javanese call sumonggo kerso, and the Sundanese,

 

sumuhun dawuh, or a "yes man" attitude, regardless of

 

whether the villagers understand or even agree. Even if
one did not actually want to do something, he still said

"yes"; this the Javanese know as inggih-inggih ora kepanggih,

 

12

or "lip service." Such an attitude has resulted from
their treatment by past kingdoms and colonial governments;
following independence, the educational system has tried
to counteract this effect of history. Villagers were
never given opportunities to develop as entrepreneurs in
their own setting. The great stories from history, of
palaces, of temples, of building under Daendels almost

800 miles of paved road throughout the island of Java, of
Dutch urban development and Dutch—managed plantations, and
finally of poor romusha (forced laborers) under Japanese
rule, are really the life histories of millions of vil-
lagers, who acted for centuries as followers, building and
creating without benefit to their daily lives in their
home villages.

The peak of traditional Javanese village culture
must have been reached centuries ago, at the time when
every inch of arable land was cultivated in sophisticated
and beautiful rice terraces or, in the hilly regions,
corn. The writer has always admired the beauty of the
landscape and the hard work of the villagers, from the
time of his childhood in his grandfather's village or in
other villages he visited. In the traditional sense, the
land was productive, and the villagers worked hard physi—
cally as they have for centuries. What then are the
weaknesses of their tradition, and why does starvation

and poverty occur? For here lies one of the challenges

 

13

facing those who would attempt to develop the villages and
use the public elementary schools as an instrument for
development.

Geertz has observed that after Javanese agricul-
tural tradition reached its peak centuries ago, and when
colonial rule began, the history of Javanese peasants
seemed to stop. Isolated from urban and foreign influences,
the peasants "involuted," clinging even more doggedly to
their traditions, making the gap between themselves and
the outside world wider and wider.7 To carry this idea
further, even though it may be painful for many Javanese,
it is necessary to identify the essential contrasts be-
tween Javanese tradition and the desired modern Indonesian
image.

Rural Java was essentially a community of blind
solidarity, while progress toward modernizations seems to
require individual thinking, responsibility, achievement,
and self realization. It is hard to leave the quiet,
peaceful Javanese traditional village setting among the
corn, tobacco or rice fields, especially at harvest time;
yet how miserable it must be for the younger people, who
can no longer survive as their forefathers have done. The

stereotype of the traditional rural Javanese is of a good,

 

7Clifford Geertz, Agricultural Involution: The
Process of Ecological Change in Indonesia (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1963), pp. 80-82.

 

 

 

l4

loyal follower, but the modern Indonesian needs the vig—
orous spirit of the entrepreneur, to open new frontiers

in nearly every aspect of life. The tendency of the
Javanese toward introversion should be changed to extra-
version; "involution" should be transformed into "outvolu-

tion, if such a term may be coined.

An inspiring economic speech by a respected leader
is without much meaning for the rural Javanese and will
have little meaning until his agricultural income becomes
more assured. In the village that this writer studied,
the "case of the goat in the house" gave proof of this.

No matter how much advice the officials gave, and how dil-
ligently they worked for modern hygiene, the goats were
still kept inside, even when some of the villagers had
died from the unhealthy, dirty conditions inside the houses.
Even though traditional means are out of date, modern ways
are either too vague or too filled with uncertainty for
the average peasant. The same types of attitudes pre—
vailed toward birth control, even when they realized they

were having too many children.

Economics and Education

 

Traditionally the Javanese peasant strives to
produce no more food than is essential for survival; his-
torically, he also had to pay taxes, either to Javanese

kingdoms or to Dutch and Japanese governments. No thought

15

was given to the modernization of the villages by various
ruling powers, and therefore rural conditions did not
change much, although urban life was altered to some degree.
The peak for the traditional peasant came several centuries
ago, when every family had at least 2 hectares of land,
but with the twentieth century, population pressure has
been intensive throughout Java. This population growth
was, in part, a result of the villagers need for more and
more children to cultivate their land, the more the merrier.
Modern economic thought in Indonesia is still
being introduced and developed by a handful of Indonesian
economists who are setting up national planning; these men
have not had time yet to develop local-level strategies.
Therefore, instead of waiting for them to be ready, this
writer has in his fieldwork tried to study the village
economy directly. In connection with the need for rele-
vancy between school and village life, it is very important
to understand the economic sector, as it plays a most
important role in human life everywhere. The village
community cannot devote much of its resources to the
education of her children, unless these educational ef—
forts can be made to serve her present economy. The study
of economic opportunities should be established and devel-
oped in village schools, and studied by all from their
childhood. The first priority, in this case, then, is not

what the village could and should do for improving the

16

education of her children, but on the contrary, what the
educational institution could and should do for developing
the economic sector in the socio-cultural setting of the
village community concerned and for helping the children
become participants in the community. Who does not want
his children to be successful, but does a child who attends
the local school learn enough so that he will be able to
eat enough food every day?

All aspects of traditional heritages that are in
conflict with the concepts necessary for rural moderniza-
tion should be firmly brought into line with sound eco—
nomic principles, so that Indonesia can survive as a young
nation, and its peoples endure as individuals as well.
This is the price of development, and it should be paid.
And for those Indonesians from Javanese backgrounds, for
support of modernization we can turn to positive tradi-
tional values, such as expressed in an old proverb that

says, djer basuki mowo bejo, nanging odjo njowo ingkang

 

muspro, meaning, "to achieve something worthwhile, you
have to pay the price, but not a soul should be wasted."
Or, as Professor Meaders said to this writer last October,

the price should not be too high.

Integrated Educational Planning:
Education for What?

 

 

The next question we must ask is, what kind of

education do we need to promote in our schools? It is

17

time for us, the Indonesians, to pay attention to the
importance of local level planning, to develop plans from
the bottom up to meet the present strategies that reach
from the top down. Although school enrollment is contin-
uously expanding, rural peoples are not yet ready for the
idea of compulsory education. The number of students
leaving schools--at all 1evels--is symptomatic that educa-
tional programs are still not relevant to the Village
community, especially in terms of local economic conditions.

Before we can answer adequately the question,
education for what?, we need some perceptive studies of
villages from different settings. Only then can we plan
technically a national strategy, based on the collected
data rather than on approximations or shallow sketches or
big myths, as we have often done in the past.

Perhaps here we have to differentiate between two
things: the values of the Indonesian nation and the
techniques of the educational profession. Since this
dissertation concentrates upon the latter, it would per-
haps be worthwhile here to mention the national principles
that form the basis for the Indonesian national conscious-
ness.

The Values of the Indonesian Nation:
Pantjasila and the 1945 Constitution

 

 

The form of the Indonesian government is a democ-

racy, based on the Pantjasila and the 1945 Constitution.

18

The Pantjasila, or the Five Pillars that form the philo-
sophical basis of the Indonesian state, are composed of
five inseparable and mutually qualifying principles, as
follows:

(1) Belief in the One, Supreme God;

(2) Just in Civilized Humanity;

(3) Unity of Indonesia;

(4) Democracy which is guided by the inner wisdom
in unanimity arising out of deliberations
amongst representatives;

(5) Social Justice for all of the People of
Indonesia.

In the past, it was common to say that the
Indonesian educational system should always be based on
these principles and the 1945 Constitution, and then one
would stop there. It is about time for we, the Indonesians,
to see these principles as the beginning of our profes-
sional planning, and not as the end of a formal popular
speech, as they have been. And this professional planning
should begin by improving economic sectors, emphasizing
agricultural or other economic needs relevant to the
individual socio-cultural setting of the village, the
place where all of us Indonesians came from, and where

most of us still live.

19

The Organization of the Study

This thesis is organized into three parts. PART
I is concerned with technical information about why the
study was initiated, what is to be covered, and how the
data were collected. In addition, a brief review of
related studies is given. PART II contains a summary of
the findings of the fieldwork, including a description of
the village, its people, their traditional socialization
patterns and its public elementary school. PART III is
an attempt to analyze theories of village development and
educational planning, and, using the case of the village

being studied as an example, to build a theory of devel-

oping entrepreneurial educators in the village setting.

Methodology and Procedures

 

The data for this study have been collected mostly
through interviewing and observation. If we trace the
progress of the fieldwork chronologically, in Djakarta
this writer relied primarily on formal interviews for
gathering information and soliciting advice from concerned
officials and scholars. He proceeded similarly in Semarang,
Kendal and Ambangredjo. The following individuals were
kind enough to discuss the writer's fieldwork with him:
in Djakarta, the Minister and the Secretary General of the
Ministry of Education and Culture, Professor Selosoemardjan,

Professor Koentjaraningrat, Professor Liddle, Mr. Koesnadi,

20

Mr. Slamet I, and Dr. Setijadi. In Semarang, Mr. Slamet II,
and his staff members; in Kendal, regency officials; and
in Ambangredjo, subdistrict officials. At the close of
his fieldwork, the writer was summoned by the Governor of
Central Java in Semarang, and he also had an opportunity
to see Professor Lawton at Gadjahmada University in
Jogjakarta; he met Professor Selosoemardjan by chance at
the Hongkong airport.

The writer went back and forth between Ambangredjo
and the village of "Harapan" on the average of once a
month, staying in Harapan between 7 and 12 days at a time,
depending on the focus of his study, on the quantity of
supplies he had, on his psychological condition or on his
health. For a period of 9 months, he was almost continu-
ously in Ambangredjo or in the surrounding areas; once in
a while he visited Kendal, Semarang, Jogjakarta or Djakarta
for consultation with professional people and officials.
For purposes of comparison, he also traveled to a coastal
village and its surrounding areas some 30 kilometers from
Harapan, where he spent 4 days interviewing and recording
data.

At the village level, the bulk of the data was
collected through the process of informal interviews. Of
first importance to the writer's relations with the vil-
lagers was the fact that he used his feet for transporta—

tion, the same as any peasant. On January 14, 1970, the

21

first time he left the highland of the subdistrict of
Ambangredjo, he walked in the rain for five hours over a
distance of 18 kilometers on steep slippery dirt trails,
through the villages up to the village of "Harapan" located
at the eastern base of Mt. "Sampan," since he had been
unable to get any transportation. He was greatly helped
by the people in collecting his data, even though he was
still a stranger to them for the first months, partially,
as he found out later on, because they appreciated his
walking right from the beginning. Also the villagers were
appreciative that he talked to and listened to his dif-
ferent guides before feeling relaxed enough to walk alone
in strange villages and along the lonesome dirt trails.
He chatted with strangers he met in coffee shops and along
the roads and conversed with different people when he
dropped by their homes or met them in their fields where
they were growing tobacco, corn and cabbage. He talked
and listened to the head of the village and his assistants
when he met them, and he chatted with the students and
schoolchildren in their classes, when they were playing
soccer using a young orange as their ball, caring for
their younger brothers or sisters, or while they were
collecting grass for their goats. Of course he talked
with the teachers and those parents he could reach.
Interviewing was done informally and indirectly,

following Javanese cultural patterns. The concept of

22

politeness in Javanese tradition is essentially based on
the categories of "refined" and "rough." The term refined,
or gigs, in Javanese encompassed informal, brotherly ap-
proaches that are indirect and do not hurt the feelings

of another. Refined communication is honest and modest;
it shows respect for elders and traditional power holders.
The term rough, or kagar, means just the opposite of the
above. "To tell it like it is" would be considered rough
by a traditional Javanese, especially if the relationship
were public. Such a communication could only be conducted
directly, straight to the point, frankly and rationally,
if it were done in private. Within the restrictions of
this refined and rough framework, the writer tried to
focus conversations firmly on relevant subjects.

Perasaan, or "emotional dignity" plays an influen-
tial role in the Javanese setting. Once a fieldworker has
been accepted psychologically, another problem arises,
since the villagers have yet to distinguish between pri-
vate and business matters. Therefore, anthropological
interviewing in the Javanese setting is really time—
consuming; the fieldworker, trying to use the technique
of "participant observation" had to be careful not to
become too deeply involved so that he would loose his
objectivity.

The writer never summoned anybody in the village

to be interviewed. He visited them in their homes or

 

23

fields, or in other natural or relaxed places. He never
took notes in front of them, but wrote up his findings as
soon as he arrived in a setting where writing was familiar.
In the evenings, however, village officials visited him in
turn, talking about what they or he wanted too. In this
situation he could write notes without making his inform-
ants uneasy.

Data collected through interview techniques fall
into what another anthropological fieldworker in Java,

Robert Jay, has called "conceptions";8

Jay has been care-
ful to distinguish such statements of informants from acts
or situations that the fieldworker has actually observed
himself. This writer has tried to differentiate between
data collected by interview and events actually witnessed;
he tried to check the reliability of interview data through
direct observation whenever possible.

Although not a professional mapmaker, the writer
attempted a simple map using the pace and compass tech-
nique. He carried his camera nearly everywhere he went,
again even though he is not an accomplished photographer.
These two devices, he found, made it easier for him to

talk with strangers he met. While mapping, he had an

excuse to visit people in their fields, whereupon he

 

8R. R. Jay, Javanese Villagers (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1969), p. 29.

 

24

could question them about their primary concern, growing
tobacco, corn, or cabbages. Only after a discussion of
such subjects would the writer then be able to pursue
other matters that were more hidden or complex.
Observation was also necessary, since the meaning
of words were often hidden beneath stereotype expressions.
It is considered polite in the Javanese setting, that if
you see someone you know from the front of your home, to
say, monggo pinarak, or "would you please drop by?" And

he would likely answer, inggih, kapan—kapan sowan, or "yes,

 

some other time." Only by observation could one know what
is meant, since traditionally it is hard for a Javanese

to refuse somebody while talking to him. Verbally you
must say "yes" to an invitation, even though both parties
concerned know that you actually mean "no." A frank ans-
wer could mean a "rough" approach to a traditional
Javanese. Javanese culture is really full of this kind

of situational context, or "silent language."

The writer did use some additional quantitative
methods in conducting his fieldwork, but he feels these
were not very successful. He trained five Village offi—
cials, on a voluntary basis, to conduct a preliminary
exploratory census; these five people in turn instructed
other people, including the four elementary teachers, one
religious teacher and three "madrassah" teachers, so that

in all about 40 people were involved in this project.

25

For almost five days, each house was visited by two people,
to ensure the accuracy of the procedure. They tried to
explain clearly that the census had no connection with
taxation, but was being done for the village's benefit and
for scientific interest. The writer must admit that the
process was not only difficult, but also quite exhausting
as well. The results were checked twice. The government
later made a nation-wide census, including Harapan, fol-
lowing this voluntary census. The census official told the
writer that the voluntary census had made it easier to
conduct the government census. When he left the Village,
the writer was unable to get the results of the government
census, however, since time did not permit his waiting any
longer. Although the voluntary census had more information
and was based on local initiatives, it lacked the facili-
ties available to the government. Consequently, its
accuracy was questionable, both because the writer fell
ill on the last day and because in one of the 4 dukuhan,
or hamlets, there was no strong leadership, as its head
had just died. There were two people competing for elec-
tion, and this situation made a voluntary census difficult.
The languages used conducting the fieldwork were
primarily Javanese in the villages, Indonesian in the
urban areas, and a little English when the writer met AID
or MUCIA officials or Ford Foundation or UNESCO consultants

at a conference held by the Ministry of Education and

26

Culture. During the 9-month period of the fieldwork,
Javanese was spoken with the villagers and even with the
local officials informally in the subdistrict. Besides
Indonesian and English, the writer, as any other field-
worker in the Indonesian setting, had to read some Dutch,
especially in tracing information about the ruined Hindu-
Javanese temples found in the village of Harapan and

surrounding areas.

The Specific Location of the Study

There were several reasons why the writer chose
the particular village that he studied. First, he felt
that since communications and transportation are still big
problems, a remote village would be more neglected than
one located closer to the subdistrict capital. Officials
suggested that the writer should observe villages which
were located close to the subdistrict capital, since these
were considered the best to visit in the area. No one
could understand in the beginning why the writer chose
the most remote village in the subdistrict, which could
not be reached since there was no transportation available
from the subdistrict capital inland. The writer also
visited two villages chosen by a Teachers College team
under the guidance of the National Assessment of Education
Project, one to represent the mountainous region and the

other, the coastal fishing setting. Both of these villages

27

were about 6 kilometers from the subdistrict capital, with
available public transportation. (The visit to the fishing
village is recorded in some detail in PART III.)

Local officials also could not understand why the
writer concentrated on a single village for so long, com-
pared with other research that they knew about thus far.
Furthermore the writer knew that Koentjaraningrat9 con-
ducted his research in villages in South Central Java that
were not as remote as this one; Wilmott10 worked in North
Central Java, but in an urban setting and specializing on
a different aspect. Selosoemardjanll worked in South
Central Java, in the urban setting, using a sociological
rather than an anthropological approach.

Whereas it is generally assumed that all Javanese
eat rice, this is not true in the mountainous regions,
where corn is the staple. And above all, the village
studied is an example of relatively extreme economic suf-
ferings, even though the peasants work hard at traditional

agricultural pursuits.

 

9Koentjaraningrat, "Tjelapar: A Village in South
Central Java," Villages in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1967), pp. 240-280.

loDonald Earl Wilmott, The Chinese in Semarang:
A ChanginggMinority Community in Indonesia (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1960).

llSelosoemardjan, Social Changes in Jogjakarta
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962).

 

 

 

28

Geographically, the village studied is isolated,
and its physical location has made its people feel psycho-
logically isolated. The Javanese language is still the
only reality in this village. How can we develop an in-
tense nationally oriented, democratic attitude in the
traditional Javanese rural setting, if we do not start
teaching Indonesian to students from the first grade,
instead of from the third grade, as is now the case? Mod-
ern communications are still scarce. Radios are too
expensive, as are their batteries and the taxes that must
be paid to maintain them. Even all the village officials
did not have radios at that time. The isolation of the
village perhaps made it easier for the writer to identify
the problems involved, even though they were complicated.

The final factor for choosing this particular vil-
lage was his family background. The writer's wife is not
trained anthropologically, and she could not have survived
in such a remote village, especially as they had a small
child. Since his grandfather had been the head of a vil-
lage in South Central Java, the writer planned so that
while he was doing his fieldwork, his family could live
in a setting familiar to her from childhood. Even so, he
eventually took his family back home to Djakarta, some
350 miles away, after seeing how busy a fieldworker was

in collecting his data.

29

The Limitations of the Study

A preliminary study of this sort has certain
limitations, and two of them are as follows:

Geographically, it does not pretend to be repre-
sentative of rural areas in Indonesia or even in Central
Java.

Socio-culturally, the data presented herein repre-
sent only one of the many variations in the rural Javanese

setting.

CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF RELATED STUDIES

In order to understand the background of this
thesis perhaps we should review related studies concerned
with anthropology, with rural economics in the Javanese
setting and those relevant to the methodology used in col—
lecting the data.

It was several years ago that foreign anthropolo-
gists who were interested in the Indonesian setting, began
concentrating on depth studies of one ethnic group as a
professional base, as there are many ethnic groups. This
approach was used by Hurgronje on the Atjehnese, Bruner on
the Bataks, Cooley on the Ambonese, Geertz, Jay and
Koentjaraningrat on the Javanese, Kaudern on Sulawesi as
a whole, Hudson and his students on the Dajaks, and many
others on the Balinese. Perhaps two anthropologists
specialized in studying the same ethnic group, but their
specific subjects were different such as Peacock, who
concentrated on ludruk performances in the East Javanese
setting, the late Claire Holt on Indonesian art, Wilmott

and his students on the Chinese in the Indonesian setting,

30

31

or Margaret Mead on the traditional socialization of
Balinese children, to name but a few.

In the history of applied anthropology in Indonesia,
we know that Hurgronje was hired by the Dutch government,
resulting in considerable misunderstanding as to the
potential of anthropology in the Indonesian setting. And
only recently has anthropology been considered to be
functional for nation and character building. At the
present stage of economic development, all Indonesian
college graduates in any field, in one way or another are
government officials, including anthropologists such as
Koentjaraningrat and his students.

There have been two kinds of foreign scholars
studying the Indonesian setting: those who were engaged
by the government and those who were academics. The first
group have joined Indonesian scholars in building a strong-
er scientific approach, such as Higgins in applied econo-
mics several years ago, and Bruner, the first applied
anthropologist in educational planning, one of the Ford
Foundation consultants who assisted on this National
Assessment of Education project. In this chapter, however,
the writer has limited his concern to studies of rural
economics in the Indonesian setting and those related to
general rural educational planning.

Some scholars who have studied villages in

Indonesia have concentrated on rural economics, Since

32

they have been concerned with the poverty of the majority
of the people.

Historically, perhaps we have to consider the
academic battles between views developed by the Dutch
scholar Boeke and others.1 Since these views will be
covered in some detail in PART III, here, the writer
would like to give some general introductory notes on
them.

Boeke wrote his dissertation in 1910; his other
books and articles, especially those written in 1930 and
1953, emphasize the same theme: his theory of dualism
between the Western economic system and that of what have
now become the new nations born after World War II.
According to Boeke, based on his fieldwork in the Javanese
rural setting, these two systems can never meet. There-
fore he advocated a "slow process" through "village
reconstruction" based on a "back-to-the-village policy";
through "sharing the poverty" the ignorant-isolated vil-
lage would not "disintegrate." At the time, Boeke was
very influential in Dutch administration, and one of his
followers was G. Gonggrijp.

Only 17 years after his dissertation had been
published did Boeke start to be challenged by other

scholars. Economists such as J. van Gelderen,

 

lSee Koentjaraningrat, Villages in Indonesia
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), pp. 21-23.

 

33

E. P. Wellestein, Aboetari and the anthropologist Raymond
Firth, denied the validity of Boeke's dualistic theories,
but Boeke had not changed his views much even as late as
8 years after World War II had ended. Benjamin Higgins
and M. Sadli are other economists who later opposed
Boeke's theory.2
The setting is now different, since Indonesia is
not under Dutch rule any more; Boeke's theory of dualism
therefore has lost its power in Indonesia. Since it is no
longer necessary to challenge Boeke's dualism, other than
on historical grounds, next we must look for pragmatic
solutions for the creation of a modern peaceful and pros-
perous village setting based on Indonesian principles.
Here, a scholar like Wyn F. Owen, quoted in Chapter I,
assumes importance. Since the writer will follow Owen's
ideas in some detail in PART III, here, the writer would
only point out that like other traditional societies
emphasizing out-dated past glories, in the first decade
after World War II, Indonesia seemed to stress extreme
contrast, attempting to leap from the painful past to the
distant and still vague future, forgetting the present
hard realities. And here lies the importance of Owen's

strategy, proposing two simultaneous approaches which he

called "subsistence and commercial sectors" to be

 

2Ibid., p. 23.

34

reflected in educational planning so that the rural student,
not only learns abOut future tasks in an industrial setting,
but also is trained simultaneously to survive individually
and economically in his own crowded Javanese Village set-
ting as it progresses towards rural modernization.

In this context what Clifford Geertz has written
is important. He analysed the rural Javanese economy
historically,3 stating that the Dutch brought Java's pro-
duce into the world market, but kept the Javanese people
isolated from world events. Thus he sees Boeke's dualism
more as the result of past colonial history than as derived
from the essential nature of the Javanese, as Boeke had
claimed. Another important study by Geertz,4 is concerned
with the patterns of economic entrepreneurship in Javanese
and Balinese settings; this will be discussed and developed
in some detail in PART III as it relates to local educa-
tional planning.

When economists like Widjojo Nitisastro and

J. E. Ismail5 began to study the economy of a single

 

3See Clifford Geertz, The Development of the
Javanese Economy, Social Cultural Approach (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1956).

4C. Geertz, Peddlers and Princes: Social Change
and Economic Modernization in Two Indonesian’Towns (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1963).

5See Widjojo Nitisastro and J. E. Ismail, The
Government, Economy and Taxes of a Central Javanese Village
YIthaca: Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, 1959).

 

35

village they were filling a real need. An investigation
of a single village, like the present study, was conducted
by these men and their graduate students, who worked
several years ago in a South Central Javanese Village.
This village, called Djabres is not as remote as the vil-
lage the writer studied. Their study concentrated on
village government in connection with the economy and tax
collection.

These writers were interested in studying the vil-
lage economy and then building theories accordingly, while
this writer's interest has been how to implement these
theories through meaningful educational planning for the
villagers concerned. As an example, perhaps, the questions
which arise from the review of the literature might be
formulated this way:

(1) How can we set up educational planning follow-

ing Owen's strategy?

(2) How can we assist at the birth of an entrepre-
neurial spirit among rural Javanese, partially
using Geertz' findings in Java and Bali?

(3) How can we build a professionally dignified
corps of elementary school teachers, especially
those serving in the rural areas, to carry out
these two tasks?

Also, the writer has examined related studies to

assess methodological studies relevant to his fieldwork.

36

The techniques of anthropology have been especially influ-
ential.

As in any other field, anthropology has several
approaches; one approach used here, is called the ecolog-
ical approach, a method originally taken from the science
of biology, which deals with "the functional relationship
between organisms and their environment."6 Geertz states
that this term has expanded into other areas, such as

"human ecology,‘ used by Bates, Park, and Quinn. It has
also developed into "cultural ecology," as used by

Julian Steward. In this light, it may be possible to
formulate "educational ecology," an attempt to employ an
ecological approach in education, as Geertz developed an
ecological approach in anthropology.7 However, the writer
is primarily concerned in this study with the functional
approach, in this case, of educational planning for a
village development, that is relevant for the villagers

concerned, rather than only for outsiders alone, as has

happened in the past centuries in Indonesia.

 

6See Clifford Geertz, Agricultural Involution
Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1968 ,

pp. 1-60

7It is beyond the scope of the study to discuss
what educational ecology is; however, it is perhaps re-
flected to a certain degree, as applied by this writer in
his analysis of the data discussed in PART II as a whole.

PART II

THE CASE OF THE VILLAGE OF HARAPAN

CHAPTER III

THE VILLAGE OF HARAPAN

"Harapan,' the Village where the principal data
for this study were collected, is located at the eastern
base of "Mt. Sampan," in the province of Central Java,
Indonesia. Sampan is a dormant volcanic peak1 that rises
some 2,565 meters (or about 8,412 feet) above sea level.
The mountain itself was long ago part of another, much
larger volcano that exploded, exposing its large crater
and creating a rim of smaller volcanic peaks. This crater,
known today as the Dieng Plateau, is the location of vari-
ous Hindu Javanese temples, dating from c. 800 A.D. The
second oldest Shivaite temples in Java, the Dieng struc-
tures are of paramount importance to Indonesia's distant
historical past.2 Mt. Sampan itself forms the eastern
boundary of the Dieng Plateau. The village of Harapan

lies on the eastern slopes of Mt. Sampan, at an altitude

of about 1,300 meters (or about 4,261 feet) above sea level.

 

1D. C. Stibbe (ed.), Encyclopedie van Nederlandsch-
Indie (s'Gravenhage: M. Nijhoff, 1919), derde deel, p. 738.

 

2Claire Holt, Art in Indonesia: Continuities and
Change (Ithaca: Cornell UniversIty Press, 1967), pp. 52-53.

 

38

39

Climate

Because of its altitude, the average temperature
at Harapan is about 67 degrees F., ranging between an
early morning low of 62 degrees to a midday high of 70
degrees. Such temperatures seem cool in comparison with
the average temperature of 70 degrees (ranging between 70
degrees and 78 degrees) at the subdistrict capital of
Ambangredjo (altitude, 600 meters; or about 1,676 feet),
some 18 kilometers to the northeast, and positively cold
when contrasted with that in humid coastal cities such as
Weleri, Semarang, or Djakarta, where the temperature
averages about 85 degrees, with a range between 83 and 91
degrees.

Harapan experiences two seasons, wet and dry.
Rains from the northwest monsoon begin in September, con-
tinuing on roughly into March. Between April and September
the weather becomes drier and hotter, and often Harapan's
small rivers are reduced to a trickle or disappear

entirely.

Landscape

 

Harapan is located in a truly picturesque spot.
Should we stand at the elementary school, which is built
on high ground in the middle of the village's territory,
we can see in all directions: to the west, over corn or

tobacco fields and past one of the village's hamlets,

4O

rises the peak of Mt. Sampan, with its wooded slopes; to
the east, cultivated fields slope down to a river beyond,
and a forest stretches to two distant blue volcanic peaks,
Mt. Sundoro and Mt. Sumbing. A road winds southward,
bridging a river that marks the boundary with a neighbor-
ing village that lies in another administrative district.
To the north, another path leads downwards, toward the
small administrative and market town of Ambangredjo and
eventually to the north coast of Java and a number of

larger towns and cities.

Isolation

 

For the outside observer, Harapan is a beautiful
place, and much of this beauty derives from its location
in an isolated, secluded spot, far from the heat and
crowds of an urban center. Harapan's isolation creates
many problems for its 1,411 inhabitants, however: prob-
lems of marketing its tobacco and other crops, problems of
transporting necessary goods back to the village, problems
of communication with the numerous governmental channels
responsible for distributing services and disseminating
information to the remote rural areas, problems of devel-
oping a viable economy, problems of educating its young
peOple to integrate their community into the modern nation

of Indonesia.

41

To reach the small market town of Ambangredjo from
the village, one must walk 18 kilometers along narrow,
steep trails which are treacherously slippery in the rainy
season. For a villager, this trip takes about 3 hours,
though one stops in roadside coffee shops (warung) along
the way; for the unaccustomed urban observer, the journey
took 4 to 5 hours. Although one or two people ride bicy-
cles or horses, the normal means of transport is by foot;
men carry crops from a bar balanced on their shoulders,

women use a basket suspended in a sling (selendang).

 

There is another, longer road (22 kms.) between Harapan
and Ambangredjo that is passable to motor vehicles; it is
not so steep, and for much of the distance below Harapan
it winds through a clove plantation. This road is wider
than the first trail, and for more than a century was used
as the access road to a Dutch plantation within Harapan's
boundaries. The plantation, first cultivating coffee and
subsequently, tea, was established before 1868. At one
time the road was paved, but it fell into disrepair during
the Japanese occupation. The plantation was abandoned
later, after it was burned out in 1948 by Indonesian
patriots during the Revolution.

Should a villager wish to carry his goods to trade
in a different subdistrict town, the relatively busy cen—
ter of Weleri lies another 18 kilometers to the north,

connected with Ambangredjo by a road crowded with trucks

42

or buses. To the east 19 kilometers along the highway
from Weleri is the regency capital of Kendal, with the
provincial city of Semarang still another 27 kilometers
to the east.

Harapan must indeed be among the most remote
settlements in the entire province of Central Java. Of
the 18 villages in the mountainous subdistrict of
Ambangredjo (to which Harapan belongs), Harapan is the
most isolated; economically, it is also one of the poorest
Villages in the subdistrict. Harapan was chosen as the
focus of this study because it was felt that any village
problems, educational or economic, would be more intense,
and perhaps easier to diagnose under conditions of such

remoteness.

The Administrative Apparatus

 

Harapan belongs to the subdistrict (ketjamatan)

 

of "Ambangredjo,' in which it is one of 18 villages. It
is situated on the easternmost border of the administra-
tive district, and because of its distance from the sub-
district capital, contacts between Harapan's villagers

and the Indonesian administrative apparatus are often less
regular than those with villagers living in nearby settle-

ments that belong to other administrative areas. Under

Dutch rule, Harapan belonged to the district (kawedanaan)

 

of Selokaton, an administrative area included the

43

subdistrict of Ambangredjo and 3 other subdistricts as
well. Following the Japanese occupation, and eventually,
Indonesian independence, district-level government was
abolished. Today the subdistrict officer (tjamat) of
Ambangredjo is directly responsible to the regency head
(bupati) in Kendal, who in turn, reports to the provincial

Governor of Central Java in Semarang.

Settlement Pattern

 

The total land area of Harapan comprises approxi-
mately 2 square kilometers. The village territory lies
between two small rivers, which define its borders to the
north and south. The two streams converge at the north-
east boundary of the settlement's territory. Most of the
village's land is under cultivation, planted in either
tobacco, the main cash crop, or corn, the staple food in
the villager's diet. There are no irrigated rice fields
(sawah) in Harapan, because the terrain and soil are not
suitable. In the western part of the village, at the base
of Mt. Sampan, the land is covered with pine forest. From
west to east, Harapan's territory extends for about 4
kilometers; its width is much narrower, only about 1/2
kilometer.

The village of Harapan, like many Javanese vil-
lages, is comprised of 4 separate settlements, or hamlets,

which are known as dukuhan. The dukuhan of Harapan are

44

connected by paths, and considerable distances (as much as
1-1/2 kilometers) separate the individual settlements. A
hamlet consists of a cluster of separate family dwellings
built along a stony path. The dukuhan generally maintains
considerable independence in its internal affairs, with
its own traditional administrative head (bgkel).

The westernmost dukuhan in Harapan, "Ekasari,"
lies at the highest elevation. With about 170 houses and
more than half of Harapan's total population of 1,411,
Ekasari is the most crowded of the hamlets. Both the vil-
lage head (lurah) and the village secretary (tjarik) live
in Ekasari. The only substantial mosque stands in front
of the lurah's house, and there are two other, small
Islamic prayer houses (langgar) in Ekasari as well. The

only religious school (madrassah) is also found in this

 

hamlet. Historically, Ekasari may be the oldest hamlet
in the village; in 1868 the Dutch scholar Brumund,3 when
investigating various Hindu-Javanese remains in the area,
mentioned both Ekasari and another hamlet, Tjatursari, as
being extant at that time. From its size and prominence
today, we may perhaps infer that Ekasari represents the

first settlement in Harapan.

 

3J. F. G. Brumund, "Bijdragen tot de kennis van het
Hindoeisme op Java," Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch
Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, XXXIII, 1868,
pp. 144-147.

 

45

No one today knows exactly, however, who was the

leader (tjikal bakal) who originally founded the village

 

of Harapan. Such stories as still exist were told to this
writer in 1970 by some of the older villagers; Brumund

also recorded something of Harapan's origins in 1868.
According to what this writer can piece together from these
two sources, there once existed a sacred bathing place or

fountain, in Harapan. This site, known as Balekambang,

 

today is found in the central area of Harapan's territory;
the fountain probably dates from about the same time as

the Shivaite temples on the Dieng Plateau, i.e., c. 800 A.D.
Today nothing can be seen at the site except a mound on
which the owner grows cassava. That the villagers still
believe a statue of pgdgt, or Nandi (Shiva's carrier, the
bull) is buried near this site, helps support the conten-
tion that the site was Shivaite and thus from the early

9th century.

According to legend, there was once a prince, from
the court of Mataram, in Central Java, who was known as
Kusumojudo.4 According to Hindu-Javanese tradition, often
a royal personage would wander incognito through his king-
dom, perhaps to view for himself the conditions of his

subjects. Frequently a king or prince would turn his back

 

4In old Javanese, kusumo means "flower"; judo "war."
Kusumojudo, then means a hero, or great warrior.

 

46

upon the mundane world of the court, to find temporary
refuge in a holy place, perhaps in a temple under the
tutelage of a religious teacher (guru). At times, a king
or prince might even renounce the material world for a
spiritual life as a priest or teacher.

Prince Kusumojudo, it is said, left the court at
Mataram to find spiritual guidance among the teachers at
the temples on the Dieng Plateau. One day, he visited the
sacred bathing place of Balekambang, in what is now Harapan.
There he met a beautiful maiden, Dewi Rengganis,5 who was
bathing in the pool at the foot of the fountain. Prince
Kusumojudo fell in love with Dewi Rengganis, and asked her
to marry him, but the nymph refused his suit. Kusumojudo,
who had taken the name Kjai Kertojoso, so that his former
identity would not be recognized, is thought to have
founded a settlement near the site of the bathing place.6
The actual origins of Harapan, then, are buried in distant,
legendary times, and today's villagers can only claim that

Harapan's founding occurred a very, very long time ago.

 

5Dewi is a title for heavenly nymph, rengga means
"beautiful," and nis is a contraction from manis, "sweet."
The implication is that Dewi Rengganis was very beautiful

indeed.

6Kjai is a title for a priest; kerto means "piece,"
"save," or secure"; joso, "to build." The name Kertojoso,
then suggests that the prince became a village founder, or
tjikal bakal.

 

47

From the dukuhan of Ekasari, one follows a trail
down the slopes, through tobacco or corn fields, and in
about 1-1/2 kilometers reaches the hamlet of "Dwisari."
This settlement, an offshoot of the older hamlet Tjatursari,
is situated at the crossroads in the center of the village
territory, and perhaps grew up because of its strategic
location. Here the elementary school was founded in 1953,
and here, every five days following the Javanese calendar
a small market is held under a tree. Today there are
about 40 houses, and one langgar in Dwisari; Dwisari's
bekel, or head, is the strongest of Harapan's hamlet lead-
ers, and the best assistant to the village head. There is
also a coffee shop (warung) which is especially well pat-
ronized on market days. Nearby is the ancient sacred
bathing place of Balekambang; 100 meters to the south, one
crosses a bridge and enters the neighboring subdistrict of
Temanggung.

From the crossroads at Dwisari, the hamlet of
"Trisari" lies about 1/2 kilometer to the north, near the
village border. Trisari was only built in 1967, on the
site of the Dutch plantation. There are about 20 houses
in this dukuhan, and most of these are only temporary
structures, built from bamboo rather than the typical wood,
brick or tile construction of the more permanent village
houses. The foundations of the old plantation building,

burned in 1948, could still be partially seen in Trisari.

48

The fourth dukuhan, "Tjatursari,' is more than a
century old; it is situated about 1/2 kilometer to the
east of the main crossroads of Dwisari. Here there are
about 60 houses and one langgar. Also there is a coffee
shop (warung) at crossroads near the bridge that marks the

village's northeast boundary.

HOUSES

The houses of Harapan are all single-story dwell-
ings, built on the ground. Only the langgar are raised
on posts, more like prayer-house designs in parts of West
Java. Harapan's cold climate may have dictated this aspect
of its house styles. Floors are made of dirt, although
concrete is used by the wealthy. Again, to keep out the
chill, there are few windows; a wide central door in front
serves as the only entrance. Houses of the families with
higher incomes also have a door at the back. The pitched
roofs are normally made of tiles, a material not available
in the village that must be transported some 50 kilometers
from tile or brick factories near the coast. Houses are
constructed of various materials, which differ according
to the occupants' economic status. The majority of houses
are built with walls of interleaved bamboo and tile roofs.
Houses of better-off villagers are constructed from wood
and tiles, and the dwellings of the well-to-do have brick

walls and tile or sheet zinc roofs. As a roofing material,

49

zinc is considered a mark of prestige, despite the fact
that it fails to insulate a house against heat or cold as
well as tiles do. Its higher price may account for its
desirability.

With the exception of the village head's house,
which has a separate, attached kitchen and several main
rooms, the interior of the typical village house is essenti-
ally a single room. Directly in front of the main door is
the kitchen area, the central focus of the women's daily
activities; here, in the chilly evenings, the family gathers
to seek the warmth of the fire. At night the household's
goats are brought inside to share the shelter of the house.

The back of the main room may be partitioned to
create small rooms where a widowed parent or older children
(boys separated from girls) sleep. The placement of such
dividing walls, however, is flexible, and depends upon the
needs of each individual household.

None of the village houses have either running
water or bathroom facilities inside; the Villagers bathe,
collect their cooking water, and wash their clothes at
various bamboo waterspouts where water is diverted from the
rivers. These waterspouts serve also as toilet facilities
for the Villagers. A single waterspout is shared among a
number of adjacent households.

It is the kitchen area that is the real center of

a villager's activity, for here in the evening the people

50

gather around the warm fire, visiting each other to share
the day's gossip and experiences, to tell local jokes and
discuss their plans for the morrow. The mother and father
of a family with their youngest children will often sleep
near the fire to take advantage of its heat through the
night.

For the outsider who comes to Harapan, expecially
the urban dweller, even the kitchens do not seem very warm.
The walls are full of holes, which admit chilly air, and
the mud floor is cold. Smoke from the woodfire makes one's
eyes red and sore. By day, the almost windowless houses
are dark and dank. The health of Harapan's villagers
suffers from these conditions. In the month of April 1970,
when the writer arrived at Harapan, a fourth man succumbed
to influenza. The writer suggested that the village head
report this death, asking that a doctor be sent from the
subdistrict capital. The next day, when a new district
doctor arrived with some other subdistrict officials in
their jeep, only the doctor himself, the lurah, and the
writer were willing to enter the houses of sick villagers.
The officials objected to the dirtiness of the houses, and
it was suggested that the houses be cleaned up. Such sug-
gestions from subdistrict officials had little impact,
however, since the villagers were living in their tradi-
tional way, bound by the conditions of their culture and

their low socio-economic status.

51

The Javanese villager values his home highly. The
better his economic status, the better his house will be,
for traditionally he derives status from his home, and
from this he gains psychological security. Only the very
poor, whose houses are built of temporary materials, will
View their homes as just a place for sleeping. Such people
may spend most of their time working in the fields, at
another's house, or at the mosque; their sons may go to
nap or even to sleep at a nearby langgar. But the average
Javanese villager looks forward to returning to his home

whenever he is away.

Population

 

At the time the materials for this study were
collected, there were 1,411 people living in Harapan, 669
men, and 742 women. Under the age of 15, there were 585
individuals; between 16 and 56, 755; and over age 57,

71 people.

The population of Harapan lives in about 270
separate households (sgmah), giving an average household
size of 5.22 people. In Javanese society, however, a

second family unit, the keluwargo or hearthhold, assumes

 

some importance in daily affairs. A hearthhold is created
through marriage, and so long as one partner of the

marriage lives, the keluwargo or hearthhold is still

 

counted as extant. Each hearthhold has a specific head

52

or spokesman; land is owned by the hearthhold. This unit
is recognized by the Government in matters of taxation or
public works. Thus while it was clear from the records of
the village head that there were 293 hearthholds in
Harapan, exact statistics on the number of houses standing
were not kept. The average size of hearthholds, then, was
4.8. Of the approximately 23 hearthholds who shared the
use of a house with another hearthhold, there were vari-
ous reasons, the most common being the existence of an
aged, widowed parent or the presence of a newly married
child and his spouse. Occasionally a sibling with a
marriage broken by death or divorce would share a house.
Normally the members of a household represent a single
nuclear family: father, mother, and their unmarried child-
ren. Sharing a house is not a stable configuration; it
is expected that this pattern will be broken up by the
departure of the extra hearthhold. A widowed parent often
rotates among the houses of her various children; in the
case of newly married children, they are expected to
establish a separate household within a year of their
marriage.

Most of the marriages in Harapan were monogamous,
even though Islamic law allows a man to take as many as
4 wives. It was "impossible" to collect accurate data on

any polygynous marriages, but the writer had the impression

53

that one or two of the wealthy, strong Moslem men had

taken a second wife.

The Agricultural Cycle

 

The principal crops cultivated by the villagers
of Harapan are tobacco and corn, grown in rotation. To-
bacco, a cash crop, is planted in January or February, and
depending upon the heat of the dry season, harvested in
August or September. Corn, the staple food for Harapan's
villager, is planted once the tobacco crop has been brought
in. It matures during the rainy season, and is harvested
in January. Drenching rains in January may delay the
harvesting of the corn, and in turn, delay the planting
of the new season's tobacco.

A certain portion of Harapan's subsistence comes
from other food crops: cassava, tea, coffee, cloves,
various fruits such as oranges, bananas and jackfruit
(nangka), vegetables, especially cabbages and a type of
gourd that is particularly low in nutritional value. Some
of these crops are carried to market in Ambangredjo.

Income is also derived from other cash crops, such

as the bark of the akasiah tree (kulit kliko) which is

 

used in dyeing leather, and from Harapan's forests, the
wood of which can be cut and sawed by hand into lumber or

used to make charcoal for sale in Ambangredjo. Although

54

there are teak forests in nearby villages, Harapan is too
high and its soil inappropriate for teak.

Fields are cultivated entirely by hand, using axes,
hoes, and knives that are either hand made or bought in
the market place at Ambangredjo. Mechanization is com-
pletely unknown. Most of the fieldwork is done by men,
as women devote a large portion of their time to household
tasks and rearing children. When an older child is able
to care for his younger siblings, women will help their
husbands in the fields or go to the market. In the day-
time most of the men are in the fields, and sometimes even
have their lunch brought to them there. The more devout
adherents of Islam return to their homes for prayer, lunch
and possibly a short nap before going back to their fields.

The daily diet of the Villager consists mainly of
corn, many kinds of vegetables, and hot pepper. In the
cold weather, chili peper serves to warm one up, at least
temporarily. Rice is scarce and expensive in this moun-
tainous region; the villagers think it is too "light"--too
insubstantia1--for a staple, and they prefer corn. The
corn is ground into rough meal and steamed to make a thick
mush. Fish and chicken are eaten occasionally, but not
regularly. Tempe, a kind of soybean cake, and salt fish
are the principal sources of protein, but diets are none-
theless very low in protein. Goats are too highly valued

to be used for food, but their dung is used as fertilizer.

55

It is hard to find a fat man in Harapan, both because of
the diet and because everyone walks back and forth to

fields and to market.

Land Holdings and Property

 

The land held by a Harapan hearthhold averages
only 0.5 ha. However, land holdings range between families
who possess no land at all (15 hearthholds from the total
of 293), those with only 0.25 ha., up to 8 hearthholds
with about 5.0 ha. apiece. Only these last 8 families
were thought to be wealthy in the local context: the
heads of these hearthholds were not forced to borrow money
annually from the lenders in Ambangredjo, and, indeed
could afford to lend some funds to their fellow villagers.

In 1967, the government distributed 0.25 ha. of
land to many families who had none; these people have
gradually begun to cultivate the forest land on the slopes
above the village. Unfortunately erosion is becoming a
problem in these areas once the forest cover has been cut
down. The 15 hearthholds who were landless by 1970 had
already sold the land they had received from the govern-
ment, probably sold to reduce their great indebtedness
which had accumulated in prior years.

In addition to land holdings, other kinds of
property, especially ownership of livestock and crop-

bearing trees, served to differentiate the villagers in

56

terms of wealth. A census of livestock produced the

following totals for the village as a whole:

goats ......... ....... 1,482
chickens ...... . ...... 1,144
ducks ................ 330
geese .............. .. 8
horses ............... 6
cows ...... ........ ... 2

A number of trees were owned by villagers:

tea buShes O O O O OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO O O O O O O O O O O 200
jackfruit (nangka) ................. ...... 316
banana 0 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O ..... O O O O O O O O O O O O O 5 I 39 3

mentoar (cheap lumber and charcoal) trees 5,393

akasiah trees (dye) ...................... 31,132
orange trees ................ ... ......... 375

A wealthy family would be distinguishable through
its house, which would usually be larger, built of bricks,
with a tile or zinc roof and perhaps a concrete floor.
Other objects owned by families that were better off
included pressure (petromax) lamps, 2 bicycles, and tran-
sistor radios (there were 20 radios in Harapan). Even so,
the distinction between villagers on the basis of wealth
was not too great, for even the wealthiest villager had
to walk together with those who carry their crops 18 kilo-

meters to market.

57

Per-Capita Income

 

For its income, Harapan depends solely upon pro-
duce cultivated by its villagers. On the basis of figures
from the 1969 harvest, the gross product of the village

was as follows:

TABLE 1: GROSS PRODUCT OF HARAPAN VILLAGE

 

 

 

Item Unit Value Total Value
tobacco 9,271 "rigen" @ Rp. 300.00 Rp. 2,781,300.00
corn 40,910 kg. @ 15.00 613,650.00
cassava 354 kg. @ 300.00 106,200.00
"kulit kliko" 18,600 kg. @ 2.00 37,200.00
orange 56 trees @ 400.00 22,400.00
vegetables (cabbages, gourd and others) 125,000.00

Total Rp. 3,685,750.00

 

With a population of 1,411, this total figure would
produce a per-capita income of about 2,605 rupiahs annually
(or about $15.00 U.S.). This would break down to Rp. 217.00
monthly or Rp. 7.2 daily. Since not all of these crops are
marketed (a large portion of the corn particularly being
kept for consumption within the household), this figure

9

therefore is deceptively high.

58

When we contrast Harapan's gross product with that
in the entire subdistrict of Ambangredjo, the following

. 7
figures emerge:

TABLE 2: GROSS PRODUCT OF AMBANGREDJO SUBDISTRICT

 

 

 

 

Item Unit Value Total Value

rice 38,180 kwintal @ Rp. 1,000 Rp. 38,180,000.00

corn 330,000 kwintal @ 150 499,500,000.00

cassava 391,800 kwintal @ 100 39,180,000.00

sweet

potatoes 48,600 kwintal @ 100 4,860,000.00

tobacco 1,200 kwintal @ 15,000 l80,000,000.00
Total Rp. 311,720,000.00

 

With a total population of 33,701 in the subdistrict, this
gives us an annual per—capita income of Rp. 9,279 (about
$60), a monthly income of Rp. 773 and a daily income of
Rp. 25.70. Comparative figures from the Wonosobo area,
just to the south of the volcanic peaks visible from

Harapan, show a daily per-capita income of Rp. 23.54.

 

7Soehardjo, "Alam Sebagai Faktor Produksi Utama"
(Nature as the Main Factor in Production), paper presented
at the workshop of all Subdistrict Heads of Central Java,
Ungaran, March l3-April 5, 1969.

8Moenadi, "Modernisasi Desa" (Rural Modernization),
a paper presented at the Prov1nc1al Congress of Central
Java, July 2, 1968.

59

Thus Harapan's villagers, even by local standards,
can be seen to be quite poor. Between 1961-1963, there
was even starvation in Harapan; today basic subsistence
is better but it is still common to begin the day's work
without breakfast.

How then, does a villager in Harapan manage to
exist at all? If we examine the economic behavior of the
villager, we find that his way of life is totally dependent
upon outside sources, upon capital that he must borrow
from moneylenders in the subdistrict capital of Ambangredjo.
Between January and March when it is time to plant the
tobacco crop, the farmer must borrow cash to buy tobacco
seed, fertilizer, tools or equipment. He mortgages his
new crop to the moneylender, who in September or October
returns a fixed price for the villager's tobacco. The
farmer, then, never shows much profit when he sells his
tobacco, since the greater proportion of the sale price
goes to repay his debt. In September or October, too, he
must purchase seed corn, since invariably he has eaten up
all of his crop from the past year. Through supplementing
his income with other cash crops——charcoal, kulit kliko
for leather dye, fruit trees, etc.——the villager manages
to exist from day to day. But it is nearly impossible
for him to amass enough capital to break the cycle. Vil—
lagers from the 15 landless hearthholds hire themselves

out to the wealthier families, doing fieldwork, helping

60

market crops and performing household tasks. For a landed
villager, however, there are not many employment oppor-

tunities in the area.

Markets

Within the surrounding territory, a market cycle
operates, based upon the 5-day Javanese week. Market day
rotates from place to place, being located in the same
place but not on the same day each week. In Harapan itself,
there is a weekly market at the crossroads near the elemen-
tary school. This, however, is a small affair, attracting
only a few petty traders from Ambangredjo who walk the
18 kilometers to Harapan carrying wares. They sell house-
hold necessities such as Egmpe (soybean cake), salt, sugar,
corn and various vegetables.

Far more important to the villagers is the weekly
market in Ambangredjo. Here the villagers sell their
crops, buy various necessities, and borrow money when they
need it. On market days, the villagers arise early to
begin 3-hour 18 kilometer walk to Ambangredjo, arriving
there by 7:00 or 7:30 in the morning. On market days,
perhaps as many as 10 trucks, crowded with people and
their goods, arrive from the southern towns of Ngadiredjo,
Tjandiroto and Parakan or from the market of Weleri to the
north. A market is not only a place to trade; it is also

a social event for the villagers. There is an air of

61

festivity and bustle on a market day; there are good
excuses to gossip with one's friends, to linger over a
cup of coffee in a warung.

In Ambangredjo, raw materials are sold to local
merchants, predominantly Chinese traders who operate truck
or bus routes from Ambangredjo to other parts of Java.
The produce of the subdistrict rice, oranges, wood, kulit
klikg for dye, lumber and tobacco, is transported from
Ambangredjo to large urban centers. Yet the return the
villagers get for their produce is not sufficient to meet
their basic needs. Whereas government fertilizer was
made available to rice growers in the subdistrict, the
villagers of Harapan were forced to buy their own for
fertilizing their tobacco and corn crops. And to buy

fertilizer, they had to mortgage their crops.

Transportation

 

For the villagers there are no transportation
facilities other than their own feet between Harapan and
either market towns or neighboring villages. Since the
roads are steep and narrow, slippery in the rainy season
and dusty in the dry season, even a bicycle is not func-
tional. When there was something to discuss with the
village head, the subdistrict officer came by jeep to
Harapan; otherwise the village official had to walk to

Ambangredjo. During the 9 months the writer was in the

62

area, only 2 small trucks ventured as far as Harapan to
fetch vegetable crops. To drive a vehicle into Harapan

was indeed a feat of considerable daring.

Communications

 

The only immediate link the villagers of Harapan
had with the modern world was the radio transistor, with
about 20 sets being found in the village at the time of
the study. And it seemed that radios were primarily used
to blare out music on cold, lonely evenings. In Amban-
gredjo, radios were common, and there were even a few TV
sets owned by Chinese merchants or plantation managers.
Even here, there was no bookstore, only a small store that
loaned comic books which was always crowded with children.
Many adults also read these comics at home. Some people
in Ambangredjo subscribed to newspapers and/or weekly
magazines published in Semarang or Surakarta, but these
were not widely read. As a subdistrict capital, and at
the same time as the former district capital of Selokaton,
Ambangredjo did have a post office, with telephone and
telegraph service as well.

Although Harapan may not have modern communications
or transportation, a rural village is not the place for
an outsider to hide. Privacy is almost totally unknown,
and for those who seek escape from the lonely crowd of an

urban setting, the village can be a crowded place.

63

Villagers maintain their own network of communications,
essentially through personal, face to face relations.
Local news and rumors travel with incredible speed, and

in emergencies, the traditional drums owned by the village
officials can be sounded. Such communications networks

are not readily apparent to the outsider, however.

Institutions

 

Village institutions in Harapan--or in any of the
villages of the surrounding area--could only be described
as still very weak.9 The formal institutions found in
Harapan comprised the village's administrative bureauc-
racy; Islamic religious groups centered around the mosque

or langgar and the madrassah, or religious school; the

 

public elementary school; and the weekly market. Informal
institutions were not conspicuous; most important of these
were the village coffee shops, or warung, which functioned
as meeting places both for villagers and itinerant traders.
The village as a whole is headed by a single

individual, the lgrah, who is traditionally elected through-
out his lifetime by the villagers. The lgrah has always
been elected by all the heads of hearthholds; he is nor-

mally selected from certain influential families. The

 

9For a discussion of institution building, see
G. H. Axinn, "Teori Pembinaan Institut" (Institution
Building Theory), paper presented at the Institution
Building Workshop at Scientific Development Center, October
12-16, 1970, Rawamangun, Djakarta, Indonesia.

64

13522, whose assistants are now appointed by himself rather
than being chosen by traditional election, is helped in
village administration by a secretary (tjarik) and the
4 bekel, or heads of dukuhan. The bekel, in turn, are
aided by village police and other officials in matters of
administration, agriculture and religion.

Since the Japanese occupation, another kind of
organization, the neighborhood association, has been
introduced throughout Indonesia. Approximately every 20

households are formed into a Rukun Tetangga, with chairman,

 

secretary, treasurer and security officer elected to 2

year terms from among the 20 households. Rukun Tetangga

 

are grouped into larger associations, Rukun Warga or Rukun

 

Kampung, each of which contains about 15 Rukun Tetangga.

 

The Rukun Warga's chairman is elected from the Rukun

 

Tetangga chairmen.

In urban areas, these organizations have consider-
able strength, but in the villages, the traditional
grouping of the dukuhan is predominant. The bekel, or
dukuhan head in Harapan hold much more influence and
worked more closely with the lurah than did the chairmen
of the neighborhood associations.

The village officials, generally, are active in
Harapan. But lacking both funds and education, in many
ways they seemed incapable of helping Harapan improve its

situation. Only the secretary actually seemed incompetent

65

in his job; developing an efficient filing system for vil-
lage records seemed completely beyond his abilities. As
a leader the lurah of Harapan was handicapped by several
factors: by his inefficient secretary; by his own lack of
education despite a very high level of intelligence; by
economic pressures generated by his 10 children, even
though he was appreciably better off than most of his
fellow villagers; and by his failure to recieve enough
government loans so that he could systematically organize
his indebtedness to Ambangredjo's moneylenders. Nonethe-
less, he was perhaps the strongest of the 18 village heads
in the subdistrict, having learned a great deal of politi-
cal acumen through experience and from government-sponsored
courses in village management and agriculture. In addition,
about once a month, all lurah in the subdistrict attend a
conference in Ambangredjo that is conducted by the sub-
district's head (tjamat). A further advantage held by
Harapan's lgrah was that he was related, by blood or
marriage, to 21 of the 24 village heads in the surrounding
area. Kinship ties are more important to a Javanese vil-
lager than administrative obligations, and Harapan's lgrah
gained much experience through visiting his relatives to
discuss problems of mutual interest.

Of Harapan's other formal institutions, the weekly
market has been discussed above, and the role of religious

institutions and of the elementary school will be discussed

66

in detail below. There were no active political parties
in Harapan, especially after 1966, the last national elec-
tions having occured in 1956. Political parties had not
yet begun to organize support for the scheduled general
election of July 5, 1971. The writer observed, however,
that the village formerly had both a relatively strong
nationalist party and a conservative Islamic party organ-
ized on the traditional religious base.

The informal strength of the coffee shops should
be mentioned in a discussion of village institutions. A
center for gossip and the exchange of ideas, the warung
attracts not only the local villagers but wandering traders,
and indeed, any visitor to the village. Warung, usually
located at crossroads, are ubiquitous in this part of Java,
as they are perhaps throughout much of Indonesia. Coffee
shops serve as a common meeting ground for all, a place
where ideas could possibly be introduced in an informal
way, where villagers discuss matters on neutral ground,
without having to commit themselves.

The writer was told that soccer games were occasion-
ally held by neighboring villages but during the time of
his fieldwork, the soccer field was used only by youngsters

who used a green orange as their ball.

CHAPTER IV

THE PEOPLE

Appearance

 

As one walks from the subdistrict capital up the
steep paths to Harapan, one meets villagers enroute to
market. Men wear a sarong, pajama shirt, and the black
velvet cap (pitji) that has been adopted as Indonesian
national dress. Long pants are worn in place of the sarong
by more urbanized men--by the teachers, by the local petty
traders and by the village officials themselves when they
attend conferences in the subdistrict capital. Urban
people use pajamas for lounging and sleeping, but wear
long pants outside their homes. Rubber sandals are some-
times worn, especially when a man is dressed up, but in
the rainy season, neither sandals nor shoes are as func-
tional as bare feet on the slippery dirt roads.

Women wear long batik skirts and long-sleeved
blouses, carrying their babies or young children supported
in a sling at their hip; younger girls adopt Western-style
dresses and skirts, but as they mature, return to tradi-
tional dress. The Central Javanese show a marked prefer-

ence for somber or dark colors, choosing batik cloths in

67

68

shades of deep brown, black and blue, with other clothing
in either black, white, or other light colors. The bright
reds, purples and greens so common among the Sundanese of
West Java are rarely seen in daily life in the rural areas
in Central Java.

For work in the fields, men and boys normally wear
only short black pants, carrying baskets and either knives
(grit) or hoes (patjul); women wear their oldest clothes
for fieldwork, and transport produce in baskets held in
their slings. Physically, the villagers are stronger than
urban dwellers. Despite lower standard of nutrition, a
villager learns from an early age to carry heavy loads
over long distances. Even bearing loads, villagers could
average 6 kilometers in an hour, whereas the writer found
himself struggling along behind. Once the villagers knew
the writer, they would often accompany him as he walked
along, but usually only if they were not in a hurry.

The appearance of the Javanese villager today,
regardless of his sex and age, shows very little difference
from that which the writer could recall from his own child-
hood, some 28 years ago in his grandfather's Village, or
even with that seen in old photographs or drawings from

over a century ago.1 The unchanging nature of dress styles

 

lSee Sir T. S. Raffles, The History of Java
(London: Oxford University Press, 1965), Vol. I, plates
pp. 84 and 86, for an example.

69

says a lot about the strength of tradition in governing
the behavior of the Javanese villager. A Javanese will

say, mbok odjo nganeh-anehi, "it's-good not to be differ-

 

ent from others." A villager told the writer that he
would feel ashamed if the head of Harapan saw him since

he was not wearing his pitji when visiting other dukuhan
or villages. One's outward appearance, how others see one,
is of tremendous importance. Outward conformity to tradi—
tional behavior patterns indeed seems more influential
with the villager than the expression of his own indivi-
dual desires and aspirations.

The Javanese is not supposed to show emotion in
his relationships to others; his behavior should be calm,
and his face almost masklike in meeting the world. One
should not be upset in a Javanese situation, for should
he become upset, this display of emotion becomes a serious
problem not only for the person concerned, but also for
everyone else around him.

The Javanese should not be aggressive in his be-
havior towards others. On meeting a stranger walking on
the road, the Javanese villager will watch silently, and
it is the stranger who must speak first. "Where are you
going?" is the polite greeting, and then the channels of
communications are opened. The villager is generally very
friendly, but will not take the initiative in starting a

conversation. Similarly, one should not ask questions

70

about another's activities, but rather find out what is
happening by indirect observation. A child is supposed to

learn from observing situations; he is told kowe kudu

 

tanggap ing sasmito, "you should understand from what you

 

see." Thus, when the writer set up his typewriter in the
village, children crowded around the windows to peer at
him. Although they had seen and heard a radio transistor,
they had never seen a typewriter. Their cultural tradi-
tions, however, kept them from asking questions about the
new machine, and they were content to stand, staring at
this amazing device and its operator.

The more a Javanese has been restricted to his
traditional setting, the more culturally bound he is. It
is hard to find a rural Javanese who can respond spontane-
ously to events outside his daily routine. At all times,
and in all situations, the rigidity of his traditional
culture dictates his reactions, circumscribing his responses

and limiting his behavior.

Lang 118.9 e

The Javanese language itself helps to define the
villager's relationships with other people. Javanese, the
native tongue of Harapan's people, is a complicated lan-
guage in which status levels are reflected by differing
speech modes. Roughly speaking, the language consists of

two different levels, known as ngoko and kromo, the former

71

representing a low-status, rough (kasag) speech style, the
latter, a high-status, refined (alas) one. Indeed, much
of Javanese life can be viewed in terms of its rough or
refined character; it should be emphasized that the refined,
alps way of life represents the desired standard that the
Javanese strives to attain. The world of concrete reality
(lahig) falls into the kasar realm; the world of meaning
(bathin) is subsumed under the gigs. Nggkg, the rough
language, is straight to the point, and deals with concrete
events and facts; in nggkg, things are described as they
are, without use of flowery metaphor and indirect state-
ment. Krgmg, on the other hand, is a sophisticated
language, in which circumlocution is the standard mode of
expression. It is the language of philosophy and of poetry.
Within this bipartite system there are not just
two levels of speech, high (krgmg) and low (nggkg), but
rather a whole range of status-linked expressions, so that
both nggkg and krgmg levels may be used with great subtlety
to define the appropriate social relationship between any
two Javanese.
One might assume that nggkg is the "language of
the people" and krgmg, that of the sophisticated urbanite

or aristocrat. The system is in no way so simple.

 

2For an extended discussion of the levels in
Javanese speech and the appropriate etiquette surrounding
their use, see C. Geertz, The Religion of Java (New York:

The Free Press, 1960), pp. 248-260.

72

Ideally, krgmg is used as a mark of respect or as an indi-
cation that the speaker feels socially inferior to the
individual he is addressing. A high-status person should
speak in nggkg to someone of lower status. Thus the more
deference one shows, the higher language he uses; the
higher your actual status, the lower language you should
use. In day-to-day speech between individuals of equal
status and among friends and relatives, nggkg is generally
used, although krgmg could also be employed.

The real difficulty in choosing a language level
comes when two people meet. As a rule, when meeting a
stranger, it is safer to address him in krgmg, and wait
for his answer. Should his reply be in krgmg, the Javanese
would see how refined a degree of krgmg has been used, and
then adopt a position accordingly. For, even in having
uttered a first sentence in krgmg, one is taking a position,
and this may have to be altered as the conversation is
continued. Or, in one's first words, one may manage,
unintentionally, to insult another. The language of urban
people is usually more sophisticated than that of the
rural villager; the unaccustomed villager may use the
wrong words in talking with an urban person, and then he
will feel uncomfortable, if only it is realized later.
Nggkg is used in business dealings between villagers and
Chinese merchants in Ambangredjo. Here it serves to foster
efficient, businesslike relations, and status differences

seem to be overlooked.

73

Problems of administration can be compounded by
the Javanese language. An official might prefer to give
an explanation in the direct nggkg style, but cannot do
so in the rural setting without offending some of his
audience, who have adopted democratic attitude, since it's
hard for them to respond either in nggkg or in krgmg in
such a situation. The most successful young officials are
those who speak in refined k£9m2_with authority despite
their high status, thus showing respect for villagers who
have traditionally felt themselves to be socially inferior
to government officials.

Indonesian, the national language, has little of
the status-differentiation of Javanese; an easy language
to learn, it would seem a possible solution for the effi-
cient conducting of government business. Certainly
Indonesian must be used by non-Javanese who are not famil-
iar with the appropriate levels. It is better to use
Indonesian than to make the wrong approach. However,
Indonesian is not spoken by many of the villagers. Al-
though children learn Indonesian in school, many do not
become very fluent in this second language. Not all vil-
lage officials speak Indonesian well, and consequently
Javanese often must be employed by subdistrict officers
at the village level. Javanese in official positions are
painfully aware of the problems created by their language.

As an illustration, years ago this writer accompanied an

74

Army colonel to Central Java. The colonel came from a
different island and ethnic group, and could not speak
Javanese. When we met a major, a Javanese, the colonel
used Indonesian both for formal and informal situations.
Yet the colonel was able to communicate in the straight,
direct language an officer must use with his subordinate,
and at the same time employ an extreme polite, almost
Javanese manner. The major told the writer that be ad-
mired the colonel greatly for being able to combine the
background of two ethnic groups by his use of the Indo—

nesian national language.

Village Solidarity

 

The villagers of Harapan feel a strong sense of
identity with others from their own village. Here in
Harapan is the land which they farm, from which they
derive their subsistence, meager as it may be at times.
The land and their homes are the center of their activi-
ties throughout an entire lifetime, from birth through
maturation, marriage, procreation, daily existence (hope—
fully to a ripe old age) and death. Whereas a villager
derives emotional support from his relationship to others
within the village, he feels insecure if he leaves Harapan,
even should he only be visiting a neighboring settlement.
At home, his contacts with others assume predictable

patterns, but in meeting outsiders, the villager inevitably

75

encounters the unknown. And it is the unpredictable that
makes him uneasy.

Kinship ties are of great importance to the vil-
lager, for many of his day-to-day contacts are with
kinsmen. Since the majority of marriages are arranged
within the village, most of a villager's close kin live
in the same village, and not in the same dukuhan. Appro-
priate behavior between individuals, then, is often
influenced by their particular kin relationship.3 In
general, age is an important factor, and older people will
be treated with respect. The normal deference shown to
age can be upset by the use of specific kin terms of
address, however. The writer, when visiting his grand-
father's village, was disconcerted to be addressed as
"Grandfather" by elderly kinsmen, who, as it indeed turned
out, were generationally the writer's "grandchildren,"
despite the relative ages of the individuals involved.

The strongest ties bind a villager to his kinsmen,
but there are other social bonds--neighborliness, friend-
ship, or respect for another--that are constantly being
reinforced through a network of reciprocal relationships.

Reciprocity is indeed a basic principle of Javanese life.

 

3It is not the writer's intention to present here
a detailed description of kinship in Harapan, as kin
behavior generally follows typical patterns, such as have
been described by Hildred Geertz in The Javanese Family
(New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1961).

 

76

Gotong-rojogg or sambatan, as this mutual aid is termed,

 

pervades many village level activities. Large work pro-
jects, such as building a new house, are accomplished with
cooperative labor.4 Traditional ceremonies, known as
slametan, are given to celebrate important events (at the
very least, birth, marriage and death) along an individual's
life cycle. Every hearthhold which holds a slametan is
rendered assistance by his kinsmen and neighbors. Social
status is clearly reflected in these ceremonies, merely
by seeing who offers aid or attends and how many people
become involved in any given event.5 The emphasis in
traditional Javanese culture upon reciprocity and co-
operative endeavors, may discourage individual initiative.
A villager, accustomed to undertaking a venture together
with a number of kin and neighbors, is often reluctant to
engage in an activity by himself.

Villagers make a clear distinction between them-
selves and outsiders. Outsiders fall into two categories,

either wong deso, "villagers,' or wong kuto, "urban

 

 

dwellers." An old Javanese saying even recognizes this

 

4For an extended discussion of gotong-rojong in two
Central Javanese villages, see Koentjaraningrat, Some
Socio-Anthropological Observations on Gotong Rojgng Prac-
tices in Two Villages of Central Java (Ithaca: Cornell
Modern Indonesia Project, 1961).

 

 

 

5For a comprehensive description of the reciprocal
character of the slametan ceremony, see C. Geertz, Religion
of Java, pp. 11-8 .

77

distinction: Deso mowo tjoro, negoro mowo toto, "The

 

village knows her customs; the town has its law." Any

outsider, either wong deso or wong kuto, who comes to the

 

village is differentiated by the villagers still further

as wong neko, a "person who comes." The status of wong

 

22kg can be lost if a person settles into the Village, but
the change occurs slowly, and perhaps only after a genera-
tion. The family of the lg£gh, for example, was originally
from a neighboring village; the villagers now consider him
a native of Harapan, but it took a generation to accomplish

this.

Village Orientation Groups

 

The villagers of Harapan, despite the solidarity
they display in the face of the outside world, are not a
homogeneous group. Certain characteristics, especially
with regard to religious beliefs and status, serve to
differentiate three basic groups. Geertz, in his study,
recognized three types of tradition among the Javanese;
he defined these groups as follows:6

(1) Abangan are mostly rural Javanese with little

or no formal education, whose religious beliefs

are syncretistic, combining elements of

 

6C. Geertz, Religion of Java, pp. 5-7.

 

78

Hindu-Javanese culture and Islam with ancient
Javanese animistic tradition.

(2) Santri are Javanese who carefully follow the
tenets of Islam, educate their children in
Islamic schools, and hope to perform the
ritual journey to Mecca (h2g1), the fifth
pillar of Islam. Often santri are successful
traders or merchants.

(3) Prijaji espouse the same syncretistic beliefs
as the abangan, but they are of higher social
status, probably educated to some degree, and
often urban dwellers. More sophisticated in
all respects, prijaji are usually oriented to
one or another of the great courts in Central
Java, if not actually members of the aristo-
cracy themselves. Prijaji often served as
government officials under the Dutch colonial
regime.

Geertz' terms have been adopted to some degree by
other scholars,7 but in Harapan today, these words do not
seem appropriate. Abangan is thought of as "atheistic,"
or at any rate, to indicate a non-Moslem, and all of

Harapan's villagers consider themselves Moslems. Some

 

7See, for example, Robert R. Jay, Javanese Vil-
lagers (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1969).

79

Harapan villagers who attend mosque could not be considered
as santri, and furthermore, to call oneself santri might

be considered boasting, a characteristic antithetical to
Javanese ideal behavior. Prijaji has unfortunately feud-
alistic overtones, making it also an unpopular term.

This writer, therefore, would like to suggest
another set of more general categories, which although
derived from his experience in Harapan, could be applied
among Indonesia's other ethnic groups, in the many dif-
ferent parts of the archipelago. These are:

(l) a group bound by its own ethnicity, which will

be called the "ethnic-bound group" hereafter;

(2) a group dominated by its religious orientation,

the "religion-oriented group"; and

(3) a group striving for a new national identity,

the "Indonesian-image group."
Specific descriptions of members from these groups as
observed in Harapan may help clarify these definitions.

Pak Suto, of the ethnic—bound group, is a typical
Javanese villager. He works his small land holding
according to traditional agricultural practices, cultivat-
ing both tobacco and corn. He has had no formal education,
although some of his children may attend public elementary
school for one to three years. Nominally a Moslem, his
religious beliefs can best be described as syncretistic.

He is not a leader, nor will he be seen taking the

80

initiative in any situation. His traditional upbringing
has taught him to follow village leaders so long as their
demands are moderate.

Hindu-Javanese beliefs are still of considerable
influence upon the villager. For example, in another sub-
district the writer was shown a waterfall, called "Tjurug
Sewu," that has considerable potential for use in develop-
ing a hydroelectric plant. Here, he was told, was the very
waterfall where Baladewa, the older brother of the great
king Krisna and ally of the Korawa had gone to meditate
near the beginning of the great war, the Bharatayudha.

The guide was certain that this was really the spot,
despite the fact that this epic battle from the Mahabharata
derives from Indian, and not Indonesian, tradition.

The strength of Javanese tradition can be seen
even in the governing of the village itself. A few years
ago, the writer was told, the village officials were asked
to apprehend a thief who had been stealing cassava in the
dark of night. After several unsuccessful attempts, it
was decided to follow an old Javanese belief which stated
that if a man first fasted, meditated, and then went out
at night in the dark without his clothes, he would be
empowered to see strange happenings, even ghosts. So the
lgggh fasted and meditated, and that night he and three
other village officials went to the cassava field, all

without their clothes. They stationed themselves,

81

shivering and miserable, at the corners of the field.
Around two in the morning they finally heard the thief
digging up the tubers. However, since none of them had
any clothes on, they were reluctant to arrest the thief

on the spot. Instead, they followed him back to his house,
returned for their clothes, and then caught him with all
the evidence early the next morning.

Pak Kadji Ali represents the religion-oriented
group. A devout Moslem (and santri to use Geertz' term),
he has carefully tried to observe the five pillars of
Islam throughout his life. He has made the pilgrimage to
Mecca, and has become a kggji. His behavior is governed
more by his religious beliefs than by his adherence to
ancient Javanese tradition. Although he is a landowner
and knows traditional agricultural methods, he is a trader
as well, and one of the few villagers in Harapan with
enough accumulated capital to make loans to other villagers.
He employs some of Harapan's landless villagers. By local
standards, he is well-off. His children, especially his
sons, have attended the village religious school,

madrassah; several have even studied religious teachings

 

outside the village in the pesantren. These young men,

 

however, have Since returned to Harapan and become reli-
gious teachers. A strong leader in religious affairs,
Pak Kadji is nonetheless as conservative in his own way as

is Pak Suto.

82

Pak Lurah, the head of the village, belongs to the
Indonesian-image group. He speaks both Javanese and
Indonesian, and in his role as lurah, has constant contact
with urban officials and other villagers as well. He is
politically conscious, and aware of problems of national
as well as local importance. Yet, as illustrated above in
the cassava-stealing incident, Pak Lurah is strongly bound
by ancient Javanese tradition. Five of his ten children
are continuing their education outside of Harapan, most in
Christian schools even though he is a Moslem, the son of
the founder of the first mosque in Harapan. One daughter
almost became a nun; two of his children attend college in
Djakarta.

The relative mobility of the respective groups
sheds some light upon the different attitudes of their
members. The ethnic-bound group is still tied to the home
Village. Even marriages are still most frequently arranged
between young people living in the same village, almost
never occurring outside the village. Members of this group
do go to the surrounding villages and perhaps even to
Ambangredjo once a year, but almost never to spend the
night outside their home village. AS an illustration,
this writer failed to persuade one of his guides to spend
just one night at Ambangredjo for practical reasons. The
man refused politely, and so he and the writer trudged

back to Harapan, departing in the afternoon and only

83

arriving at Harapan late in the evening. This writer
actually did not like walking in the evening or at night
between two villages, since there were still tigers in
the forests and bushes that killed goats belonging to the
people. Even though the tigers did not mind seeing the
writer along the lonely, bush-lined dirt trails, the
writer did! But he never saw a tiger, only heard that
three goats belonging to the lEEEE had been killed by
tigers and carried out to the nearby forests. Thus the
people have another reason to bring their goats into the
house at night. If the people are lucky, it will not be
the goats or themselves that the tigers kill; rather, the
villagers will enjoy tiger steak.

The religion-oriented group has been better ex-
posed to the world outside Harapan than the ethnic-bound
group. Trading tobacco and other goods, many members of
this group have travelled extensively to neighboring vil—
lages and more distant market towns. Some have travelled
to Mecca on the h2g1; some have attended meetings of the
conservative religious political party in urban areas.
Nonetheless, their orientation is to their home village,
which is clearly illustrated by the fact that their sons
generally return home after completing their religious
education in other towns.

The Indonesian-image group has had wider experience

beyond the village. The lurah, with both his kin ties in

84

surrounding villages and his administrative duties, has
seen more than most. Through children attending schools
in other towns, the members of this group (who are all
village officials) keep in touch with the nation as a
whole. Yet, unlike the religion-oriented group, the
Indonesian-image group finds that their educated children
leave the village to take up jobs and occupations in more
urban areas. Capable as these men are, they are not
raising a new generation to assume positions of responsi-
bility within the village.

The bulk of Harapan's population could be classed
as ethnic-bound. Perhaps 68 per cent of the population,
or about 175 hearthholds, belong to this category. At the
other end of the scale, only 2 per cent of the villagers,
or approximately 20 hearthholds, could be counted as
Indonesian-image group. All of these families are headed
by village officials. The remaining 30 per cent, or
almost 100 hearthholds, represent the religion-oriented
group. Within this group, however, there were between
10 and 15 strong leaders, each of whom met the criteria
for the religion-oriented group. Each of these men, in
turn, attracted a number of relatives, neighbors and
friends who followed their lead in nearly all matters.
None of these satellites, however, exercised much indivi—

dual initiative.

85

Each of Harapan's three orientation groups have
distinct characteristics. Yet, in terms of village devel-
opment, only the religion-oriented and Indonesian-image
groups possess any leaders capable of influencing public
action. The differences between the Moslem leader and the
Indonesian village official, however, are profound. The
former is hampered by the conservative nature of the
interpretation of his religion; the latter, by the con-
servative, tradition-bound character of his followers, the
members of the ethnic-bound group. Central to any pos-
sible rural development are the economic problems confront-
ing the village, and we will now turn to a discussion of
the relationship between the three orientation groups and
their economic activities.

Economics and the Orientation
Groups

 

For all of Harapan's villagers, the struggle for
subsistence is of overwhelming concern. All are tobacco
growers, who spend nearly all their time and energy in
their fields. In fact, for the nine months he spent in
Harapan, the writer tried to find some form of activity
among the villagers other than economic. In most rural
areas, usually following the harvest in September and
October, marriages are performed and festive celebrations

held. Ethnic—bound villagers then stage various

86

traditional Javanese art forms--shadow puppet or live
dramatic performances based on the Indian epics, the
Mahabharata and the Ramayana; religion-oriented Moslems
choose Islamic musical performances, such as trebangan or
orkes gambus. At Harapan, however, there were no fes-
tivities, only more talk about tobacco, kulit kliko and
corn. Villagers found it hard to understand the writer's
purpose in coming to the village; they were constantly
asking him the price of clothes and other urban goods,
assuming that he could only be a trader. Those with some-
what wider experience, from the Indonesian-image group,
realized how poor their village was. An old 23591 said,
Kito niki mpun merdiko nggih, ning ekonomi rumahtangga kok

taksih angel temen, nggih? or "We've gained our independ-

 

ence, but our family economy is still very weak, isn't it?"
All the Villagers shared anxieties about the
economy, and perhaps this accounts for the serious, quiet
character of the village at the time of this study. The
men are mostly worried about borrowing money every year,
about the rainfall, about the quality of their tobacco,
corn and kulit kliko, and about the ups and downs of the
market prices. They work very hard physically; they have
learned that when they do not, starvation occurs. Even
though the illiterate people in the village worry about
economics, they are confused. They realize the importance

of their crops, but they only know traditional farming

87

methods which are time consuming and not too productive.
Formerly their economy depended on the quality of the
tobacco they grew, but now it depends on the price given
them by the money lenders, regardless of its quality.
They can not eat tobacco, and they have no money to buy
corn, since their corn harvest this year was not as suc-
cessful as usual. Even the price of kulit kliko, usually
bought by local Chinese traders, is dropping lower and
lower, since leather is being replaced by plastic these
days in Indonesian shoe factories.

Should a villager need immediate cash, he can
borrow money on what is called sistim idjon, ("the green
system"). He sells the entire crop of a fruit tree, while
it is still green, to a money lender. But he must deliver
the ripe fruits in good condition, and of course the price
is far lower than usual. Even the usual in Ambangredjo
is way below the price in places where these fruits will
eventually be retailed. One whole tree of oranges, for
instance, only costs Rp. 400.00 or about $1.10 at Harapan.
In Djakarta one big orange costs about Rp. 35.00 or almost
10 cents, and how many fruits are there on the whole tree?
The buyers are experienced enough to estimate profits,
after calculating the transportation and other costs
involved.

Another concrete example is the tobacco price. In

August the tobacco is harvested, but if the peasants could

88

keep the leaves until October, the price would go up,
since the longer the leaves are kept, the better the
quality. There are many things involved that the tobacco
growers fail to overcome. The money lenders, who are also
often the buyers, put financial pressures on them. The
buyers do not send the tobacco directly to West Java,
where the consumers are, but keep it in storage, sending
it later when the price goes up. Another big agent from
West Java buys the tobacco from the Central Javanese
agent, and then does the same thing. Only later do the
small Sundanese village traders of West Java buy the
tobacco from their local agents and retail it in West
Javanese markets to consumers. In 1968 the quality of
the tobacco was higher than the previous harvest, but its
price fell even lower. The local people, who know tradi—
tional agriculture but not economics, could not understand
what actually happened; it was ironic for them to see that
even though the tobacco price was lower than usual, the
local buyer bought another truck. One of the major needs
of a community like Harapan is to have more market infor—
mation; and second to have more diversified marketing
opportunities.

Economic affairs affect the ethnic—bound group in
several ways. Tied to the village as they are, they are
totally dependent upon their land. Disputes about land

and the distribution of water are very serious matters.

89

Most families have many children, forcing division of land
into increasingly smaller plots. Over time, they become
poorer and poorer, until even their day-to-day income has
become uncertain. Two old Javanese sayings no longer hold
true in Harapan: Anak kuwi bondo, or "Children are wealth,"
and ono dino ono upo, "as long as there is daylight, there
is still food to be eaten."

Strength can be found in the close kinship bonds
among the ethnic-bound group, however. A family will
share its profits and losses with close kinsmen, according

to the old proverb, mangan ora mangan asal kumpul, "Being

 

able to eat or not, sticking together is still best."
Thus any family is dependent upon its close relatives
within the village. This traditional sharing of assets
among kinsmen raises some obstacles to the economic devel—
opment of the ethnic-bound villager. Under such a system,
better-off peasants do help their less fortunate kin.
Such sharing, however, tends to obviate any one individ-
ual's accumulating enough capital to support entrepreneurial
ventures, a characteristic that Geertz has called "sharing
the poverty."8

The economic orientation of the religious group
contrasts with that of the ethnic-bound group. This

group both practices traditional agriculture and trades,

 

8See C. Geertz, Agricultural Involution, p. 97.

 

90

and in the latter field, they sometimes compete with
Chinese traders in the towns. ‘They think about profit
making in terms of supply and demand, carrying goods

needed by fellow villagers and trading produce with

Chinese merchants in market towns. Wealth is important

to them not only in terms of their subsistence and amassing
material goods, but one of their religious obligations,

the pilgrimage to Mecca, can only be accomplished through

the accumulation of wealth. ‘They say, Golekko redjeki

 

sing taberi koon kowe arep urip suwe lan amal sarto

sembahjango koon sesuk arep mati, or "Make as much money

 

as possible, as if you were going to live a very long
time, and give alms and pray as much as possible as if
you were going to die tomorrow." The religion-oriented
group is more independent and powerful than the ethnic-
bound group. From their religion, they gain considerable
psychological support for their trading ventures. As
skillful traders, they are not totally dependent upon
their land and agricultural produce, like the ethnic-
bound group. Accumulation of wealth leads to power within
the community, and the group has a relatively strong,
religiously oriented political party.

The Indonesian-image group has begun to realize
that traditional agricultural methods are no longer suf-
ficient for their village. Yet, although they see a need

to switch to other fields of economic endeavor, they are

91

still relatively weak; they need professional guidance in
development, and even more, they need capital. As an
example, the writer was discussing economics with a man
who owned 2 hectares of land. He had only Rp. 15,000 and
needed to borrow some Rp. 45,000 more from the money lenders
on their terms. And so it had happened every year. The
people are really uneasy in the month of February if they
are not sure where they can borrow money, and this situ-
ation makes the position of the money lenders stronger.
This writer wrote about the situation to the local govern-
ment, which responded positively by giving peasants credits
with relatively low interest. Unfortunately, the informa-
tion was still vague when it reached the villagers, and
this writer observed at the meeting how hesitant the vil-
lagers were in deciding whether they would borrow or not.
The ethnic-bound group is dependent upon the Indonesian-
image group for direction in such matters, but, with

strong leadership, could be persuaded to follow the lead

of the Indonesian-image group.

Although the village officials receive some train-
ing from the subdistrict government in implementing
government programs that penetrate to the local level,
they need much more assistance. Lack of education among
traditional village leaders has become a real handicap
for these individuals, and, indeed, the traditional role

of village head as a power holder has changed. The writer

92

was told, "Formerly to be a village head was to be like a
king. But now we're supposed to serve the village, leading
it to justice and prosperity. That's why it's a tough
job."

The subdistrict government tries to support rural
development. Each village collects annual taxes, which
are then transmitted to the subdistrict, and eventually
to the regency. Each village is supposed to submit a
village development plan, and if this program is approved
by the head of the regency and the Regency Congress, then

tax funds are returned to the village.

CHAPTER V

TRADITIONAL SOCIALIZATION

IN HARAPAN

In the past chapter, we have been discussing some
of the attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that characterize
the villagers of Harapan. Before turning to our central
description of Harapan's elementary school, it would be
helpful to outline briefly the traditional manner in which
a Javanese child is socialized.

As an infant, a child is given tender care by his
mother; he is carried about in a sling, and offered the
breast whenever he cries. As he grows older, the young
child is often cared for by an elder sibling; gradually,
a girl begins to spend her time in the kitchen helping
her mother, while a boy learns a man's tasks by working
with his father. The writer was told that when children
were too young to help their parents either in the fields
or by taking care of younger brothers or sisters, they
were sent to public school. But the moment they were
ready for both, they dropped out, usually at third or
fourth grade level. The boys go to the fields, and the

girls, to the kitchen. Of the children observed in

93

94

Harapan, perhaps 25 per cent of school-aged children were
actually enrolled in school, while the others were engaged
in child-care or helping their parents.

There is no rigid division of labor by sex, in
that both boys and girls learn to perform most field tasks,
help care for the family's goats, and assist in marketing
produce. Men do not cook, however, and there is even a
strong feeling that the kitchen is an inappropriate place
for a boy to be. He may be outside, in the fields, or in
other sections of the house during the day. After a cer-
tain age, usually around 10 years, boys and girls are not
together in most activities; they sleep in separate rooms
as well. There is no formal sex education, and indeed
Javanese culture could be generally called puritanical.

The values a Javanese child are taught reflect the
long history of Javanese culture. Particularly among the
ethnic—bound group, Hindu-Javanese influence is still felt.
The spiritual world before birth and beyond death is more
essential than earthly existence. A truly Javanese
character, according to old tradition, is very calm and
stable in the face of his sufferings; he should be a noble
type of man, known as satrio. A boy is taught the concept
of perwiro, or dignity; he learns to be ready to help
others at any time, but to accept help only from those he
loves or respects. They say: Iki dodo satrio, ora awatak

buto or "My character is that of a satrio, and not that of

95

a giant (who is assumed to be rude, rough, greedy and out-

law like)."

Some cases might perhaps clarify this Javanese

concept of dignity or perwiro:

(l)

(2)

(3)

Since Javanese relationships are personal, it
is hard to talk about money and friendship in
the same breath. After knowing that kerosene
was needed in the village, as it once happened
that there had been no light when the writer
was staying in the village, this writer went
to Ambangredjo accompanied by another man.
Since the writer was ill and almost could not
walk, he wanted to give the villager kerosene
to take back, but the man refused his aid,
and money was definitely out of the question
in such a situation.

Some of the people, only after knowing the
writer better, would accept help and con-
sidered him as a very close friend. They

used to say in a proverb: Dudu sanak dudu

 

 

kadang, nek mati melu kelangan, meaning that
"although somebody is not one of the family,
if he dies, much has been lost."

With a young boy, the concept of perwiro may
still be very weak. However, it was not
uncommon for a boy to refuse once or twice be-
fore receiving something from another spontanu

eously.

96

From childhood a boy or girl should understand and
practice the concept of perwiro. Those who do not are
called ora ngerti isin, or "a person with no understanding

Q

of shame." The concepts of perwiro and isin ("shame") are

 

essential to traditional Javanese culture, whereas in more
sophisticated modern culture, an individual is faced with
his conscience when he has failed to do what he knows he
should have done.

Whereas a boy is expected to pattern his behavior
upon the noble satrio, a girl is valued not for her beauty
alone but for her devotion to her husband. It's said,

suwargo nunut neroko katut, or "if the husband goes to

 

heaven, the wife just follows, but if he goes to hell,

she will be pulled to follow him." The woman should
demonstrate devotion or dedication; as a symbol of this,
lun:hairis traditionally worn long, the longer the better.

A husband is called guru laki, or "teacher man."

 

A Javanese boy or girl learns many things from his
parents and his peers by neniteni, or "silently watching."
Children are not supposed to ask questions, but watch
indirectly. Children in remote villages do not often
see strangers, so when small children saw the writer walk—
ing back and forth for the first time, they avoided him,
hiding behind doors and later peering at him from behind.
Seeing a stranger walking through the village was a new

experience for them. But once they knew the writer, they

97

used to follow curiously. From different hills between
valleys, they would follow where the writer went with
their eyes; even some of the adults did the same. For the
first weeks, the writer always greeted almost all the
people he met along the relatively lonely slippery or
dusty dirt trails. Only later did they greet him earlier
when they saw him walking.

In traditional Javanese society, many of the be-
liefs and much of the values system is transmitted through
traditional dramatic performances, known as wajang. Al-
though there are various kinds of wajang (shadow puppets,
round puppets, dance-drama), most performances are based
upon the same body of Hindu-Javanese literature, with
plays derived primarily from the great Hindu epics, the
Mahabharata and the Ramayana.1 Here, in the performance
of the shadow play, is the place where philosophical
teachings are acted out in detail. A man is supposed to
respect his parents, his teacher and his king; he worships
his gods. Most of the traditional plays are concerned
with kings and princes from Hindu legend; these noble
heroes are models for Javanese ideal behavior. The ven-
erated prince is a noble warrior or satrio, whose acts
exemplify the refined, alga standards that a Javanese

is taught to admire; the wicked enemy, whether giant,

 

1For a detailed discussion of the "wayang World,"
see Claire Holt's Art in Indonesia, pp. 123-150.

 

98

demon, or mortal, is a prototype for coarse (kgggg) be-
havior. Yet within the wayang world, there are several
hundred individual characters, and each of these is typ-
ified by characteristic habits. Ardjuno is a ladies' man;
his brother Werkudoro, an impetuous warrior; the great
king Kresno, a smooth-talking manipulator of men. It has
been suggested2 that the wajang characters offer an indi-
vidual Javanese the choice of many different roles or
personalities, all of which are capable of existing within
the same cultural framework. Thus any child may select a
compatible role from among a great deal of diversity; in
wajang he learns about his cultural alternatives through
the approved method of silent watching, neniteni.

Wajang performances are of great importance in
much of the island of Java. An all-night affair, running
from nine in the evening until dawn the next morning, the

shadow play (wajang kulit) is preferred entertainment for

 

ethnic-bound villagers and sophisticated urban dwellers
alike. Radio stations broadcast play performances, reach-
ing a vast audience who cannot even see the action.

In Harapan, as indicated in Chapter IV, there were
no wajang performances, and, indeed, it was not a popular

art in either the subdistrict capital of Ambangredjo or

 

2Benedict R. O'G. Anderson, Mythology and the
Tolerance of the Javanese (Ithaca: Cornell UniversIty
Southeast Asian Program, 1965).

 

99

the former district of Selokaton. Nonetheless, traditional
approved behavior was much the same in Harapan as it was

in areas such as the Weleri subdistrict, where wajang is
often performed. Where, then, do Harapan's children learn
traditional Javanese values?

In terms of appropriate ethical standards, there
are three possible channels in the village of Harapan for
children to observe:

(1) There is talk with adults: in the evening,
with parents and other adults, around the
warm kitchen fire; during the day, the women's
talk in the kitchen between mother and
daughter, or the men's talk in the fields
between father and son.

(2) Young children learn from the example of their
older brothers and sisters, since tradition-
ally, regardless of sex, rearing younger
brothers or sisters is common.

(3) Among peers, there is talk during the various
activities that children engaged in. Groups
of either boys or girls collect grass for the
family's goats. Girls gather at the water-

spouts (pantjuran) for bathing and washing.

 

Boys collect at the neighborhood prayerhouses

(langgar), and older boys spend evenings at

100

the watch posts that guard the entrances to
the dukuhan.

The lack of a strong wajang tradition in Harapan
and even throughout the larger areas of Ambangredjo or
Selokaton leaves something of a vacuum that should be
filled positively. The villagers recognize their loss,
but do not have any strong tradition to substitute. Thus
one finds a child being sent to public elementary school
only when he is too young to care for his younger siblings
or not yet strong enough to work in the fields. The
writer feels this is a negative aspect of the relationship
between the traditional system of informal education and
that of formal public elementary education in the village
of Harapan. Most in need of new educational models are
villagers in the ethnic-bound group, the majority of the
people living in the villages. Since they are not willing
to follow the strong leaders in the religion-oriented
group, their only alternative is to follow the lead of the
Indonesian-image group.

In Harapan traditional socialization patterns are
very little different from those of several generations
ago. The enduring qualities of Javanese tradition seem
stronger than the ability to accept innovation; it is
indeed a static system. How many centuries have Harapan's
people depended mainly on the price of tobacco, for

instance? They live based on past culture, and this past

101

then becomes the future for their children. There is
almost no room for innovation, especially now, when the
land supply cannot support the burgeoning population. The
writer was told that a family actually needs 2 hectares

of land to survive, but most families now have only an
average of 0.5 hectare, and many have only 0.25 ha. Among
the 293 hearthholds are also the fifteen families who do
not have any land anymore. And this means that the tradi-
tional pattern of informal education, of teaching children
to subsist from their land in the traditional way, has
begun to break down.

In the Javanese setting, there is a second type of
traditional education, formal religious education. To
understand the religious influence, perhaps we should
examine Islam historically to a certain degree. Islam was
brought to Indonesia by Gujarati traders, who spread the
new religion among coastal peoples, including those on
the island of Java. Around 1500, kings became Moslems,
while Hindu or Buddhist temples were neglected; most of
the population followed their kings, becoming Moslems
gradually and syncretistically. Islam must have come more
slowly to the mountainous interior, the location of Hindu-
istic temples. Several thousand Javanese fled into the
mountains, where they are now found as the Tenggerese at
the foot of Mount Bromo in East Java. Others moved to the

island of Bali, which maintained a Hinduistic culture.

102

Nobody knows when the first Moslem trader came to
the village of Harapan to spread Islam. Perhaps, since it
is a remote village and because it had been the site of a
Hindu-Javanese holy bathing place, this occurred as late
as 1600. This writer could only trace how and when Hara-
pan's big mosque came into being. Around 1870, an Islamic
leader and his followers came across the border from vil-
lages in the regency of Temanggung, and only in 1907 built

a big mosque. The present lurah is one of this leader's

 

sons.

In order to understand Islamic education in the
Javanese setting, perhaps we should review at least two
fundamental principles of Islam. From childhood a Java-
nese learns about Rukun Iman and Rukun Islam. Rukun Iman
covers certain Islamic articles of faith, such as "Allah
is the One and Only God," and the belief that Allah sent
all the Prophets with the Holy Books, beginning with Nabi
("Prophet") Adam and ending with Nabi Muhammad, the last
Prophet. Rukun Iman thus embraces the concepts of reli-
gion, while Rukun Islam covers the five teachings, or
Pillars of Faith, which a man should uphold if he wants to
be a Moslem. These are:

(1) The confession of faith, or Sjahadat:

Asjhadu'Allah Illaha'Ilullah, wa'asjhaduanna

Muhammadarrasu'llulah" or "There is no other

103

God but Allah, and Prophet Muhammad is Allah's
Messenger";

(2) Prayers, performed 5 times a day;

(3) Fasting in the month of Ramadhan;

(4) The giving of alms, known as Zakat and Fitrah;

(5) The pilgrimage to Mecca, if it is financially

possible.

Islam's teachings are based on the Holy Koran and
the Hadith; these teachings are indeed complicated and
beyond the scope of this thesis to explain. For the pur-
poses of this study, it will be sufficient to see the
degree of Islamic involvement among the villagers of
Harapan; their "involvement" will be evaluated according
to how many of the Five Pillars of Islam they actually
observe.

Since Islam is the first monotheistic religion
known by the villagers, the majority of the people (in
this case from the ethnic-bound group), when asked about
their religion, answer that they are Moslems. These people
actually fall in the writer's first category, Moslems who
observe only the first Pillar of Islam, the Sjahadat.
Among such individuals, one sees the meeting of Hindu-
Buddhistic Javanese culture and Islam in such rites as
praying according to Islamic practices during the tradi-

tional Javanese slametan celebrations held for births,

 

marriages and deaths, or the introduction of the Islamic

104

bgggg drum into the Javanese percussion orchestra or
gamelan, as seen in wajang performances in Tjirebon, where
the Javanese and Sundanese cultures meet. The majority of
the villagers of Harapan, indeed the entire ethnic-bound
group, falls into this initial, Sjahadat category.

Among the religion-oriented group, there are vary-
ing degrees of involvement with Islam. The next largest
number of villagers add a second Pillar, the giving of
alms and payment of taxes; then come those who observe the
fast as well as the first two acts. Daily prayers are
performed by even fewer villagers, and finally, there are
not more than five people in the village who could claim
to be kggji, individuals who have gone to Mecca.

In its teachings, Islam is methodically systema-
tized; by tradition memorization of the Koran is of primary
importance. In the beginning a Moslem trader must have
come to the village to trade with the people, and his
patience and care in dealing with the villagers perhaps
eventually made Islam successful in the village. The vil-
lagers usually did not have the experience to go beyond
nearby villages and after buying goods brought by the
urban Moslem trader, they may have listened to his accounts
of Islam. After listening more carefully, some villagers
became Moslems, step by step, following the Rukun Iman and
Rukun Islam. They studied the Holy Koran and memorized it,

and eventually these peOple built the first small mosque

105

or prayerhouse that is known as langgar. Traditionally,
in the evening at the langgar, the children come to memo-
rize the Koran, where they sat on mats around the feet of

a guru ngadji, the traditional religious teacher. When

 

the followers became greater and greater, they made a
mosque, since all Moslems are supposed to pray together
every Friday noon, if possible.

Traditional Islamic education, the memorization of
prayers, chants and the Koran, follows a predetermined
course. Before memorizing the Holy Koran, instruction is
given in memorizing turutan, or simple prayers. Most of
the students and quite a few of the teachers, do not under-
stand Arabic; following the correct form of the chants is
more important than understanding their content. Should
parents want their sons to study religion further, they

send them to pesantren or pondok, Islamic boarding schools

 

attached to mosques in larger centers, where young men
continue to memorize religious texts under the guidance of
a religious teacher or kijgi, In Harapan, three young men,
after having dropped out of the fourth grade of the local
elementary school, were sent by their parents to a pondok

in another regency for two years. Upon their return, they

established a madrassah in Harapan. Madrassah are schools

 

 

formed expressly for teaching religion, which are organized

along more formal lines than the traditional guru ngadji

 

religious education.

106

Actually there are two kinds of madrassah, one in

 

which only Islamic religion is taught, with emphasis on
teaching the Koran in Arabic. The second type is called
MWB (Madrassah Wadjib Beladjar), indicating that in this

madrassah not only is religion taught, but also instruc-

 

tion is given in elementary subjects like those usually

taught in the public schools. In Harapan, the madrassah

 

is of the first type, with a curriculum devoted only to
Islamic teachings. Thus for the dukuhan of Ekasari, where

the madrassah is located, the guru ngadji type of in-

 

 

formal religious education in the langgar has been sup-

planted by the formation of the madrassah. Children in

 

other dukuhan still attend guru ngadji instruction.

 

Another difference between madrassah and pengadjian under

 

 

the guidance of guru ngadji is that boys and girls attend

madrassah together, in a formal classroom situation, where-

 

as in the langgar, the pupils are predominantly boys.
Harapan's madrassah is a more recent institution

than the public elementary school, and although its

building is in poor condition, its teachers young and

inexperienced, the madrassah gains strength from the vil-

 

lage's Islamic traditions. It is an institution dominated
by the religion-oriented group, whose sons act as its
teachers. Much of its strength derives from the fact that

the teachers are villagers themselves, a circumstance, as

107

we shall see below, that does not hold true for the cur-
rent teachers in the public elementary school.

The madrassah in Harapan is open only in the
afternoons, because its three teachers also teach mornings
in madrassah in nearby villages. Since there are only two
classrooms, the three teachers take turns. The regular

students in the madrassah number about 75, primarily from

 

the religion-oriented group. Also the madrassah serves

 

primarily the people of Ekasari, where it is located.
Some of the teachers' salaries are paid by the Ministry

of Religion, which supervises madrassah education through—

 

out the country.

Whereas the madrassah is supported by the religion-

 

oriented group and by the Ministry of Religion, the public
elementary school is sponsored by the Ministry of Educa-
tion and Culture, the Provincial Government and the
Indonesian-image group. In Harapan, public elementary

school is held in the morning, and madrassah in the after-~

 

noon, so there is no conflict. But in some surrounding
villages, where the religion-oriented group is stronger,

the madrassah, with an expanded curriculum, is held in

 

the morning. At the present time the madrassah teachers

 

are less qualified than those teaching in the public
school. Moreover, in the public elementary school, reli-
gion is also taught as part of the standard curriculum by

qualified religious teachers. Nonetheless, most rural

108

people who face a choice in schools, send their children

to the madrassah instead of to the elementary school under

 

present conditions. In some villages the elementary
schools are closed for lack of students. The teachers,
despite their qualifications, are helpless, since they
are not the sons and daughters of the villagers concerned.
Since their salaries are low, they cannot overcome the
professional challenges in their jobs. Should Harapan's

madrassah expand its curriculum to basic subjects and

 

open morning sessions, similar conflict might emerge here,

tOO .

CHAPTER VI

THE SCHOOL

The Building

 

The public elementary school building in Harapan,
as we described before in Chapter III, is situated in a
central location at the crossroads in the hamlet of Dwisari,
not far from the border with a neighboring village that
belongs administratively to the regency of Temanggung.
There are only three classrooms in the building, even
though it was first established as long ago as 1953. The
walls are made of local wood; the roof, of tiles and rusty
zinc. The floor is still mud. The facilities inside are
even less imposing. Long tables and benches are made from
local wood. There are three cubboards, a few textbooks,
blackboards, some pieces of chalk, and nothing else.

When this writer first came to Harapan in January
1970, many roof tiles were broken, because the building
was located at the edge of the soccer field, and children
used to kick the ball onto it. Once he knew the lgggh
better, the writer suggested that the building could be
moved to a higher piece of land, just above its first

location. The lurah did not respond verbally to this

109

110

suggestion, but in July 1970 he invited the writer to a
small ceremony which was attended by all the bgkgl, six
villagers and the religious teacher. (None of the other
four teachers had come to school that morning.) The 12522
announced that the school building would be moved up, the
soccer field made wider, and the road improved gradually.
One month later, the building had been moved, and the
other two improvements were still being worked on.

In its new location, the school building is sur-
rounded by the soccer field, tobacco or corn fields, and
metoar woods. At the crossroads in a warung, and a small
river flows nearby. One can also see hills and mountains
in the distance. The landscape from this location is
really beautiful; the problem is to make a plan so that
this beauty has some meaning for rural development. When
he left the village in September 1970, this writer felt
that at least the lg£gh and his assistants were beginning

to understand what rural development might entail.

The Teachers

 

There were four regular, full-time teachers and
one part-time religion teacher who were supposed to teach
in the school. However, they all had many personal prob-
lems, and could not come every day.

The first teacher is a graduate of Teacher Training

School, six years beyond elementary school level. Although

111

he is therefore qualified to teach in an urban elementary
school, his supervisor has assigned him to Harapan as
"administrative punishment." The man lives in Ambangredjo
and has five children. He could not stand living in
Harapan, visiting his family only once a week. It is,
however, impossible for him to walk the 36 kilometers be-
tween Ambangredjo and Harapan daily, and when he did come,
perhaps two or three times a week, he would be able to
teach less than three hours.

The second teacher, who began teaching in 1969,
has completed junior high school in Ambangredjo, three
years beyond the elementary school level. He is teaching
in Harapan because he could not get another job when he
finished junior high school. Still a young bachelor, he
leaves Ambangredjo at 5:00 a.m. on his bicycle, eventually
having to push or carry it up the steep slopes. In the
afternoon, however, he enjoys the ride back down to
Ambangredjo. Usually this teacher came to teach four or
five times a week.

The third teacher, a junior high graduate from the
same class as the second teacher, is also a young bachelor.
Although he lived in a village only 7 kilometers from
Harapan, he did not come regularly, averaging at most two
days a week.

The fourth teacher, an older man with seven child-

ren, is less qualified, having taken only a short training

112

course for a few months beyond elementary school. He lives
in another village also about 7 kilometers from Harapan,
but did not attend with any regularity.

The religion teacher is a graduate of a religious-
teacher training school, six years beyond elementary
school. His salary is paid by the Ministry of Religion.
Actually he is a native of Harapan, though he lives now in
a nearby village for several reasons: first, he also
trades, dealing in tobacco, corn, and transistor radios,
and he finds the other location easier for traveling back
and forth to Ambangredjo. Second, even though he prefers
urban living, he finds that he can do better economically
in the village; and third, he teaches part-time in two
different public schools. Unfortunately, he is a widower.
Because his parents are still living in Harapan, he does
not want to move back to their house, where he feels he
would have to follow his father's lead and could not
exercise the independence he has become accustomed to.
Among the teachers at Harapan, he is in the strongest posi-
tion: he is better qualified educationally than most, he
knows the people as an insider, he has capital and knows
how to trade. He observes local demands and tries to get
the particular supplies the villagers want. As an indica—
tion of the esteem with which he is regarded, he has been

invited to lead prayers at slametan ceremonies. He is

 

clever in his trading ventures; he is easily capable of

113

"fooling" the villagers or taking advantage of their unso-
phisticated grasp of economics. He values his own
personal profits and has not attempted to spread economic
education along with the dissemination of his religion.
Nonetheless, he is the only teacher who comes regularly to
school, not only because he lives nearby, but also because
he is strongly motivated to spread Islam.

The four regular teachers at Harapan seem to face

a few common problems:

1. Teaching in a remote village gives them no financial
advantage over the teacher in an urban setting, since
the government does not offer any incentives to rural
teachers. If the urban teachers are frustrated, these
are even more so.

2. The teachers, who are mostly still young, know the
world outside the village, and if given their choice,
they would teach in the towns.

3. The village did not give them either land or houses in
which to live. Actually the lgrgh did offer the
teachers board and lodging in his own large house, but
there was no privacy, and none of the teachers was
willing to put up with it for any length of time.

4. All had accepted the post for the time being, as a
stepping stone to some other, better job.

5. All would like to continue their education, but none

has had any chance.

114

6. The teachers did not have any image of the meaningful
role that teachers could play, especially in the re-
mote villages. Usually a young man would serve for
two years in a remote village and then ask his super-
visor for a transfer to an urban area, where most
teachers are originally from.

Thus Harapan's teachers found their post a dis-
tinct hardship; all were frustrated-and most apathetic
about their jobs. None was able to see the rural school
as a challenge that should be met. The rapid turnover
among Harapan's teachers makes the situation worse, since
those teachers Harapan does get are usually less well
qualified than their urban counterparts. The problem of
teacher evaluation was made considerably harder for this
writer, since almost every time he visited the school,
several teachers were absent, and often school closed
completely when no teacher came.

The supervisor of the Ambangredjo elementary
school district is responsible not only for Harapan's
school, but for some 30 schools, including private schools
and kindergartens, throughout the subdistrict. A man of
some 47 years, he is prominent in the local teachers'
association, and a local politician to some degree. His
wife is also a teacher in Ambangredjo. He has been in the
job about two years, and because of his post, the sub-

district officer gives him other responsibilities in

115

connection with other subdistrict functions. His office
and the typewriters in it are not~government property, but
were donated by the teachers' association. In his role as
supervisor, he sees all teachers in the subdistrict monthly,
at the time when they come to collect their wages. At
this time, he gives instruction to the teachers and con-
veys information to them from the educational bureaucracy.
In terms of actually observing his teachers in their jobs,
he is hampered by lack of transportation. He has no jeep,
but only a bicycle. Thus, whereas he visits his immediate
supervisor in the regency capital of Kendal once or twice
monthly, he has been in Harapan twice in his entire life--
once, in 1947, when the Dutch occupied the towns during
the Revolution, and he was escaping from them, and the
time, in September 1970 when he came to watch the relocat-
ing of Harapan's school. At the time of his visit, only

two of his teachers showed up.

The School Routine

 

The school-day is supposed to begin at 7:30, with
classes lasting until 12:30. Actually each morning the
children did come to school; the boys played soccer while
the girls played a kind of handball called kgggi, as they
waited for their teachers to come. When a teacher had not
come by about 9 o'clock, the children went home or to the

fields where they gathered grass for their goats. If only

116

one teacher came, he was at a disadvantage. He could not
substitute daily for his absent colleagues, but on the
other hand, it was hard to teach only his class while the
other children were noisily playing ball outside. And
when there was only one man in the school, he would feel
lonely by himself, and tend to dismiss his pupils early.
Thus the school itself operates erratically, and even on
days when several teachers are present, some of the stu-

dents will be outside the classroom.

Curriculum

 

The curriculum of Indonesian elementary schools is
established at the national level, although some flexibil-
ity has been allowed for adaptation to local conditions.1
In regions like Central Java, the Indonesian language is
supposed to be used as the language of instruction
beginning at the third grade level. In practice, there
are many fourth and fifth grade students whose Indonesian
is not yet fluent.

What the children of Harapan actually learn in
school depends much upon the moods of their teachers,
when the teachers come. Teachers were further handicapped

by the lack of textbooks. Despite the fact that the

 

lDepartemen Pendidikan dan Kebudajaan (Ministry of
Education and Culture), Kurikulum Sekolah Dasar (Elemen-
tary School Curriculum),7(Djakarta: Dep.P.dan K., 1968),
pp. 1-253.

 

117

national government has tried to distribute new mathematics
texts to all elementary school students, Harapan had not
yet gotten any. Often the traditional Three R's comprised
the entire curriculum. Instruction in the first two grades
was in Javanese; when Indonesian is introduced at the third
grade, it is subdivided into conversation, composition,
writing, reading, grammar and vocabulary so that an indivi-
dual teacher could not cover all of its many aspects well.
Once this writer asked the teachers to assign essays to
fourth and fifth grade students, about anything they liked.
In these two classes, there were 28 children, and all 28
papers were received by this writer. None of these papers,
however, was at all meaningful. The children are not
trained to express themselves verbally, to offer any in-
dividual ideas. Usually the teachers explain or read
something and then ask questions which the children are
expected to answer.

Some traditional components of urban curricula
lack relevance in the rural setting. Physical education
seems unessential for children who organize their own
games, and where every villager must perform a great deal
of hard physical work throughout most of his life. Natural
science would be relevant if it were related to agricul-
ture. "Cultural" education is neglected; the children
could not sing the common songs used in urban schools.

Nationalism was offered, but there was still no flag to be

118

flown in front of the building. Family education met
resistance from the students' home. A curriculum for the
rural school, in order to be successful, must have rele-
vance to its surroundings; it must try to meet the daily

needs of its local village population.

The Students

 

At the time of this writer's fieldwork, there were
about 585 children under age 15 in Harapan. Of these 585
children, there were 190 between one day and 5 years old,
213 between 6 and 10 years old, and 182 between 11 and 15
years old. Children begin school at 6 or 7 years. Since
children between 11 and 15 could already help their parents,
at least by collecting grass for goats or taking care of
younger sisters or brothers, let us consider the group of
children between 6 and 10, who formed the bulk of the
school population. The entire school enrolled 122 children,
divided by class as shown in Table 3. Fifteen children
from other villages attended Harapan's school, either
because schools in their own villages were closed (from
competition with the expanded-curriculum madrassah, as
discussed in Chapter V) or because they lived much closer
to Harapan's school than to schools in their own village.

Thus 107 of Harapan's children were attending the
public elementary school, and in the 6—10 year age group

alone, at least 106 were not. If we add the 182 children

fl“

 

119

TABLE 3: HARAPAN SCHOOL BY GRADE- AND- SEX.

 

 

 

 

 

Grade Boys Girls Total
I 23 23 46
II 21 8 29
III 10 ll 21
IV 9 8 17
V 4 5 9
67 55 122 Students.

 

in 11-15 age group, then it could be seen the village con-
tained perhaps as many as 288 children eligible for school.
An examination of the table above also indicates
the frequency with which children leave the school before
finishing fifth grade, beginning, indeed, after first
grade. Dropouts increase during fourth grade, at an age
when a child becomes economically useful to his parents.

An Analysis of the School's
Problems

 

If only the school were functionally related to
village life, it would perhaps become the strongest formal
institution in Harapan at its present stage of economic
development. But the gap is still too wide between what
is taught at school and the real economic needs of the

villagers. One thing is certain, however, that in the

120

village setting, nationalism is fundamentally developed in
the public elementary school.

Nonetheless, in the village setting, especially in
Harapan, theroles of the materially wealthy and of the
young peOple are becoming greater, and the old people
painfully have to learn from them the hard way. One day

an old bekel said to this writer that djaman saniki niku

 

kebo nusu gudel, or "in this generation the baby water

 

buffaloes should give milk to the adult ones." He meant
that the young men should teach older people to read and
write, even though the function of such learning is still
not clear in their daily life. In one dukuhan meeting,
however, when all the people who attended had to sign their
names if they wanted to borrow some money at low interest,
the lgggh took a piece of paper and said jokingly, "Since
the paper is so small, the smaller signature is the better."
All the people laughed, and this writer whispered, "What

is so funny?" And they said that those whose signatures
are big are those who are still illiterate, usually older
people, because they use their thumb to make a finger print
instead of signing.

The Villagers' Attitudes
Toward the Teachers

 

 

The Villagers' attitudes toward the teachers are
somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand, they respect the

teachers, especially in the village meeting, where these

121

people are verbally skilled and can ask or answer questions,
and explain things. Since the teachers-have no land in
the village, however, they are still considered "outsiders"

or wong neko. Furthermore, teachers usually work in the

 

village for only two years, and do not live there, but
just come in the morning (if they do come). Teachers go
home at noon, and since most of the people begin their
work in the fields early in the morning, the teachers do
not often see the parents themselves or the community as
a whole. Even if the teacher meets a man in his field,
they greet each other but not more, since the gap is too
wide.

From the teachers' point of view, although they
are materially poor compared with some of the villagers,
all of them are urban educated to some degree. Their
world is wider; they know more and need more. However,
they are helpless and restless, and therefore they are
frustrated. They teach in a remote village only for the
time being; they come to school, if possible, teach, and
then go home at least to another village that is closer
to urban areas. Lacking supervision as they do, what is
to prevent them from not coming to school, or teaching too
short hours, or dismissing the children too early? They
are aware that actually they could do better if the people
in their village, led by the Village officials, took their

part, but they are not strong enough to encourage this.

122

What the teacher does know at the present stage is
paperwork. He does not know how to-grow tobacco or corn,
but, thanks to his education, he should be able to learn
faster, if only the villagers would give him the support
he needs. The teacher does not see-his-future as part of
the traditional village, but he is too weak at the present
stage to become an entrepreneur. However, the village
officials could ask the teachers' help, for instance, in
doing the paperwork connected with the subdistrict admin-
istration once in a while, but it is hard if he does not
come regularly for a young teacher to request something
for the school from the village officials. The village
officials do know which teachers come regularly and which
do not. And therefore when the roof tiles were full of
holes, they did not care. However, once they realized
that the school could serve their own needs for rural
development, they repaired the building and even moved it

to the better location.

Village Leaders and Teachers

 

Let us try to compare the status of the teachers
with that of the three influential village leaders, the
lurah, the kadji and the bekel. The x's in Table 4

indicate increasingly higher qualifications.

123

TABLE 4: COMPARISON OF VILLAGE LEADERS

 

 

 

Criteria Lurah Kadji Bekel Teacher
age xx xxx xx x
sex x x x x
social status xxx xx xx x
power holding xxx x xx x
wealth xx xx x -
formal education xx x x xxx
agriculture xx xx xxx -
trading x xxx x -
religion x xxx x x

 

The lgggh, the kggii and the 22kgl are usually
older than the teacher. Whereas there are increasingly
more women teachers in the urban setting, this is not the
case in the villages, where women still work in the kit-
chen, in the fields, or in the markets, but not in the
school. However, if a woman taught in her home village
or had married another teacher in the same school, one
might see several women teachers in the neighboring vil-
lages. From the table above, we can perhaps see that the
position of the teacher in the village setting is weaker
in all aspects other than that of the formal education.

Therefore, until the teacher can survive economically in

 

124

the village setting, his status will be too weak. Tradi-
tional agricultural methods are no longer sufficient to
guarantee economic success, and thus the field of trading,
still weakly developed in Harapan, might offer the teacher
the kind of economic stability he needs. If the teacher
could only use his education to become a successful trader,
his principal competition would be only from the £2911:

It seems clear that the rural Javanese, including
those at Harapan, are still psychologically closer to the

institution of the madrassah than the local public elemen-

 

tary school. Three Harapan dukuhan have built their own

langgar, where children attend guru ngadji training, and

 

in Ekasari, there is even more than one. Here too, the

madrassah has been established for the whole village,

 

where the children attend by themselves rather than among
the adults in the langgar or mosque after prayers. Thus
we see that the community has been capable of mountainous
cooperative action for a project they felt inclined to
support.

The problems of building or improving a public
elementary school are more easily comprehended by urban
dwellers. However under the leadership of the Indonesian-
image group, it would also be supported by the ethnic-
bound group if they were once awakened from their long,

long sleep. The condition of the village school, therefore,

125

depends primarily on the quality of leadership exercised
by the lgggh and his assistants.

The school and village life should meet in a
meaningful way. Certain obligations should be fulfilled
by teachers and villagers alike.‘ If the villagers are not
yet ready to come to the teacher's world, then instead the

teacher should come to the village as a starting point.

CHAPTER VII
THE VILLAGE AND THE SUBDISTRICT

For the villager of Harapan, the subdistrict capi-
tal of Ambangredjo represents his principal contact with
the world beyond his traditional village. Here he brings
his produce to be traded with local merchants; here he
buys manufactured supplies, seeds, fertilizers, and other
items; and here, he finds capital when he needs to borrow
money. Some trading and some personal relationships may
take him to other, nearby villages, but for any admini-
strative needs, he must go to the subdistrict capital.
Let us now turn to a brief description of the Ambangredjo
subdistrict itself.

The Subdistrict and its
Population

 

 

Ambangredjo is a small town in the highlands,
situated at about 600 meters (or about 1,676 feet) above
sea level. The capital of the subdistrict of Ambangredjo,
it was once the capital of the former district of Selokaton
as well. Although not as busy as Weleri to the north,
these two subdistrict towns act as centers for their sur-

rounding areas, both administratively and economically.

126

127

There are 18 villages in the subdistrict, divided

into some 7,369 kepala somah or households.l In 1968, the

 

total population was divided by age, sex, and ethnic origin,

as shown in Table 5.

TABLE 5: AMBANGREDJO POPULATION BY AGE, SEX AND
ETHNIC ORIGIN

 

 

Indonesians New Citizens Chinese Dutch

 

 

 

Under 16
Boys 10,999 57 21 2
Girls 11,225 69 17 4
Total 22,224 126 38 6
Over 16
Men 5,193 75 4O 1
Women 5,891 79 27 1
Total 11,084 154 ' 67 2

 

The population has been expanding at about 2 per
cent annually, if we consider the figures in Table 6 for

the total population over the last 5 years.

 

1Soehardjo, op. cit., pp. 1-6. (Soehardjo also
reports 83 Rukun Kampung and 236 Rukun Tetangga, but as we
have seen abEve in Harapan, these neighborhood associations
are of less importance in the villages than the dukuhan.)

 

 

 

128

TABLE 6: AMBANGREDJO TOTAL POPULATION BY YEAR

 

 

 

Year Population
1964 32,102
1965 32,237
1966 32,462
1967 33,087
1968 33,701

 

Yet if we look at population figures from 1905 for

the entire district of Selokaton,2 the total population

then was only about 60,000, and this area now includes

some 4 subdistricts.

The population of the subdistrict as a whole,

could be broken down according to occupation into the

following percentages:

25%

Peasants who own land

Peasants without land, who must work for
others

General workers

Traders and local businessmen

Government officials

 

2

D. C. Stibbe, (ed.), Encyclopedia van Nederlandsch-

Indie ('s-Gravenhage: M. Nijhoff, 1919f derde deel,

p. 739.

129

Subsistence and Per-Capita Income

 

The total area of the Ambangredjo subdistrict is
63,285 ha. The harvest of 1968 produced total income as
shown in Table 2. The sum of Rp. 311,720,000 does not
include figures for additional income that was earned by
such products as coconut, EEESE cotton, oranges, mangoes,
gggg fruits, durian, mlindjo, jackfruit, pgtg, rambutan,

djengkol, and some other minor products. Statistics for

 

these goods were not available in the subdistrict office.
Taking the population of 33,701, the gross product
of the region would give per-capita income of Rp. 9,279
(or U.S. $23) annually, Rp. 773 monthly, and Rp. 25.70
daily. This total includes the income of the new citizens
and the Chinese, who between them control a large per-
centage of the capital resources of the entire area.
Should we exclude their incomes from per-capita calcula-
tions, the per-capita figure would be much lower. Cash
money is very scarce in the villages, even though some of

the villagers could be considered wealthy in their settings.

Plantations

 

In the subdistrict of Ambangredjo at the present
time, there is only one private clove plantation, which is
located between Ambangredjo and Harapan. This plantation
actually consists of only 250 ha. of cloves used in the

kretek cigarette industry. Although growing cloves is

130

profitable, it takes 7 years before a crop can be picked,
and care for the trees involves certain knowledge.
Ambangredjo is one of the best places for raising cloves
in terms of its temperature and height above sea level.
But in the villages of nearby subdistricts, there
are other plantations, all private or semi-private, that
raise coffee, kgpgk or £2292 cotton, resins, and teakwood;
formerly tea was also planted. In the ex-district of
Selokaton, at the time of the Dutch, there were 8 planta-
tions.
The Roles of the Chinese and

Citizens from Chinese and
Arab Origines in the

Economy

 

 

 

The Chinese and Indonesian citizens from Chinese
and Arab origins, play an important role in the economy of
Indonesia, including Ambangredjo. This is perhaps most
clearly illustrated by a comparison with two other nearby
small towns of Patean and Weleri.

Patean is located some 24 kilometers to the south
of Harapan. Also the capital of the subdistrict of Patean,
Patean, however, was never the capital of a district, and
according to Indonesian Law, foreign Chinese were only
allowed to live in ex-district or regency or provincial
capitals, and not in subdistrict towns or in villages.
This regulation was intended to protect the villagers

economically from the cleverer foreign Chinese. Should

 

131

a foreign Chinese become an Indonesian citizen, he could
live wherever he liked, but most of them actually live in
ex-district towns such as Ambangredjo.

Weleri is located some 36 kilometers to the north
of Harapan. Weleri is the capital of the subdistrict of
Weleri, but it was also the capital of the ex-district of
Weleri. There are some similarities between Ambangredjo
and Weleri. Both were formerly district capitals. Both
have foreign Chinese and new citizens as traders and
businessmen. However, there are some differences too. As
Ambangredjo is a highland town, Weleri is a coastal town.
All new citizens in Ambangredjo are originally from
Chinese ancestors, while those in Weleri, are not only
from Chinese ancestors, but also from Arab ancestors, and
some traders or businessmen. Ambangredjo and Weleri,
therefore, are relatively busy in terms of local economics,
and only government officials really know which Chinese
or Arabs are citizens and which are not. Patean then is
very quiet economically, because not much cash money is
available, and the demands are very low, even though the
produce of the area is quite valuable. Those with a sense
of humor can still say that the Indonesian local economy
has been in Alibaba's hands for centuries--Ali, an Arabic
name, represents the Islamic trader; 3223! or Egggh, is

the Chinese merchant.

132

The Government as a Factor
in tHe Economy

 

 

Most capital not controlled by the Chinese or Arabs
comes from government sources. Some government funds have
been made available to villagers in the form of loans, but
at this stage most of the government's money is being used
to improve agricultural production, to build dams, bridges,
or roads. As an illustration, the local government has
almost finished paving the 18 kilometer road connecting
the towns of Ambangredjo and Weleri. The local businessmen
have been investing to make their stores bigger; they are
buying and operating public transportation. What has
happened to the villagers? They still have become con-
sumers. With the government spending about Rp. 1,000,000
or about U.S. $2,600 for every 1 kilometer of road, the
benefits, go first to the relatively rich local traders
and businessmen.

The POpulation of Ambangredjo
Town and the Orientation

Groups

 

 

If we concentrate upon the people who live in the
town of Ambangredjo, we find that the ethnic-bound group
are primarily small traders, workers in nearby plantations,
or workers in fields owned by urban people. These latter
workers follow what is called the ngQ system, in which

the harvest is divided in half, one for the owner and the

133

other, for the worker. These people are usually the
descendants of the original villagers of Ambangredjo,
centuries ago, before it was built up into a subdistrict
town.

In our ethnic-bound category, we include also some
new citizens of Chinese nationality, people who are bound
to their own ethnic, Chinese origins. These people began
trading centuries ago, and under the Dutch were given some
privileges which separated them from the local people,
based on the "divide and rule" colonial principle. Many
of these Chinese are rich by local standards. The child-
ren of these peOple, however, by continuing their education
or inter-marriage, have changed their position and are
gradually entering another category, the Indonesian-image
group. In Ambangredjo, one of the prominent Government
figures is a young medical doctor in this changing cate-
gory.

The religion-oriented group also becomes more
complicated in Ambangredjo, because there are several
religions here. Strong Moslems are primarily traders or
"big" peasants, who have established a large mosque, many

langgar, madrassah, and have political parties, associa-

 

 

tions, and institutions. In Ambangredjo, Catholics own a
church and schools up to junior-high level. Protestants
(who have some relationship with Satyawatjana Christian

University in Salatiga, Central Java, which partially is

134

sponsored by the United Board for Christian Higher Educa-
tion in Asia, of New York) also have a church and schools
up to junior-high level. The new citizens mostly belong
to either Catholic or Protestant groups. And some of the
Chinese also belong to this group, worshipping the
Buddhist Kong Hu Tju.

In Ambangredjo, the Indonesian-image group is
stronger qualitatively than it was in Harapan, since many
young adults have graduated from at least junior-high
school. The leaders who live in Ambangredjo are graduates
of senior high schools or university. Whereas this group
is still small numerically, it is stronger than the other
two.

Education in Ambangredjo
Subdistrict

 

 

The schools found in the Ambangredjo subdistrict

are as shown in Table 7.

TABLE 7: SCHOOLS IN AMBANGREDJO SUBDISTRICT

 

 

 

No. Type No. Teachers No. Students
7 kindergartens 7 358
24 elementary 1-6 147 4,860
junior high 23 483
religious training 8 187
1 agricultural high 4 36

15 madrassah 30 1,860

 

 

135

Once a week an instructor comes from the provin-
cial capital of Semarang to Ambangredjo where he teaches
and gives assignments to elementary teachers who want to
continue their education so they can become better quali-

fied.

Government Civil Servants

 

Indonesian civil servants, first, are not a homo-
geneous group insofar as their ethnic origins, religions,
education and experiences; in Ambangredjo alone, there
were a number of government employees from different
islands or ethnic backgrounds, with different religions,
levels of education and different experiences. In the
Javanese setting, they gradually have learned to speak
Javanese and follow local traditions to a certain degree.
One such individual is the head of the local post office,
a Batak and part-time Protestant Minister. Some new
citizens speak Javanese very fluently, and many do not
understand Chinese anymore.

Indonesian civil servants, or pegawai negeri, are

 

numerous, yet compared with military or police officers,
poorly compensated. Many are young men, and as we have
seen, youth is less esteemed than age. Departments with
control over monetary resources attract better quality
employees, primarily because the opportunities for self-

enrichment are to be found in these jobs, with some

136

exceptions being made for the idealists. From day to day,
the civil servant faces numerous problems.) The bureaucracy
is complicated, the budget limited, and there is more
personnel than jobs if the work were being done efficiently.
Incentives are not yet given to those who work hard under
the salary system. As the head of the family, the civil
servant faces problems caused by not receiving enough
salary to care for too many children. It is hard for a
government official to campaign in the rural areas for
family planning, for instance, if he has many children
himself. The rural people, rightly enough, cannot sepa-
rate an official from his personal circumstances. Some-
times his wife may work, or he himself hold several jobs

in order for the family to survive economically. A couple
which has been educated to a certain degree is greatly
concerned with the education of their children and their
subsequent retirement.

At one time being a government official or prijaji
was a high status position. Under the Dutch, the salary
was relatively high, even though it was far lower than
that for Dutch nationals of comparable qualifications.
Today, however, salary levels are still not encouraging.
Since there is no other alternative, young people still
apply for posts as civil servants, even though the govern-
ment no longer accepts civil servants other than college

graduates or teachers in certain areas where their services

137

are needed and the budget permits their employment. But
government officials in Ambangredjo are still too weak to
work effectively, to conceive and then to implement any

long range, systematic planning.

Development Potential

When this writer came to Ambangredjo for the first
time at the end of 1966 for just two days, at that time
Ambangredjo was a dead, neglected small town in the high—
lands. At the beginning of 1970, however, it amazed him,
since the bus station had been built and the stores erected
according to plan, the road from Ambangredjo to Weleri
northward and to Tjandiroto southward was gradually being
paved. A brick hospital building and a high school had
been erected. The first college graduates to live at
Ambangredjo were the medical doctor and the subdistrict
head. Thus the town would seem to have potential for
development, if the work now begun is continued, and if
its development can be coordinated properly. A develop-
mental plan for an area like Ambangredjo depends to a
certain extent upon the individuals who will be called
upon to administer such a program. And the success or the
failure of the village development such as in the case of
the village of Harapan, partially depends on the quality,

the dedication and the reasonable income of the government

138

authorities in the subdistrict, who have direct contacts
with the villagers to be helped in order to be able to

help themselves.

PART III

A THEORY OF VILLAGE DEVELOPMENT

AND EDUCATIONAL PLANNING

CHAPTER VIII
SCHOOL AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES

In PART ZEI, the writer has tried to discuss one
specific village in considerable detail, in order to show
the complex relationship between village life and the out-
side world. Within the village of Harapan, we have seen
the position of the public elementary school today; now we
will turn to an examination of the role that the village
school might potentially play in fostering rural develop-
ment.

The data collected in Harapan seem to suggest
certain areas in which interaction between school and com-
munity is needed. The school could serve the community in
facilitating a transition between the traditional rural
way of life and a modern, urbanized existence. Education
would be essential in promoting improved standards of
sanitation, birth control techniques, new entrepreneurial
ventures, and identification with the modern Indonesian
nation. Curricula should be developed that relate to the
real economic needs of the village.

In the following two chapters, the writer will

examine Indonesian educational planning in considerable

140

141

detail, giving particular attention to various aspects of
the National Assessment of Education Project that is cur-
rently underway in Indonesia. As background to this
discussion, a brief outline of the history of education in
Indonesia will be presented. Finally, the writer will
consider the prospect for a school-based development
strategy in the village of Harapan.

The History of Education
Inilndonesia

 

 

For purposes of this summary, the educational
history of Indonesia may be viewed against the background
of three principal phases in Indonesian political history:
(1) the colonial era; (2) the Japanese occupation; and
(3) the post-independence period. However, within the
colonial era, schools were developed by both foreign and
indigeneous educators, each of whom had distinctly dif-
ferent goals in mind.

Dutch-built schools.--In order to govern Indonesia

 

efficiently, the Dutch needed a small number of indigenous
civil servants who had received a rudimentary education.
Secular education was thus introduced in the form of a few
Dutch-oriented, urban elementary schools, in which poten-
tial civil servants were educated. These schools, providing
7 years of elementary education in the Dutch language, were
known as H.I.S. ("Dutch native schools"), and in the edu-

cational hierarchy, fell below the H.C.S. ("Dutch Chinese

142

schools") which were only open to Chinese, and the E.L.S.
(schools exclusively for Dutch or European children).

Only in 1901 did the Dutch establish what were called
"village schools," with curriculum limited to three years
of native-language education in the 3 R's and some basic
hygiene. In 1915, a few vocational schools, for developing
training in agriculture, some practical skills, and teacher
education, were introduced, adding 2 years of education
beyond 3-year village elementary schools.

On the basis of educational qualifications,
Indonesian society under the Dutch could be differentiated
into 5 major groups:

(1) On the bottom, the majority of villagers re-

mained illiterate;

(2) A few villagers, primarily the children of
village officials, had graduated from the
3-year Village schools;

(3) A few low-ranking civil servants were gradu-
ates of the H.I.S. These people were usually
sons and daughters of government officials or
aristocrats;

(4) Civil servants and businessmen of Chinese
descent, graduated from the H.C.S.; and

(5) Dutch children who had graduated at least from

E.L.S.

143

At the end of the colonial era in 1940, there were
only 240 Indonesians who had graduated from high school.
A mere handful, 37 individuals, had received college
degrees.

Christian missionaryschools.-—The second major

 

sponsors of elementary education in pre-war Indonesia were
Christian missionaries. Both Catholics and Protestant
missions established elementary schools, often long before
any schools were introduced by the colonial government.
In Kalimantan, for example, schools were established in

1 . .
Miss1on schools were

the interior as early as 1850's.
found in many islands, especially in the Tapanuli region

of Sumatra, in Manado,iJ1Su1awesi, in Kalimantan, and on
eastern islands such as Maluku and Flores. In Java, both
Catholic and Protestant schools were founded, but located
primarily in district towns rather than in the villages
themselves. For example, there are today both Catholic

and Protestant schools in the subdistrict town of
Ambangredjo, but there has never been one in the remote
village of Harapan. Eventually the Dutch contributed sub-
sidies to mission schools, since the curriculum concentrated

on secular education rather than religious instruction.

The Indonesian government also subsidizes Christian schools.

 

1A. B. Hudson, Padju Epat (Cornell University Ph.D.
dissertation, 1967), p. 78. Also "P.N. in historical
perspective" Indonesia 4, pp. 40-42.

 

 

144

Islamic education.--Traditiona1 Islamic education,

 

as has been discussed above in our description of Harapan,

consists basically of religious instruction, pengadjian,

 

in neighborhood mosques or prayer houses. Successful

students at this level continued on to pondok or pesantren,

 

the Moslem boarding schools associated with large mosques.

Subsequently, a more formal religious school, the madrassah,

 

was developed. An expanded-curriculum madrassah was

 

eventually introduced in some areas. Under the Dutch,
none of these Islamic schools were subsidized; under the
Indonesian government, their status is ambiguous. Some
Islamic schools are supported by the Ministry of Religion,

but the madrassah which teach basic elementary education

 

are not under the supervision of the Ministry of Education
and Culture. A few Islamic-oriented urban schools, known

as Muchammadijah, do fall under the supervision of the

 

Ministry of Education and Culture, however.

The Taman Siswa school.--In 1922, an indigenous

 

school movement, Taman Siswa, was founded by Ki Hadjar
Dewantoro. A reaction to the Dutch-sponsored elitist
schools, the Taman Siswa curriculum emphasized traditional
artistic expression and nationalism within an educational
framework derived in part from Montessori, Dalton, and the
teachings of Tagore. The movement later spread throughout
the country, until more than 200 schools had been

established. These schools were limited to urban areas,

145

and, understandably, never received subsidies from the
colonial government.

Another educator and artist, Mohammad Sjafei,
established a private school at Kaju Tanam in Sumatra, in
which the arts were emphasized. This school, however,
did not flourish and spread to other areas as did the
Taman Siswa.

Education under the Japanese.--Under the Japanese,

 

the distinctions between native and other foreign schools
were abolished and a uniform curriculum for all elementary
education was introduced. Dutch was abolished as a lan-
guage of instruction, with Japanese introduced instead.

In some areas where qualified Japanese instructors were

not available, Indonesian was employed in the schools.
Queen Wilhelmina was replaced with Teino Heika, the emperor

of "Dai Nippon,’ the great Japan. Every morning school
children were taught gymnastics (taisg) in a regimented
way, and they were also given some military training.

Once a week, students had to clean up the local villages,
put in djarak plants, and engage in other public-work type
projects. Young people were also trained for various war
enterprises, such as HEIHO, PETA; many of these youngsters
later formed the core of the new Indonesian army when

independence was proclaimed on August 17, 1945.

Indonesian public schools.--The most striking

 

thing about education under the Indonesian government has

146

been the dramatic increase in numbers of schools. All
people now have the right to send their children to the
schools of their choice; 6-year elementary schools have
been established in most villages. Some small or remote
villages, like Harapan, do not yet have full, 6-year pri-
mary schools, however. Let us examine some statistics
about the growth of schools in Indonesia:

TABLE 8: ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS, STUDENTS AND TEACHERS
IN INDONESIA, 1877-1970

 

 

 

 

 

Year Elementary Schools Students Teachers
1877 546 36,082 945
1882 666 40,270 1,427
1887 654 45,507 1,567
1892 790 63,987 1,871
1897 1,203 93,111 2,902
1904 1,785 148,138 4,390
1907 2,423 190,370 5,612
19382 3 ..... 2,266,000 .....
1939-1940 20,819 2,266,088 45,583
1941-19454 5,069 2,523,410 36,287
1950 23,801 4,926,370 83,850
1951-1952 24,642 6,530,183 87,030
1955 30,871 7,413,963 13,616
1961 35,801 .... ..... ......
1968 ...... 12,574,820 288,146
19705 61,678 15,949,109 343,029
2Foreign Areas Studied Division, "Education" US

Army Area Handbook for Indonesia (Washington, D.C.:

American University, 1964?, pp. 195-222.

The

3M. Hutasoit, Compulsory Education in Indonesia
(Netherlands: UNESCO, 1954), p. 54.

 

4Moerdowo, "Education" Reflections on Indonesian
Arts and Culture (Surabaja: Permata, 1963), pp. 289-2—0.

 

 

5Britannica Book of the Year 1970 (London: Ency.
Britannica Inc., 1970), p. 317.

 

147

Secondary education and college education has
experienced similar expansion; the following table sum-

marizes the quantitative data.

TABLE 9: SECONDARY AND COLLEGE EDUCATIONAL STATISTICS

 

 

 

FOR 1970
Type of No. of No. of No. of
Schools Schools Students Teachers
High school 5,291 999,485 39,560
Vocational high
school 2,118 454,349 28,045
Colleges 190 155,077 17,015

 

At the provincial level, let us examine the statis-

tics on elementary schools in Central Java.6

TABLE 10: ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS AND KINDERGARTENS IN
CENTRAL JAVA, 1970

 

 

 

Type of No. of No. of No. of
Schools Schools Students Teachers
Kindergarten 3,475 136,045 5,153
Elementary school 11,897 2,359,400 63,321

 

These statistics show some discrepancies with those

reported by the provincial government, which pays the

 

6As reported by the Central Java office of the
Ministry of Education and Culture.

148

elementary school teachers' salaries. Their figures list
10,436 elementary schools and 56,886 teachers; the writer
has no way of determining which figure is more accurate.
Similarly, there is no way of knowing how many expanded-

curriculum madrassah with morning sessions exist in the

 

province, and these schools should be considered in any
discussion of public elementary schools since elementary
education forms a substantial part of their curriculum.
From the above statistics, it is apparent that
the quantity of educational facilities has expanded dramat-
ically between 1950 and 1970. The speed with which this
expansion occurred has generated other problems, such as
the effective administration of so many schools and the
quality of education provided by the school system. It is
the latter topic, educational quality, that we will examine
now.

Educational Quality in Indonesia's
Schools Today

 

 

One of the results of the rapid expansion of
Indonesian schools in the first decade following independ-
ence has been, as I. P. Simandjuntak has observed, that

"at present every one (whether he is a layman or a

149

professional), seems to be dissatisfied with the course
education has taken in Indonesia."7

C. E. Beeby, although he has no recent personal
experience in Indonesian primary schools, was able to
make some valid comments on typical weaknesses in the
school systems of countries at Indonesia's current stage
of development. He describes:

...excessive numbers of drop-outs and repeaters, poor
qualification of teachers, lack of books and materials,
inappropriate curricula, lack of adequate supervision,
poor methods of teaching and especially an over-
reliance on sheer memorization.
Certainly nearly all of these weaknesses have been ob-
served at the local level in a remote village school.

Of Indonesia's total population, 120 million, per—
haps more than 50 million people have received some sort
of education since independence. But most of these people
have found their limited education has not greatly im-
proved their daily lives, with the result that a high

degree of frustration and confusion exists among these

peOple. Until the national government can give educational

 

7See I. P. Simandjuntak, "Some Thoughts Concerning
Elementary and Secondary Education in Indonesia," a paper
presented in the workshop of educational problems in devel-
oping countries,on August 26-28, 1970, Tugu, Bogor, West
Java, Indonesia, p. 1.

8C. E. Beeby "Improving the Quality of Primary
Education," a paper presented in the workshop of educa-
tional problems in developing countries, on August 26-28,
1970, Tugu, Bogor, West Java, Indonesia, pp. 2-4.

150

funds a higher priority in the allocation of resources,
these frustrations are likely to increase.

Whereas the Dutch schools prepared low-ranking
civil servants, and Japanese education emphasized milita-
ristic aSpects, schools in Indonesia today are more
syncretistic. Religion is important at the elementary
level, as Islamic learning has considerable relevance to
village life. Children must generally leave their villages
for urban areas in order to continue their education at
the secondary level, and in so doing, they assume urban
values instead of their traditional village way of life.
The educational system tends to produce an urban-oriented
type of civil-servant, or alternatively, an orientation
to an army career, a role that is still attractive to
young men in terms of its income, authority and prestige.
Elementary education fails to encourage young people to
stay in rural areas; it does not help its students cope
more effectively with rural conditions.

Recently the problem has become more intense for
educated youth, since government positions have been
multiplying. The schools have been educating their stu-
dents to become consumers, but they have not been develop-
ing a class of people who are capable of finding new jobs
in an already overcrowded market. Once a youth has been
educated beyond elementary school, and has failed to find

employment in an urban center, he is ashamed to return to

151

his home village. Traditionally only people who have
achieved economic success-return to their home villages;
if not, they prefer to hide in urban areas where they can
preserve some measure of anonymity. Life in an urban
center is physically easier, and having adopted shoes and
urban dress, they feel they cannot work in the fields as
their parents do. Finally, an educated person who has
left his village will no longer own land in his home vil-
lage. Thus it is not surprising that most children in
Harapan leave school at the level of the fourth grade,
before they have become assimilated to urban ways of life,
as the data suggested, from the interviews conducted with
both youth or adults who had left Harapan and were now
living in a city and with parents whose children had fled

the village.

CHAPTER IX
SCHOOL-BASED STRATEGIES IN INDONESIA

In the early days of Indonesian independence, one
cannot say much about educational planning strategies that
are concerned with rural development. A principal hin-
drance to the development of such strategies was the fact
that educational institutions were colored by political
struggles; at the time many Indonesian educators were
actually also politicians, at least part of the time.
Educational policies changed along with realignments
among holders of political power. Educators banded into
formal and informal associations according to their dif-
ferent political aspirations. Any nascent profession died
prematurely, so that before 1968 strategies of educational
planning cannot be discussed in a meaningful way.

It was only in 1969 under the present administra-
tion that Indonesian education gradually began to see
scientific and systematic planning. Some young scholars
from universities throughout the country were asked to
work in the central government, to set up the steps to be
taken in building a desired strategy of educational

planning. Thus the National Assessment of Education

152

153

Project was established, and with its inception, foreign
technical experts and assistance funds came from agencies
such as UNESCO, UNICEF, AID, the Ford Foundation and CARE.
In the following chapter, the writer will discuss develop-
ments of the past two years.

First, the National Assessment of Education Pro-
ject will be described; second, the report of the American
anthropologist Edward M. Bruner which was submitted to the
National Assessment of Education Project will be discussed;
the case of Pesisir Urang, one of the villages at the
beginning of this program will be presented; finally, the
prospect for a school-based strategy in the village of
Harapan, will be examined.

The National Assessment
of Education Project

 

 

Since 1969, the present Minister has taken action
on vital educational issues.1 For example, Presidential

decree No. 84, 1969 establishes the Badan Pengembangan

 

Pendidikan, or Board of Educational Development, whose

 

main task is to coordinate all efforts and planning acti-
vities undertaken by the Ministry of Education and Culture,
and to discuss these in conferences held in such places as

Tugu and Malang. This plan might be termed a nation-wide,

 

1See the Minister's speeches, on Dec. 15, 1969,
June 30, 1970 and Sept. 21, 1970.

154

school-based strategy. Results from this kind of plan will
only be seen over a considerable period of time. It will
take years to train competent fieldworkers in order to
collect necessary data from so many islands that exhibit
so much cultural diversity. The task is enormous; many
aspects are still too limited, but the professional chal-
lenges are there.
A crucial development has been the establishment
of the National Assessment of Education Project, on May 1,
1969. The project, supported by the Ford Foundation, is
intended:
(l) to collect any useful information and problems for
a long term national strategy of education in
Indonesia.
(2) to carry out assessment of the items mentioned in
paragraph (1); and
(3) to provide the Board of Leaders of the Department
of Education and Culture with suggestions/recommen-
dations concerning the long term national strategy
of education.2
One aspect of the National Assessment of Education Project
has been to enlist foreign experts to help suggest plans
for educational development, drawing conclusions from
their own experiences. Edward Bruner, professor of Anthro-

pology at the University of Illinois, came to Indonesia in

July 1969, charged to help "investigate the attitudes and

 

2Winarno Surachmat, Education under Assessment
(Djakarta: Ministry of Education and Culture, National

Assessment of Education Project, 1969), p. 7.

155

aSpirations of pupils, parents and teachers."3 Bruner,

who had worked extensively in Sumatra among the Batak
ethnic group during the 1950's, thus becamethe first
anthropologist who has attempted to apply the technique
of his science to Indonesian educational planning. He
began his study together with a handful of Indonesian
educators, such as Dr. Setijadi from Teachers College at
Malang, East Java, Dr. Winarno Surachmat and Dr. Santosa
from Teachers College or Padjadjaran University in Bandung,
West Java; and Dr. Tilaar and Prof. Simandjuntak from
Teachers College in Djakarta. These men worked together
in the Ministry of Education and Culture to set up long
range educational planning, a development that this
writer, who worked in the same Ministry between 1960-1968,
feels is progressive and encouraging. In his report,
distributed to Indonesian Educators in August, 1970,
Bruner made some observations similar to conditions the
writer had observed in Harapan during his own fieldwork.
In his proposal Bruner advocated that the first
step to be taken should be the collection of fresh data
through anthropological fieldwork. He felt that before
designing large projects, brief exploratory investigations

on specific problems are needed. And since the data were

 

3Edward M. Bruner, "Report of Edward M. Bruner,"
p. 2, a proposal presented in the workshop of educational
problems in developing countries, Tugu, Bogor, West Java,
August 26-28, 1970.

156

still to be collected, for the time being, he proposed
some general topics, drawn from his own intuitive feelings
that need to be discussed before detailed data are col-
lected. Thus he mentioned first the problem of sampling
the pOpulation, since there are so many ethnic groups in
Indonesia. Secondly, as the diverse geographical areas

in the archipelago present difficulties, he therefore pro-
posed using universities throughout the country: to
represent Java, schools in Djakarta, Bandung, and Jogja;
for Sumatra, those in Atjeh, Medan and Padang; for
Sulawesi, Manado and Makassar; and finally one area in
Kalimantan and another in eastern Indonesia. Bruner also
realized that "modern cosmopolitan internationally-minded
educated Indonesians are found in all of these cities and
hopefully the sample would go beyond this one socio-
cultural type." Surveys should include "different social
strata, classes, and the various social types in Indonesia,"
to represent both rural and urban variations. In short,
he proposed that the Indonesian educational system should
be adapted to the great variety of local, cultural and
ecological settings. He suggested 7 projects to be under-
taken: (1) a case study of the school system, (2) the
dropout problem, (3) the social role of the primary school
teacher, (4) educational aspirations, (5) occupational

attitudes, (6) educational decision makers and (7) bilin-

gualism.

157

To this writer Bruner's report is one of the peaks
in the school-based strategy of educational planning at
the present stage of Indonesian development. But, such
plans still have a long way to go, and in order to return
to reality, let us examine a model community that has been
selected by the National Assessment Project.

The National Assessment of Education Project
operates through delegating authority to teachers colleges
in the provincial capitals such as that in Semarang,
Central Java. Members of the teachers college working
together with provincial superintendents and respected
regency supervisors have selected villages that they feel
typify educational problems within specific regencies.
Here they retrain local teachers in the Teachers Training
College, and make available new materials from the National
Assessment Project for use in the model schools.

The regency of Kendal, where Harapan and
Ambangredjo and another subdistrict called Weleri are
located, has 606,558 inhabitants. Seventeen local school
supervisors control 329 elementary schools, with 2,359,400
elementary school students (1,309,890 boys and 1,049,510
girls) and 63,321 teachers (45,071 men and 18,250 women).
The Teachers College in Semarang has selected a number of
schools in the regency of Kendal for consideration by the
National Assessment Project. The writer visited two of

these, one (not the remote village of Harapan) representing

158

the mountainous region, and one, in the subdistrict of
Weleri, chosen to exemplify a coastal, fishing village.
This particular village is known here as "Pesisir Urang,"
and was visited by the writer for 4 days, including the
surrounding areas, during the course of his fieldwork.

TherCase of the Village
of PesisIforang

 

 

Location.--"Pesisir Urang" is a pseudonym for a

 

village located on the north coast of Central Java, about

6 kilometers to the north of the small subdistrict town

of Weleri. Like Ambangredjo, Weleri is also an ex-district
town, and a busy trading center with a substantial number
of Chinese and Arab descendents. Pesisir Urang contains

84.645 ha. of wet rice fields, 0.9 of bondo deso or vil-

 

lage property, 31.403 ha. of pekarangan or house yards,

 

and 12.06 ha. of bengkok lands, with a total land area of
129.010 ha.

Climate.--In contrast to Harapan's mountainous
location, the temperature in Pesisir Urang and Weleri
ranges from 85 up into the 90's; the humidity is high,
although the sea breezes make it cool once in a while.

In the rainy season, it is very wet, like a swamp, and
in the dry season, very dusty and quite hot.

Landscape.--Pesisir Urang is a flat, lowland vil-

 

lage, where to the north we see the calm Java Sea, and

159

to the south, along the river of Kali Kuto, hundreds of
boats and rafts. The river cuts rice and tobacco fields
towards its source climbing up and up to hills and forests,
ending on the blue Mount Sampan, which when seen from this
distance, is sometimes covered-by clouds or fog.

The administrative apparatus.--Like Harapan,

 

Pesisir Urang belongs to the same regency of Kendal, and
the same province of Central Java. It lies in the sub-
district of Weleri, a town only 18 kilometers north of
Ambangredjo.

Settlement pattern.--Pesisir Urang is divided in

 

the western part by the wide river known as Kali Kuto,
and in the middle of the village by a formerly paved road
leading southward to the town of Weleri.

In the village's southern part are wet rice fields
and rather well built houses; along the river and the

beach the fishermen live. Sailing boats (prau lajar) and

 

bamboo huts are spread along the beach. In the village
center are 51 warung, where the fishermen eat and drink,

a busy fish market, a fish auction building, some rela-
tively wealthy local traders' houses, the lurah's house,
and a fishing cooperative office.

Houses.--The majority of the houses belong to poor

fishermen; these huts, or gubug, usually consist of four
bamboo walls with a dry savannah roof. Inside there are

no tables but only amben, or bamboo couches, for sleeping.

160

Houses belonging to people who are-fishermen and part-time
rice growers, are constructed with more sophisticated
plans from bamboo, wood and tiles. Tables, chairs, kit-
chens, and wells are common in these houses, but there

are not yet any bathrooms. Wealthier people such as local
traders and the lurah, have similar houses, but these
commonly have bathrooms and other signs of modernity such
as transistor radios. There were also 2 mosques and 14

langgar.

Population.--There were 6,688 people in Pesisir

 

Urang, 3,368 men and 3,320 women. Older people could
still recall that in 1941 there had been only about 4,000
people; in 30 years the population has nearly doubled.
Today it is too big for a traditional village, and its
administration cannot efficiently serve its changing
needs.

Over the years the beach has become shallower and
shallower; the sea has been slowly retreating to the north.
The land then has grown wider and wider; perhaps the
great-grandson of a fisherman now owns land away from the
sea and has become a part-time rice grower or trader. New
fishermen come to settle in the beach area. It was hard
to find a villager who could claim to be an "original"
villager; very few knew the history of the village.
Pesisir Urang is full of strangers working as fishermen

or traders.

161

Fifty per cent of the people own rice fields; the
other half work as full-time fishermen, local traders or
provide public transportation to Weleri. In the village
life of Pesisir Urang, the ethnic-bound group comes into
contact with both the religion-oriented and the Indonesian-
image groups. Not all of those residents of Pesisir Urang
come from a single ethnic group, a factor that makes the
Pesisir Urang setting interesting; many variations of
traditional Javanese culture are found between Tjirebon,
at the border of the province of West Java, and Demak to
the east. Fishermen from several islands come and go as
must have happened for centuries. Their boats are deco-
rated in styles distinctive to the different ethnic groups
or localities, and these customs have not faded out upon
contact with various foreign influences.

The population of Java's north coast can be
characterized by their wide chests, strong shoulders, arms
and hands developed from rowing their boats; they are
darker skinned, having been exposed to the sun all the
time. Physically they are bigger and taller compared to
the rice growers.

Economy.--According to the data collected, Pesisir
Urang has a rice harvest of 28,000 kgs. Villagers owned
29 horses (used for transportation), 2 cows, 121 water
buffaloes, 52 goats, and 26 sheep. There were also 704
coconut trees, 214 kapgk trees, and a number of coffee

bushes.

162

There was 1 poorly organized brick factory, some
repair shops, the 51 warung mentioned above, and 1 fish
market.

The principal income of villagers is derived from
the fishing industry. The village is the site of a
fishing co-operative, established and managed by officials
from a provincial-level department. The co-operative is
designed to serve the needs of the fishermen: it sells
supplies on credit and maintains a clinic. All fishermen
are expected to join, and everyone must sell his fish to
the co-operative, which in turn resells the catch to local
buyers or to Japanese businessmen who purchase shrimp for
export. Villagers maintain three kinds of boats: the
majang or the big boat, the grajak, a medium-sized boat,

and the kementing a smaller boat. The majang is operated

 

by 20 people; it costs about Rp. 300,000 or $1,125. Its

owner is called djuragan; its fishermen are divided into

 

the djurumudi or captain, and the djurugidang or common

 

 

sailors who row the boat and catch the fish. According to
information gathered in interviews, there had been 100 big
boats, and 120 small ones. But the total number of big
boats had decreased to 60, for lack of supplies. Big
boats require more men and supplies, but can stay out for
extended periods of time. The co-op had formerly supplied
these boats, but recently had not been able to provide the

needed materials. Consequently, the big boats were no

163

longer feasible to operate. Nonetheless, the co-operative
officials insisted that all fishermen must join the co-op.
At the time the membership of the co-operative was in-
creasing, while the price of the fish was lower, although
that of the shrimp had gone up.

The fishermen start rowing their boats out to sea
at about 2 in the morning; they return home 12 hours later
unless they have enough supplies so they can continue to
fish for three or four days. Since the boats are still
traditionally made, when the wind blows across the bay it
is very dangerous for them. Every year about 10 to 15
small boats are lost. Motor boats are too expensive for
the fishermen, and moreover, the bay is becoming shallower
and shallower all the time due to the silt deposits from
the river. Where the river meets the sea, the people say,
the crocodiles once lived at the bottom of the water.

Economic life is divided into several groups: the
villagers and their officials represent the producers'
viewpoint, while the co-op officials, local buyers and the
Japanese businessmen stand on the other side.

The villagers are the men and women of Pesisir
Urang and their children. The men are either full-time
fishermen or part-time fishermen if they own rice fields.
The women are full-time fish sellers or buyers in the
local market, or if they have to work in the fields with

their husbands, they work part-time in the market. All

164

children are supposed to go to school, but in fact they
do not necessarily go. Some children are more attracted
to the call of the sea, and especially when the boats
return from their expeditions at noon, the children rush
to the beach to ask about the many kinds of "strange"
fish the men have caught. And this creates problems for
the teachers.

The village officials are responsible for develop-
ing their village, but at the present stage they cannot,
because they do not have any financial resources. The
community's resources are all taken by the co-op, and the
village owns only an auction building where the fish are
weighed before being sold to the co-op. The market and
the warung are dirty; the roads are bad, especially in
the rainy season. Most of the houses are poorly built,
serving only as places to sleep before sailing to sea,
since the fishermen generally eat in the warung. The
schools' walls are full of holes.

The co-op is actually an urban institution, built
by a provincial department. Urban officials are sent to
live and manage the co-op. This institution is a good
example of negative benefits resulting from departmental
strategy penetrating into the village setting. Many other
aspects involved with the co-operative have not been given
any consideration. Perhaps from the point of view of the

department concerned, the co-op shows material profits,

165

but from the Villagers' viewpoint this system hinders their
own rural development. Local people should learn to par-
ticipate in such a venture, and not act just as second

rank workers. The village officials in Pesisir Urang are
powerless, because they, like the other villagers, are
financially dependent on the co-op. -The institution may
become stronger and stronger if it does well, but the
villagers will not change much; their position becomes
weaker and weaker as they get older, and this means they
will be increasingly poorer in old age.

The local buyers are still divided into small
village traders and Chinese traders from Weleri who have
more money. These traders can only buy the fish through
the co-op, and consequently the price is high. They must
resell at an even higher price to the consumers. Both
producers and consumers suffer in this system. The
Japanese buy shrimps through the co-op, waiting for the
catch in Semarang. Shrimps are profitable for the time
being at least, but the question is, who makes the profit?
Unless the profit comes to the villagers themselves, any
development is contrary to the strategy of rural moderni-
zation, where people not only should learn how to increase
their per-capita-income by making more money, but also,
should be taught to spend it wisely. The meeting of dif-
ferent local Javanese cultures creates a special variant

of socio-economic cultural setting which needs deeper study

166

before a workable plan could be set up to overcome it well.
Some negative aspects result from such a meeting of various
ethnic groups or subcultures in this small potentially
profitable coastal center. Thus one finds hidden local
gambling and prostitutes, since the fishermen sometimes
come from other islands as well. But the worst result is
that the money economy of the sophisticated urban centers
has penetrated to village life directly before the vil-
lagers are adequately prepared for-it.

Communications.--Public transportation between

 

Weleri and Pesisir Urang is by dokar (in Javanese) or
delman (in Indonesian), a two wheeled carriage drawn by
one or two horses. There were 22 dokar in Pesisir Urang.
People also used to ride bicycles, since it is not far to
Weleri, and the land is flat. There were also 6 Honda
motorcycles or Lambretta motor scooters. Trucks journeyed
back and forth from Semarang to Pesisir Urang carrying the
shrimps.

Orientation groups in Pesisir Urang.--The three

 

orientation groups we saw in Harapan can also be found in
Pesisir Urang. The ethnic-bound group contributes.Hindu-

Javanese theater, such as wajang kulit, wajang wong,

 

 

ketoprak and sinden. These villagers are fishermen and

 

traditional rice growers. They also practice pentjak or

the traditional stylized art of self-defense.

167

The religion-oriented group contributes to village
life by building mosques and langgar; they maintain trading
businesses in competition with the Chinese. They also had
a trebang musical association.

The Indonesian-image group has helped to spread
the idea of nationalism, as well as having some limited
influence on elementary education, on dress styles, the
use of Indonesian, and introduction of recreations such as
chess, volley ball, and soccer. This group has also
brought in trucks and motorcycles. However, such modern-
ization is not at all organized, and in the technical
sense, the strategy of village development is still neg-
lected. The most potentially impressive economic channel,
the Fish Co-op, has resulted from the application of a
departmental strategy from the top down. The worst aspect
of the co—op was that the villagers were afraid to a cer-
tain degree of its power, more than they were afraid of
the village administration, which obviously was against
the strategy of village modernization.

Institutions.--The village administration is still

 

poorly organized; it remains personal in nature, as do
many others in the village setting at the present stage

of development. The lurah is about 85 years old, tall and
big, but too old to work or even to hear the people he
talks to. He was one of those who could claim to be an

"original" settler, but when asked by the writer, who used

168

a microphone connected to hearing aids, about the tjikal-
bakal and the history of this village, the old man laughed
at the writer, because he had never been asked such a
question even by the higher officials he had met. Con-
sequently he had never thought of that, and he said in
low krgmg style Javanese: "Ngeten mawon, nek sedjarahe
dusun mriki kula mboten ngretos, ning nek sedjarah gesang
kula, ngeten . . . " or "Well, if asked about the history
of this village, I really do not know, but the history of
my life is this way . . . ," and he told the writer a long
story of his life, full of spice and jokes, without waiting
for the writer's response.

He had been a Dutch soldier, and after resigning,
was elected lurah_in his home village, Pesisir Urang.
When the Japanese came, he was put in prison, beaten
severely, and at night thrown from a ship into the Java
Sea, he told the writer. The Japanese did not know that
he was still alive, and he swam back to the secluded shore,
helped by floating wood he fortunately found. He returned
to his village secretly, at the point, when the Japanese
war effort began to collapse. The 12£§h_was an influential
traditional leader in Pesisir Urang, a village divided
into 12 dukuhan.

The writer did not have an opportunity to meet the
bekel; it seemed that village administration was carried

on by the wife of the lurah, who performed daily duties

169

for her husband and by the tjarik and three other officials.
These people were intelligent enough, but did not have ade-
quate education to lead the village, especially since
authority was in the hands of the old lurah. This lurah
was a chariSmatic leader, powerful in the local setting.
This made the development of the village even slower, since
he became too weak physically, but maintained a powerful
will. Nobody in the local setting dared argue with him,

and he mostly rested in bed, going once a week to a doctor
in Semarang.

Religious institutions in the village were repre-
sented by 2 mosques, l4 langgar and the Arabic Musical
Association.

Political parties were not much different from
those in Harapan; the lurah_was a leader in the national-
ist party, and the kadji usually followed religion-oriented
parties.

The school.--The school, while potentially good,

 

was basically still neglected. Actually there were three
elementary schools in Pesisir Urang, but only one had a
full 6-year curriculum. The writer was only able to visit
two of the schools.

In the larger elementary school, there were 226
children, divided as shown in Table 11. There were 6
teachers and one janitor. Two teachers had just come

back from inservice training at the Teachers College in

 

 

170

TABLE 11: CHILDREN IN PESISIR URANG'S ELEMENTARY
SCHOOL NO. 1

 

 

 

 

Grade Boys Girls Total

1 31 19 50
2 18 30 48
3 19 21 40
4 l3 0 23
5 24 0 34
6 18 13 31

TOTAL 226

 

Semarang, as the first and the second grades in this
school had been chosen for the project in curriculum
improvement under the guidance of the National Assess-
ment Education Project in Djakarta. These teachers were
waiting for equipment, tools, and textbooks promised for
the project at that time. The building itself was in poor
shape, with walls full of holes.

The second elementary school did not have the
sixth grade, and its general condition was poor (Table 12).

Pesisir Urang's teachers mostly lived in Weleri,
about 6 kilometers south of the village. They commuted
on bicycles. The teachers had realistic reasons for not
living in Pesisir Urang, as the village officials still

had not given them the piece of land they had promised.

171

TABLE 12: CHILDREN IN PESISIR URANG'S ELEMENTARY
SCHOOL NO. 2 ‘

 

 

 

Grade Boys Girls Total
1 30 18 48
2 22 26 47
3 24 23 47
4 22 6 28
5 13 6 19

 

TOTAL 119

 

When the teachers and village official met at the
time of the writer's visit, the writer asked informally:
"Assuming that you, the teachers, got all the necessary
tools, equipment and higher salaries, etc.--do you feel
confident to improve village life here?"

Their answers were uncertain, and full of if's.
The setting was indeed complicated, and with the urban-
run co-op operating in the village economy, the elementary
school teachers became less respected socially by the
villagers. Most of the teachers were frustrated, and if
they could have continued their educations, wanted to
become high school teachers.

We have seen something of the complexities in the
Pesisir Urang setting, and we have also witnessed the first

stage of a curriculum improvement program that follows the

172

school-based strategy. Beginning with the training of

2 teachers, and concentrating on the first two grades for

several years, the school in Pesisir Urang is operating

independently from the community and its enormous problems.
Let us turn now to a consideration of Harapan and

the prospect for introducing a school-based strategy in

this mountainous community.

The Prospect for a School-Based

Strategy in the Village of
Harapan

 

 

Needless to say the quality of Harapan's school
should be improved before one can gradually introduce any
substantial innovations among the villagers. However,
there is difference between what should be done and what
realistically can be done, in terms of the limited re-
sources in the local setting. At the present stage not
much can be done in Harapan, unless the village were
chosen as a pilot project so that direct professional
guidance and needed funds could be made available.

After seeing the poor condition of the Pesisir
Urang school, which was chosen as a pilot project follow-
ing a school-based strategy of educational planning, the
prospect for Harapan's school, which is located in such
a remote and neglected village, is then even worse, since

there are too many other problems to be solved first.

173

How can one think about curriculum improvement, if
a first step like making teachers live in the village where
they serve, is still impossible? The dignity of the
teacher must be encouraged so that human beings can be
educated as individuals, as Indonesian citizens full of
dignity. The villagers as a whole, are capable of collec-
tive action to a considerable degree, but as individuals,
they are weak, and lack education. An individual vil-
lager is afraid to go far away for a long time, even if
it means achieving a better existence. This is why trans-
migration is still a failure for the Javanese, not even
considering the many other reasons.

Teaching jobs are not attractive at the present
stage of development in Indonesia. Salaries are very low,
and who likes to live in a remote village like Harapan
after having graduated from high school in Ambangredjo,
Kendal, or Semarang, without being paid more? Even the
job of principal is not attractive at Harapan, since the
salary still does not compensate a teacher's basic needs
and aspirations. The oldest son of the lurah, for ex-
ample, could only stand teaching in his home village for
two years, and then he left for Djakarta to enroll in a
college. Even the teachers at Pesisir Urang mostly live
at Weleri, 6 kilometers from the village, in a town instead
of the village, they are supposed to serve, so they do not

begin to know the villagers well.

174

The local supervisor, or even the regency super-
visor, cannot do much about such a case. Being responsible
for more than 30 schools in the 18 villages of Ambangredjo
subdistrict, the supervisor has to be an extraordinarily
strong man to visit Harapan more than twice a year. Real-
istically speaking, there is no such man. Even the office
in Ambangredjo was built by the teachers association, and
the regency supervisor still borrowed a school building
for his office. The need to build a decent office for the
supervisors is urgent. Not only is the space really re-
quired, but also the structure would build the self-
confidence of those who are charged with educating proud
citizens. The office is not only a building, but a pres-
tige symbol, especially since other departments have their
own, better office buildings.

Being assisted by UNESCO at the present time, the
Government is concentrating on giving free textbooks for
elementary school children throughout the country, beginning
with mathematics textbooks. These books cost a great deal,
more than 15 million copies are needed, and transportation
is another problem. A school located in a remote village
like Harapan still had to wait for its books. But this
could be a good starting point, especially to provide
reading textbooks that would widen the scope of the vil-

lage youngsters.

175

Three aspects of the curriculum should be given
attention in the village school: Education for national,
modern life, such as civics, the Indonesian language,
basic sciences, and history should be provided. Local
conditions should be honored by teaching subjects such as
ethnic-group languages and other socio-cultural aspects
of the diverse regions.. Third, the curriculum should
include pragmatic skills adapted to fit the local setting,
such as animal husbandry, agriculture, home industries,
trading business, and various games or other physical
education.

Since the size of village and the population varies
among the villages, perhaps encouraging stronger leader-
ship and smaller schools would be better. For example,
Ambangredjo could be divided to create two supervisor's
offices instead of just one. This strategy would make it
possible for a supervisor to live in a village, and to
be responsible for ten other villages at most. Since
many villages do not have more than one elementary school,
contacts between teachers and their supervisors would be
more frequent.

The prospect for Harapan's school is still dark in
the near future, primarily, perhaps because it is too far
from the supervisor's office in Ambangredjo town, in this

case .

CHAPTER X

ECONOMIC THEORIES IN DEVELOPMENT PLANNING

This writer belongs to those who believe that
economic planning is a must for young countries that have
won their political freedom. However, excessively detailed
planning at the national level should be avoided, so that
potential entrepreneurs in the local setting will have
room to develop. One of the principal problems in Java is
that for centuries, the people have not been trained to
achieve something new as individuals competing against
each other. Their traditional culture stressed the virtue
of collective cooperation and consensus, in such concepts

gotong rojong and musjawarah untuk mufakat; the Javanese

 

 

could not compete with Chinese and Arab traders who had
had generations of experience building economic entrepre-
neurship. For this reason public elementary schools,
especially those located in the rural areas should empha-
size entrepreneurial aspects in their curriculum, as it
relates to the potential of the surrounding area.

Since World War II various theories of economic

planning have been applied in the newly independent

176

177

countries. Only those which have some relevance to the
Indonesian setting are discussed here.

After some preliminary historical remarks, the
dualistic economic theory of Boeke will be discussed.

Then ideas of three Americans writing specifically about
the Indonesian situation will be presented--Geertz, Owen,
and Higgins.- Finally, the development theories of 3
international economists-—Rostow, Myrdal and Prebisch
will be introduced. The chapter concludes with a brief
examination of data from schemes currently being employed
in Central Java.

In 1817 Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, former British
Lieutenant Governor, who governed the Indonesian archipelago
between 1811-1824, when England held sovereignty over the
East Indies, wrote an extensive history of Java, described
the Javanese with sympathy, seeing them to a certain degree
as they exist today. His interpretation was in conflict
with the way Dutch administrators had viewed them for cen-
turies. Raffles, when writing about Javanese character,
discussed not only their weaknesses but also emphasized
their strengths and potential. He, too, felt the Dutch
had characterized them unjustly.

Below, the writer would like to quote some inter-

esting comments made by Raffles, who includes an official

178

report written by Residentl Dornick, a high Dutch official
in Djepara in 1812, a town located at the north of Semarang,
Central Java. For those Indonesians, who still respond
emotionally to what Dornick wrote in his official report,
perhaps it is better to change the word "the Javan" into
"the Dutch," since after two centuries being colonized by
the Dutch there was nothing good left about the Javanese

in the eyes of Dornick and other Dutch administrators,

even as late as 1950, 138 years later.

. . Thus far I have given a faithful representation
of the people as they appeared to me; but it may be
amusing to the reader to read the Javan character, as
transcribed from the impressions of the Dutch. The
following is an official account of this people given
by a subject of that nation, which has contributed so
much to depress and degrade them. "If the Javan is a
person of rank, or in affluent circumstances, he will
be found superstitious, proud, jealous, vindictive,
mean, and slavish towards his superiors, haughty and
despotic towards his inferiors and those unfortunate
beings that are subject to his orders, lazy and sloth-
ful.

The lower class is indolent and insensible beyond
conception, and although certain persons, who presume
to be perfectly acquainted with the character of the
Javan, maintain the contrary, still I am convinced by
daily experience, that the Javan in general is most
shockingly lazy, and that nothing but fear of his
superior, and apprehension of being punished, or
momentary distress or want, can compel him to labour.
If left to himself, he will do no more than what is
absolutely requisite to furnish the necessaries of
life, and as he needs but little, his labour is pro-
portionate: yet as soon as he has a sufficiency for
four days, or for the next day only, nothing will put
him in motion again but force or fear.

 

1The Resident was a Dutch government position simi-
lar to Lieutenant Governor representing and coordinating
4 or 5 Kabupaten or regencies. A Governor was assisted by
4 or 5 Resident in his provincial administration.

 

179

Cowardly, vindictive, treacherous, inclined to rob
and to murder rather than work, cunning in evil prac-
tices, and unaccountably stupid (supposed intention-
ally), if any good is required of him. These are the
principal traits of the Javan character."2

The vast majority of books written by the Dutch

about the Indonesian people under their rule, regardless
whether they were supposed to be scholarly or not, that
the writer knows so far fall into Raffles' category, "it
may be amusing to the reader to read the Javan character,
as transcribed from the impressions of the Dutch."

However, the writer feels that Dutch scholars

were sometimes in conflict with themselves at that time,
since their scientific findings, analyses and conclusions
about the Indonesian people were not always in the inter-
est of the ruling Dutch government. Often what they wrote
in their official books was inconsistent with what they
discussed at scientific conferences.

And now let us see the dualistic theory of the

economist J. H. Boeke.

Boeke's Dualism

 

J. H. Boeke3 based his economic theory on research

findings collected in certain Javanese villages. Perhaps

 

2Sir T. S. Raffles, The History of Java (London:

Oxford U. Press, 1965) Vol. I, pp. 253-4.
3J. H. Boeke, The Structure of Netherlands Indian
Economy, (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1942).

 

180

here we should characterize him both as a Dutch colonial

economist and as a humanistic scholar, so that his works

seem to fulfill two functions.

Boeke, the Dutch colonial economist, stated that

the Indonesians, and particularly the Javanese, could not

participate in the world economy, because of the dualism

existing between:

(1) town and village, between the world market and

(2)

(3)

the village economy, and between capitalistic
and pre-capitalistic economy. By the word
"town," he meant a "court, royal center, military
or consumer, living as a parasite on the vil-
1age economy,"

between East and West, as Kipling once said,
that separates Europeans and Asians;

between natives and foreigners. Boeke observed
that between 1911 and 1921, Europeans repre-
sented 12 per cent of the India's population,
but between 1921 and 1931, they dropped to only
4.5 per cent. Boeke concluded that dualism in
India was then decreasing. In Indonesia, be-
tween 1905 and 1920, the Dutch increased by

109 per cent; between 1920 and 1930 there was
another increase of 42 per cent, Boeke then
concluded that dualism in Indonesia was in-

creasing;

181

(4) between economic dualism and cultural

pluralism.

Boeke expanded his principle of dualism to encom-
pass Asia, Africa and Latin America in general, stating
that the Indonesian people had to be under Dutch economic
rule because they could not manage without Dutch super-
vision. Entrepreneurship was of course out of the question.
In Boeke's book, he never attributes the Javanese in-
ability to participate in the world economy to the economic
isolation in which the Dutch colonial government kept the
native peoples; Geertz has observed4 that certainly Dutch
policies contributed greatly to the development of the
dualistic society.

Boeke, the humanistic scholar, however, presented
a paper at the meeting of the Indisch Genootschap, in the
Netherlands, on October 13, 1922, entitled "Auto-activiteit
naast autonomie" or "Auto-activity next to autonmy," in
which he said:

. . . All this has broken down the existing social
organization, has pulverized without moulding anew,

misery without generating new strength and the result
has been a degradation of the human spirit.

 

4See Clifford Geertz, Agricultural Involution,
p. 142.

5M. Hatta, "Past and Present," an address, upon
receiving the degree of doctor of honoris causa from Gadjah
Mada University at Jogjakarta on November 27, 1956, p. 4.

182

Indonesians really appreciated Boeke for this. In

1956, Dr. Hatta, the former Vice President, and an econ-
omist, wrote about this statement by Boeke:

. . . This is not the pronouncement of an Indonesian

revolutionary, but the result of a scientific anal-

ysis by a colonial economist, a man of deep human

feelings.
As late as 1953, Boeke's books were still being translated
into English for American readers by the Institute of
Pacific Relations in New York. In the same year, however,
a team of American scholars from M.I.T. began to study the

Indonesian people directly without depending on Dutch

sources .

The Writings of Clifford Geertz

 

Clifford Geertz is an anthropologist who first
went to Java as a member of the M.I.T. team. He has
studied Javanese people from different perspectives but
here the writer will concentrate only on his research
connected with entrepreneurship.

Geertz' conclusions are drawn from his observations
in two very different small towns in Indonesia--"Modjokuto"

in East Java, and Tabanan in Bali.7

 

6Ibid., p. 4.

7Clifford Geertz, Peddlers and Princes: Social
Change and Economic Modernization in Two Indonesian Towns
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1963).

 

 

183

. . 8
Geertz' conc1u51ons can be summarized as follows:

Innovative economic leadership (entrepreneur-
ship) occurs in a fairly well defined and
socially homogeneous group, among Moslem

traders in Modjokuto and the ruling family

This innovative group has crystalized out of
a larger traditional group which has a very
long history of extra-village status and
interlocal orientation.

The larger group out of which the innovative
group is emerging is one which is at present
experiencing a fairly radical change in its
relationships with the wider society of which
it is a part.

On the ideological level, the innovative
group conceives of itself as the main vehicle
of religious and moral excellence within a

generally wayward, unenlightened, or heedless

The major innovations and innovational prob-
lems the entrepreneurs face are organizational
rather than technical, the prerequisite for
success is rather organizational and adminis-

trative skill.

 

(l)

in Tabanan.
(2)
(3)
(4)

community.
(5)
8

Ibid., pp. 147-151.

(6)

184

The function of the entrepreneur in such
transitional but pretake-off societies is
mainly to adopt customarily established mean

to novel ends.

From the writer's experiences in Harapan,

Ambangredjo and Pesisir Urang, he would basically sup-

port Geertz' conclusions, though with the following

qualifications:

steps:

(1)

(2)

In Ambangredjo and its counterpart, Weleri,
entrepreneurial positions are commonly held
by Chinese and/or Arabs; the strength of
traditional ruling families is fading out,
to be replaced by certain civil servants.
Especially with regard to Chinese and Arab
entrepreneurs, no opportunity is given for

the villagers to develop themselves.

The writer would like to suggest some additional

(1)

(2)

(3)
(4)

Entrepreneurship can be developed, though a
long process, therefore entrepreneurial educa-
tors in the village setting are important.
Taking certain risks is a must in introducing
innovations.

Loans are essential.

Education for the villagers is really impor-

tant, so that they understand and develop the

185

necessary skills to cope with the money
lenders. Even adult villagers were afraid
to borrow money, unless it was inevitable.
They need to understand the meaning of loans,
investments, and banking; if they then have
the opportunity to use these skills, in-
directly they would realize that the school
has really been important in teaching them

about economic development.

Owen's Plan for Economic
Development

 

 

Another American, an agricultural economist, has
made a recent analysis about economic planning in Indonesia.
W. F. Owen, from the University of Colorado, suggests that
"unless and until the basic validity of a two-sector ap-
proach to rural economic development planning is recognized
in countries like Indonesia, it will not be possible to
proceed very far with relevant policy formulation"9 based
on the facts that low population density and industriali-
zation and commercial farming are essential. He distin-
guishes two sectors, especially in Java which is too

crowded.

 

9Wyn F. Owen, "Structural Planning in densely
Populated Countries," p. 112.

186

First, there should be a program to handle what he

calls the "rural subsistence sector" in order to create

more and more employment opportunities for the population

in rural areas. Secondly, he suggests a program in the

"commercial farming" sector to "develop manufacturing,

processing and service activities that are complimentary

to the farm production process itself."

He also advocates:

(l)

(2)

(3)

(4)

The role of the commercial sector to maximize
the marketable produce;

The role of the subsistence sector to maximize
social welfare purposes;

The role of the plantations should be that of
"a commercial farm and not as a population
supporting institution" so that they could
compete economically with the small holders;
The importance of geographical distribution

of commercial and subsistence farms, "as one
of the most strategic long-run planning ques-
tions for long-range planning in Indonesia."
In this light, he suggests opening new lands
in the outer islands of Indonesia; which
should be restricted for maximizing commercial
farms; migration should be located near the
potential new urban industrial growth result-

ing from these commercial farms, as it is

187

better to concentrate migrants in these areas
rather than spreading them out. He advocates
promoting rapid amalgamation of the farms so
that they are continuously.important economi-
cally in the long range, and the restriction
of the production of industrial crops to
commercial sectors. "Finally, all things
considered, a substantially greater share of
the rice lands, especially in the outer is-
lands, but also in Java, undoubtedly should
be assigned to optimum sized commercial
farms."lo
Owen's suggestions are primarily restricted to the
agricultural sector. However, he realizes that a radically
new approach, that of developing agricultural resources
outside the overpopulated islands of Java and Bali, is the

only solution for improving Indonesia's agricultural pro-

duction over the long-range.

IBenjamin Higgins

I I I I I 11
Benjamin Higgins, an economist, was once an

eaconomic advisor to the Indonesian government. While

lOIbid., pp. 106-112.

llBenjamin Higgins, Indonesia's Economic Stabili-
4gation and Development (New York: Institute of Pacific
IRelations, 1957).

188

Geertz was more interested in economics in a local setting,
Higgins concentrated on national scale planning.

Higgins divided the Indonesian people and their
complex setting into.two categories, those who belong to
the economics-minded group, stressing production and nation-
al income achievements and distribution of wealth, and
traditional values of village life.12 Higgins also states,
"The notion that 'baking a larger pie' is more conducive
to increased prosperity than cutting more equal slices out
of‘a small pie has yet to penetrate Indonesian political
consciousness."13 Much of what Higgins wrote in 1957 is
still valid today. At the present time, Higgins' main
points are now beginning to receive professional attention
from those economists who have high positions in the
present Indonesian administration.

Let us now turn to an examination of more general
development theories that are relevant to the Indonesian
situation.

Leaders of most Asian, African and Latin American
countries have tried to set up intelligent economic planning
for their countries and then apply these ideas directly and
gradually. This has indeed been a difficult and painful

trail, difficult because these countries could not compete

 

lzIbid., p. 118.

13Ibid., p. 103.

189

with the technological European and North American soci-
eties. Secondly it is a painful road for these countries
because they seem to be standing in the middle of a long
bridge, above a rough mainstream that sees many revolu-
tions within a single generation; they can still see and
feel the stone age bank on one side of the stream as they
move towards the moon age bank on the other. After lead-
ing their peoples successfully to gain political freedom,
it is interesting to note how their leadership has been
transferred to the next generation in terms of development.
Assisting these countries have been economists who have
studied possible strategies of development in young

countries. Rostow, Myrdall and Prebisch are such scholars.l4

W. W. Rostow

 

Rostow is an American economist, who has studied
young countries, concluding that a young nation should
establish the following preconditions in order to achieve
economic success:

(1) stabilize her government;

(2) improve her education;

(3) organize innovators and businessmen to mobilize

and use savings in effective investments;

 

14Daniel R. Fusfeld, The Age of the Economist: The
Development of Modern Economic Thought (Illinois: Scott,
Foresman and Co., 1966), pp. ll7-120.~

 

 

190

(4) expand trade;

(5) reach at least 10 per cent of national income

in savings and in investments; and

(6) build industries to reach higher living

standards, economic maturity and mass consump-
tion.

He also suggested that the rich nations should
give larger aid to the still poor nations so that they can
reach the take-off period, and then gradually reduce the
aid so that these nations begin to help themselves eco-
nomically.

If only the leaders in both the young countries
and the rich countries could follow Rostow's strategy,
perhaps the present world would have another, better
picture. Unfortunately, history has told a different story.
It has taken millions of lives to free young nations after
World War II. Stabilizing their governments has taken
even longer. There are not many economists, that the
writer knows, who have assigned education a second prior-
ity. Ministers of Education and educators in young
countries might support Rostow, ideally, but in the first
years of their history, young countries, usually spend too
much time, energy, funds and resources pursuing ideologi-
cal and political quarrels. More often they have only
bought more and more weapons with their resources than

devoting them to economy and education.

191

In Indonesia, it took years before a balanced
budget was considered important. Since the beginning,
ironically, education has been regarded as important in
Indonesia, except when the budget has been discussed. It
will take years before the national budget could look some-
thing like this:

A. Expenditures:

25 per cent for defense and public security.

25 per cent for education and health.

40 per cent for economic activities such as agri—
culture, trade, industries, financing services,
transportation and communications, public works
and electric power.

5 per cent for religious and social welfare.

5 per cent for improving administration.
B. Income: internal revenues (taxes), export, foreign

grants and loans.

This budget perhaps could still be improved, but at least
budget priorities have been assigned. The current dif-
ferentiation of the budget into routine as opposed to
deve10pment expenditures, although far better than it used
to be, is still vague in the national budget. This is
partially because routine expenditures are still based on
an inefficient and ineffectively structured system of

public administration.

192

There are several reasons why the national budget
should be professionally studied in young countries, since
the nation uses funds that belong to all the people; and,
moreover, money is borrowed from rich nations in the form,
of aid, grants or loans with some 3 per cent annual inter-
est that must be paid back within a specific time. The
spending of this money should be economic, and applied for
the good of all the people. Getting loans or credits is a
must in terms of economic development but spending money
improperly and having public debt for generations more
than necessary, is not sound traditionally, religiously,
economically or educationally. Especially when rich
nations give loans, grants and aid to the poor countries,
partly for economic, political or ethical reasons, econo-
mists like Gunnar Myrdal and Raul Prebisch give less

optimistic assessments.

Gunnar Myrdal

 

Myrdal, a Swedish economist was a student of the
brilliant Swedish economist, Kunt Wicksell, who advocated
birth control and planned parenthood. Wicksell influenced
John Maynard Keynes, the noted British economist, in the

field of national income.

193

Myrdal15 says that the rich nations buy raw mate-
rials and products from poor nations at low prices,
consequently making local markets unstable and producing
low income for the producers. Then the rich nations sell
manufactured goods back, at high prices, giving loans to
the purchasers. The rich nations build common markets,
partially because of the high wages of their workers and
tough competition between big industries. Big industries
are not too attracted to invest in poor nations because
although their labor costs would be far cheaper, skilled
workers are scarce, their governments still unstable,
bureaucracies too complicated, and these investments are
not profitable compared with those put into rich countries
where technological advancement has occurred.

Myrdal, who successfully assisted the Swedish
government in developing her national income, wrote three

thick volumes, titled Asian Drama, about the poverty of

 

the majority of the Asian people. His earlier work, An

American Dilemma, treated racial problems in the United

 

States.
In Asian Drama, he wrote:

But even if a certain "education mix" were assumed,
the output of education--both in the importing of
abilities and the improvement of attitude--would bear
no definite relation to the inputs of resources.
There is great wastage in all forms of education in

 

15Gunnar Myrdal, Asian Drama (New York: The 20th
Fund, 1968).

 

194

South Asia; much of it is plain miseducation--given
modernization and development as the goals, the wrong
attitudes are imported or preserved.‘ This implies
that improvement of education requires a better use of
resources, not simply an increase in the volume of
resources for that purpose. Any attempt to analyse
the impact of health or education measures without
taking other policy measures into consideration in-
volves the logical fallacy of illegimate isolation.
The effectiveness of such policies can be increased
by directing educational efforts toward the same goal.
Thus a propaganda campaign, directed toward a specific
purpose--for instance, the spread of birth control--
may be launched. If the purpose is achieved, this is
of course, an educational improvement, even though
brought about by means not usually thought of as
educational efforts.16

The judgement that the South Asian countries
would be well advised to devote more resources to
improving health and education is probably correct as
far as it goes, but it is vague and it does not clarify
the really important issues, namely: where should
health and educational programs be directed, how far
should they be pushed, what means should they employ,
and what other policy measures are needed?

 

Like it or not, Myrdal makes some strong points.
Education indeed costs money and is expensive in Indonesia
for the majority. After finishing schools, their future
is still vague; the educational system should try to solve
these problems. It is interesting to note that after 1968
some key positions in theMinistry of Education and Culture
that had been held by army generals or officers have been
gradually replaced by college graduates in Law, Economics,
Philosophy, Agriculture, and others but unfortunately not

yet in Education. One of the reasons perhaps is because

 

1611616., p. 1535.

l7Ibid., p. 1551.

195

Indonesian Colleges of Education usually concentrate on
the insides of the "school building," talking about teach-
ers, administration, curriculum, facilities, and then
demanding more funds for those. Education is seen as a
spending institution, rather than an investment in human
beings or as a producing institution. Usually the educa-
tors reply that education is a non-profit institution, that
educational planning needs other disciplines to supply the
quantity, quality and the kinds of manpower that need to
be "produced." Other disciplines still cannot answer these,
at least for the time being.

Myrdal's realistic view of the slow and complicated
process necessary for development is expanded by Raul

Prebisch.

Raul Prebisch

Prebisch is an Argentine economist who once worked
with the United Nations. He has advocated that the poor
nations should:

(1) eat and use what is produced domestically;

(2) reduce their dependency on foreign manufactures;

(3) organize economic cooperation among other young

nations by building tariff protection, common
markets, free trade areas, and industrializa-

tion.l8

 

l8Fusfeld, The Age of the Economist, p. 120.

 

 

196

Theoretically, this is a good idea, but practi-
cally it is hard. Even people in remote villages like to
buy radios, and many urban dwellers want television sets,
cars, watches, and shirts, almost all of which are imported.
More crucial is the problem of providing spare parts for
equipment already purchased. These problems will be faced
repeatedly, until domestic industries are gradually built.
The solution perhaps, as the government is doing now, is
to introduce assembly factories like those being started
for radios, television sets, and cars. Educational

planning should respond to these new needs.

 

Assuming that someday 25 per cent of the national
budget will be allocated for education and health, what
should the priorities be then? The Ministry of Education,
under the National Assessment of Education Project, should
certainly design programs to follow the country's stages
of economic development. Considering the varying needs of
different localities, the writer would propose an alloca-
tion of budget resources as follows:

70 per cent for the school-based strategy, concentrating on:
40 per cent for 6-years of compulsory education, to
support:

(1) teacher education for the elementary village

schools;

(2) in-service training for present teachers;

(3) improving the teachers' salary system;

197

(4) improving school facilities, textbooks,
libraries, and curriculum;

(5) improving office and supervision facilities;

(6) recruiting new teachers from surplus civil
servants now unnecessary to an efficient
administration;

(7) providing health services for all students;

(8) developing migration propaganda textbooks and
the skills needed for migration.

20 per cent for improving semi-skilled vocational high

 

schools, which would become the only high schools
that received government financing. These schools
would serve the manpower needs of clients in the
private sectors of the various communities, such
as industries for bicycles, radios and cars.
Placement programs following graduation should be
made available to students. All high schools
other than the government vocational ones would be
closed gradually, so that private sectors could
build them if they need them.

10 per cent for Universities, which should be develop-
ment based:
- What kind of colleges does Indonesia need most

at the present stage of development?

- What kind of Colleges of Education should

Indonesia have?

198

- Research and processing the data should have

priorities, libraries should be expanded, and

private universities subsidized.

25 per cent for the community-based strategy, concen-

trating on:

(1)
(2)

(3)

(4)
(5)

(6)

(7)

(8)

(9)

training programs for village officials;

adult education in the villages with various
facilities and libraries.

gradually sponsoring loans and savings pro-
grams in the villages;

sponsoring cooperatives in the village setting;
sponsoring market buildings in the village
setting;

sponsoring home industries and/or animal
husbandries in the village setting;

physical, recreational and cultural programs
in the village setting;

health services that provide birth control and

planned parenthood;

gradually sponsoring subdistrict radio stations.

5 per cent for general administration, in which the

bureaucracy would be streamlined by building

achievement—based procedures, reducing paper work,

centralizing policy decisions but decentralizing

their implementation to fit the local settings,

reducing wasted energy by recruiting civil

 

199

servants into teaching jobs once compulsory educa-
tion has been established, and economic rationali-
zation of routine expenditures.

Stabilizing the administration is very essential
regardless of any changes in legislative, judicial,
and top executive officials; it should be a

conditio sine qua non in Indonesia at her present

 

stage of economic development.
We have been discussing possible development
priorities for educational planning in Indonesia. Now let

us examine the current stage of development in Central

 

Java; such data should help us to determine the starting

point for educational development at the present time.

Departmental Strategies:
From the Top Down

 

 

Current Indonesian development plans call for
increased productivity and per-capita-income; the people
are to be trained in various practical skills. Capital
formation and investments should be encouraged, without
producing confusion in the traditional socio-cultural
setting. In five years, beginning in 1968, agricultural
production should reach a level to make the people self-
sufficient in foodstuffs, although this plan depends also
upon controlling population expansion and the introduction

of industry. These, then, are the goals of the top

200

Indonesian economists serving in the central government,
but there are many difficulties in implementing these
ideas. Not only is it hard to control all sectors of
economic life, so that development plans are coordinated,
but also the current administrative bureaucracy in some
ways intensifies the problems of integrated action. Each
administrative department maintains its own channels for
implementing plans down to the local level, and more often
than not, these channels act independently without co-
ordinating their plans. Thus it becomes hard for power
holders at the local level to administer a coordinated
plan which is working harmoniously towards a single goal.
In Indonesia today, city modernization is being
pioneered and developed by Governor Ali Sadikin of

19 Rural modernization is being systematized by

20

Djakarta.
Governor Moenadi of Central Java. This last program has
been promoted to the point that even the lurah in the

remote village of Harapan could report that "the strategy
of rural modernization is the agricultural based economy."

Let us examine the present development strategy as it re-

lates to the province of Central Java, in an attempt to

 

19See Willard A. Hanna, "Pak Dikin's Djakarta,"
AUFSR, Southeast Asia Series, 1969.

20Moenadi, Strategy used for Developing the Rural
Modernization (Semarang: Tjitra Aksara, 1968).

 

201

see what progress has been made and what problems are
being encountered.

The province of Central Java21 comprises about
32,456.89 square kilometers. The total population of the
province is about 22,979,500 with an annual increase of
approximately 2.8 per cent. The total area is divided

into the following administrative districts:

 

 

 

Municipalities (kotamadya) 5
Regencies (kabupaten) 30
Subdistricts (ketjamatan) 498
Villages (dega) 8,466

The government itself, down to the level of the subdis-
trict, employed 100,128 people in 1969, and in 1970,

97,496 people. This total does not include village offi-
cials, who amounted to another 111,742 individuals. Of
this number, 52,742 received some financial support from
the government, while the others were compensated for their
services through use rights to bengkok land, or fields that
are held by the village. Of these bengkok lands, they were

cultivated in the following categories:

 

Wet-rice fields (sawah) 139,959,488 hectares
Dry fields (tegalan) 119,478,642

Fish ponds (tambak) 1,087,428

21

These figures are drawn from a speech given by
the Governor on July 2, 1968, to which statistics were
appended.

202

The villages also own additional lands, as follows:

Wet-rice fields (sawah) 16,713,969 hectares
Dry fields (tegalan) 12,920,879
Fish ponds (tambak) 171,746

For the province as a whole, the provincial budget

between April 1, 1969 and March 31, 1970, was as follows:

1. Income Routine: Rp. 5,243,976,152.03
Development: 646,501,564.48
2. Expenditures: Routine: 4,794,836,332.49
Development: 793,476,696.05
3. Foreign Exchange

 

Income: U.S. $1,112,400.40

Expenditures: 124,040.14

4. Export values, first
term 1970: U.S. $2,700,424.00
Imports: 2,940,257.31

One of the primary goals of the Indonesian national
development scheme is to increase domestic rice production
to the point that the country is self-sufficient. Could
Central Java possibly expand its rice production to pro-
vide adequately for its population? For the province as
a whole, rice production in 1970 was 1,885,890 tons, an
increase of 3.49 per cent over the 1969 harvest. Yet,
calculating each person's annual rice consumption at 100
kilograms, the province as a whole would require some

2,297,950 tons of rice, resulting in a shortage of

203

Lpproximately 612,060 tons. The population in fifteen of

:he 35 municipalities and regencies indeed often does still

:uffer from malnutrition due to this shortage of rice, and
even increasing rice production to its maximum capacity
may still fall far short of the demand within the province.

To cultivate its fields more efficiently, tractors

could be used rather than the traditional labor-intensive

techniques; the cultivation of some 300,000 hectares of

land could conceivably be mechanized. Currently, in the

whole province, there are 11 tractors, each capable of

finishing about 16 hectares a month.

 

Under traditional

methods, 3 people must work for 15 days to prepare a single

hectare of land; one tractor could complete 15 hectares

in 25 days. But each tractor costs about Rp. 2,300,000,

or almost U.S. $6,000, a price far to expensive for the

province as a whole.

In the case of Harapan, for example, 10 tractors

would be needed to complete cultivation of its nearly
150 hectares within the month of January, when the land is

customarily readied for the tobacco crop. Work formerly

requiring the full-time labor of 700 men and women could

be completed by 10 people. And this leads us to still

another problem, what of employing the peasants put out of

work by mechanization. The land-holding pattern through-

out Central Java compounds the problem still further, for

it would be exceedingly difficult to mechanize agricultural

204

roduction when the average land-holding is about 0.5
ectare; often too, such small holdings consist of several
eparate parcels of land.

Thus it would seem that for Central Java, a devel-
meent scheme should not concentrate upon. increasing

agricultural production on land resources that are already
heavily used. Perhaps the government would be better

advised to introduce mechanized rice cultivation in the

less populous islands of Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sulawesi,

building rice production into a big business. Such a plan
would also necessitate improvement of inter-island trans-

portation facilities, something which deserves a high

priority in any national development scheme. Skilled and
planned migration to the outer islands could accompany
such schemes. Finally, to increase protein consumption

in the daily diet, fishing industries should be expanded.

These three big industries--rice, transportation, and

fisheries--should be given top priority in the national
budget. For Java, national planning should try to develop

other economic alternatives for its people.

Currently every department at the central govern-

ment level has its own development program. The prolifera—

tion of plans demands inter-departmental coordination, and

although theoretically everyone is agreed on this, in

practice coordination at the local level is difficult to

observe. It is necessary to integrate development schemes

 

205

o as to combine technical expertise (derived from scien-
ific knowledge) with administrative efficiency and
inancial solvency. Too often today each of these aspects
.as‘ either its own officials or even itsvown separate
rnstitutions, making cooperation even more difficult to

achieve .

 

 

CHAPTER XI

COMMUNITY-BASED STRATEGIES OF DEVELOPMENT

Perhaps to begin with, we should clarify the term
"community-based strategy." A community-based strategy
is local planning, that is integrated and meaningful, in
which an approach from the bottom meets one from the top.
It is village planning on the one hand, and national
planning on the other. Community-based strategies are not
departmental ones such as the school-based strategy of the
Ministry of Education and Culture or the Fishing Coop we
have seen in the village of Pesisir Urang that was estab-
lished under the administration of the Department of
Fisheries. Local needs become more important than bureauc-
ratic administration, but national demands should not be
neglected. The essence is more important than the forms.

Some departments have established different pro-
jects with many kinds of specialization, but the writer
has never heard of a project that follows the community-
based strategy of development in the Indonesian setting.
The community development programs that now exist are
actually model projects based on departmental strategies,

such as the rural community education project at Ungaran,

206

 

207

Central Java, under the Ministry of Education and Culture.
The Ministry of Social Affairs has several projects, called
Lembaga Sosial Desa or "Village Social Institution," the
Ministry of Home Affairs has established Pembangunan
Masjarakat Desa or "Village Community Development"; the
Ministry of Religion has founded the expanded-curriculum

madrassah, and the provincial governments have set up

 

family education programs. Many strategies or programs,

from various departments, penetrate to village life, but

without exception, the gap between these programs and the
villagers seems unbridgable, and even most of the village
officials do not understand the aims of such schemes.

By contrast, the community-based strategy begins
by stressing better quality among village leaders. Any'
departmental program that neglects soliciting participa-
tion by village officials to help set up planning and to
learn its operation does not follow a community-based
strategy. Community-based strategies, then, vary from one
community to another, depending upon local needs, the level
of development, and the socio-cultural setting. Capital
formation, as an example, is a broad economic term, that
must include many other related concepts such as savings,
money economy, banking systems, investments, the spirit of
exploring for new profits or of breaking down traditional
barriers to development. None of these terms would have

any meaning for the villagers today, but if in the case of

 

208

Harapan, for instance, these were translated into meaning-
ful, specific concepts such as corn and tobacco storage,
getting loans with very low interest from the government,
systematized tobacco selling to take advantage of higher
prices, or the encouragement of chicken breeding, these
ideas, because these are relevant to the specific situation
could gradually be understood even by illiterate peasants.
Here it might be worthwhile to examine two cases
in which community-based development strategies have been
successful: The Academy at Comilla, Pakistan, and Japanese
methods used in the 1850's. Whereas the specific details
of these cases do not necessarily fit the Indonesian
settings, both are worthy of consideration.

The Comilla Program in
East'Pakistafil

 

 

The Comilla program is a rural development program
in East Pakistan sponsored by the Government of Pakistan,
and assisted by the Ford Foundation, Michigan State Univer-
sity, and a number of other agencies.

To a certain degree, the rural areas of Pakistan
exhibit some similarities with the Indonesian setting,
especially in terms of the religion-oriented group. Condi-

tions of poverty, of over-population, of money lenders, of

 

1A. F. Raper, H. L. Case and others, Rural Develop-
ment in Action; the Comprehensive Experience at Comilla,
East Pakistan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970),
pp. 1-351.

 

 

 

 

 

 

209

literacy, and of the madrassah are found in Comilla,

 

aangredjo and Harapan alike, although there are certainly
1y differences.

The Comilla program dates from 1956; its history
5 been well recorded. Comilla was intended to be a com-
ahensive experiment in agriculture, in saving, in banking,
loans, in village-based cooperatives, in rural education,
irrigation and rural electrification, in the use of
lctors, in women's and family planning programs, and in

1y kinds of research in rural areas.

 

One of the essential ideas of this program, which
:es it relevant to our purposes in this study, was that
'al development programs must be based upon a careful
.lysis of village needs, and on enlisting the efforts of
village peOple in the objectives of the program. This
a has been stated by David E. Bell in his foreword to
El Development in Action (op.cit., viii):

The central concept of the Academy from its beginning
therefore has been to regard Comilla thana as a labora-
tory for social and economic research, and to enlist
the people of the thana, the staff of the Academy, and
the local officers of government in a joint program of
research and experimentation. And the staff members of
the Academy--Pakistani and foreign alike--had to start
by listening to the villagers, because that was the
only way to find out where the process of change had to
begin, and--furthermore--the only way to persuade the
villagers the people from the Academy might be worth

listening to.

The story of the Comilla Academy for Rural Develop-
t is really impressive, although there do seem to be

3 questions which have not been answered:

a

210

(1) How successful have Comilla people actually
been in improving their standard of living?

(2) How effectively have the ideas spread to other
villages in East Pakistan?

(3) Have the costs been excessively large to be
duplicated economically? (From 1960 until 1968,
the Pakistani Government has spent $2,367,153,
and the Ford Foundation $1,935,082; other
agencies have also invested substantial sums.)

This is really an enormous amount of money,

 

especially for countries such as India, Pakistan
or Indonesia, where per-capita income is gen-
erally around $60 per year.
It is interesting that the Academy at Comilla for
ral development has been visited by officials from a
rge number of countries, but not by anyone from Indonesia
t. Perhaps it would be worthwhile for the majority of
e people on earth to study the experience of such a pro-
ct--the accomplishments as well as the problems involved.
Whereas the story of Comilla was not known in
ionesia (the writer only learned about it in 1969, from
Case, Dr. Luykx and some Pakistani students), but the
>ry of Japanese development has been known in Indonesia

r a considerable time.

211

gvelopment‘ in Japan

 

Many Indonesian people have been impressed by Jap-
Iese economic development since the end of World War II.

M was it possible after losing a big war, that a crowded,
all island nation could become so prosperous in such a
ort time? Many factors, of course, contributed to this
ory; the quality of Japan's people, as the result of
ucation and successful investments following savings and
pital formation; help from the United States and almost

1 the western European countries; and the fact that Japan
5 been a free country for centuries, at a time when other
ian and African countries were colonialized.

Geertz2 has stated that Indonesia, or more specifi-
lly, Java, was actually economically comparable to Japan
1870, this is not really true, since a colonial country
1 a free nation are incomparable in many ways.

Japan started its development in 1850; in 1868 the
>anese emperor ordered young people to seek foreign
>w1edge to create new leaders. In 1872 compulsory educa-
>n was started, and in 1890 strong nationalistic feelings
'e disseminated by the militaristic Meiji administration.
£3.3apan, in terms of development, has exhibited the
we of sycretism that we have seen in Javanese tradi-

nal culture.

 

2 . .
C. Geertz, Agricultural Involution, Pp- 131-143.

 

 

 

 

 

 

212

What has been taking place is by no means simply a
process of foreign stimulation and borrowing, although
that is important. More significant is the amalgama--
tion of native and alien elements to produce entirely
new patterns. What is old in Japan is by no means
immutable; what is new not necessarily transitory.

The Japanese to a remarkable degree have displayed a
capacity for cultural borrowing, but they have kept
little which they have not reworked and made their
own.

As Indonesia has just begun her development in
.968, she is still exploring which way she should choose.
.et us consider the prospect for a community-based strategy
,n the village of Harapan, which, despite many uncertain-
;ies, may hold one key for economic development in the
Lation as a whole.

the Prospect for a Community-based
Ltrategy in the Village of Harapan

 

 

We have seen already that a school-based strategy
.n the village of Harapan faces many problems. The pros-
>ect for a community-based strategy may seem equally
liscouraging, although the government's granting of loans
rith low interest to Harapan villagers may be viewed as a
:entative, shaky first step.

Let us identify the problems faced by the villagers,
:onsidering first the field of village administration.

Phe dukuhan of Ekasari is too big in comparison with the

 

3L. G. Harris and others, US Army Area Handbook
for Japan (Washington D.C.: US Government Printing Office,
L964), p. l.

 

 

 

 

 

213

:her three hamlets. Perhaps it should be divided in two,
Lth the replacement of the bekel_who just died as well as
re appointment ofka new bekel_with the agreement of the
ajority of concerned family heads. The tjarik should be
aplaced, perhaps on the-grounds that he has earaches and
Dund it difficult to hear others. The current tjarik is
me of the lurah's relatives from one of the traditional

lder groups so that according to tradition, the lurah

 

ust respect him. With regard to his position, the tjarik

hould follow the lurah's administrative policies; in

 

ractice this man did not. Therefore the responsibilities
f the tjarik, or the lurah's secretary, should be clearly
efined to specify that he is not in a position like the
ead of the dukuhan, the bekel. A new tjarik, bekel or
ther village official should not be chosen from the older
roup of the lurah's relatives, so that the position of I
uch a man does not conflict with tradition. 1
Perhaps one of the best solutions would be for the
grab to discuss this problem with the tjamat and the
eachers' supervisor and then to make an announcement to
he teachers that applications are being taken for tjarik
1f Harapan on a contract basis. Then they could select
me best man, and this teacher would be paid for two jobs,

.n the morning to teach, and in the afternoon and evening

 

:0 work as tjarik on improving the administration of the

Lurah's office. The writer thinks the job would be

 

 

214

athactive, since as a teacher a man would receive both
sahuy and rice and from the tjarik job, he would be paid

intme form of bengkok land, so he could live in the vil-
lamaand strengthen the position of the elementary school

intme village life. This method perhaps could be imple-

maued in any village that needs such an innovation.

Secondly, let us consider ideas for a loan program,

ckwelOpment of corn storage facilities, market building

mklfamily planning program. These schemes need a better

quality of people, but until the prospect for a school-

 

based strategy improves, the village officials should try

to solve these problems on the village level instead of

only waiting for help from above.

Thirdly, it is necessary to increase the village
income by means other than increasing the tax paid by each

hearthhold. Every hearthhold could plant banana trees, as

this is very easy, and once every year every hearthhold

(mauld pay a tax equal to the sale value of just one banana

-tree. Another idea is that the people could plant trees

altnmg the roadsides of the whole village, to fulfill three
purposes at once to make the road cooler in the heat of

tflne (dry season, to prevent erosion and make a better View,

auud.-to be sold for their fruits or their wood.

Fourth, in order to get financial support from the

subdistrict and the regency, it is necessary to make a

good program for village development. Here again the

215

rumnledge of a teacher who-became atjarik could help the
iLLlage considerably. And if the village officials need
0113 teachers, one of the best ways is to give them houses
rui land so they would live in the village and make com-
11lsory education a reality. The village could do this,
rui the school-based strategy could concentrate on in-
reasing the salaries of those teachers who are willing
.o serve in the remote villages.

There are still many other possibilities, but

:hose should be handled from the top down rather than from

 

:he bottom up, since both need to be treated simultaneously.

 

 

CHAPTER XII

ONE CONCLUSION: THE NEED FOR

ENTREPRENEURIAL EDUCATORS

Realizing that the difficulties faced by either
chool-based or community-based strategies in the village
f Harapan, or in any other village throughout the country
or that matter, the writer will make one proposal based
.ot only on the analysis of this particular fieldwork, but
.150 on his previous experiences in dealing with elementary
education in Indonesia. He sees the need for a systematic,
Lationwide in-service training program for the elementary
:chool teachers who serve in villages in order to create
1 new class of teachers, the entrepreneurial educators.
This proposal marks the closing of this thesis but hope—
Eully it will be just the beginning for those who are
.nterested in developing the idea.

As anthropologiSts studying Indonesian ethnic
groups have remarked upon the diversity of socio-cultural
settings and the variations in many localities, and as
economists have talked about setting up preconditions in

the pretake-off period of economic-development, this writer

216

 

 

217

advocates in educational planning the need for developing
"entrepreneurial educators."

As in any other field, educational planning needs
certain preconditions to be well applied. In the Indone-
sian setting, these preconditions are just being established
to follow the agrarian-based economic strategy that has
seen in Operation since 1968. Why should education partic-
ipate in setting up these pre-conditions, instead of
waiting until after they have been established by the
politicians or the economists or the army? There are
several reasons for this.

It is a fact that teaching is just one part of the
essence of education, by profession. An "educator" is a
oroader concept than a "teacher." An educator is not only
supposed to know how to teach certain subjects, as many
Indonesians thought at the time of the writer's field
study, but he is supposed to know the reasons for teaching
certain subjects and why a specific subject should be
taught in the elementary school, the school of the majority.

What happens at home and in the society at large
are reflected in the student's world. A school, then, is
a part of the community; it is also a social institution
or a social force. It can become an agency of change or
innovation or a progress or entrepreneurship, that can
strive towards modernization of attitudes to achieve some-

thing worthwhile in terms of long range development. A

 

218

teacher then is essentially a social leader. An educator
therefore, in the Indonesian setting, is called upon by
profession to participate in setting up national develop-
ment planning.

And since there have been many complicated problems
in the process of Indonesia's national development as a
whole, it has really taken many years for Indonesia to
succeed in writing a relatively good national educational
law which covers many basic things in a few short pages.

At first many people preferred to choose the hard way,

 

deducing concrete ideas from abstract, broad premises.
Perhaps this has something to do with the previous back-
ground of education. On November 11, 1947 in Jogjakarta,
where the Indonesian Central Government was located when
the Dutch occupied Djakarta during the armed revolution,
the Minister of Education took the initiative to set up an
Advisory Committee to draft an educational law. The main
principles set forth in the Indonesian Education Law were
nationalism and democracy. National education meant that
Indonesian education should be based primarily on Indone- I
sian culture, although it should also incorporate selected
foreign influences without creating a new "cultural bondage"
to foreign influences as had been experienced under the

former colonial rulers. Therefore Indonesian history was

 

219

to be reviewed again,4 based on Indonesian sources rather
than the one-sided foreign views that destroyed Indonesian
self-confidence. The Indonesian language should be used
in all schools, with a bridge from a child's mother tongue
between the first and the third grades of the elementary
school. Artistic expressions, such as dances should be
recreated in the various settings.

Indonesian education should be democratic in nature,
as found in the relationships among students, between
students and teachers, whose instruction was to be based
on auto-initiative and freedom rather than on orders as in
colonial times- However, anarchy should also be avoided.
Scholarships should be made available to help those who
were capable but without financial support. The freedom
to build private educational institutions should be guar-
anteed, and even the Government should assist those which
need financial support. This draft, which consisted of
30 articles was passed into law at the "Badan Pekerdja
Komite Pusat," and signed by the President, the Minister
of Education and Instruction, and was known as Law no. 4,
1950. Later, in March, 1954 this law was activated con-
tinuously by the Parliament and signed by three top

executive officials, when it became Law no. 12, 1954. The

 

4See Soedjatmoko and others, (eds.), An Introduc-
- tion to Indonesian HistoriOgraphy (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1965).

 

 

 

 

220

story of this law continues, since some controversial
issues have not been solved yet. This writer follwed its
progress at the "Dewan Perwakilan Rakjat Sementara dan
Madjlis Permusjawaratan Rakjat Sementara" or Parliament
(something like Congress and Senate), for two years be-
tween 1966 and 1968; in 1970, at the time of his fieldwork,
a new and better law had not been born yet.

Since there were not many college or high school
graduates, under both the Dutch and Japanese administra-
tions, elementary school teachers became the leaders of
the country during the armed revolution between 1945 and
1950. They were the first officers in the army, and some-
times they were teachers in the daytime but army officers
by night, since their soldiers were partially high school
students. In 1949 there were those who continued to serve
in the army, but also those who went back to teaching or
serving in the Ministry of Education and Culture at all
levels. Most of these men retired in 1968, since civil
servants must retire at the age of 56 years, unless they
are politicians, Ministers, professors, or generals who
are still needed. Even the father of the army himself,
Indonesia's firstgeneral,—the late General Soedirman, was
an elementary school teacher. Many Ministers and Generals
were actually teachers before World War II or under the

Japanese. Another interesting thing is that many prominent

 

221

figures of the Indonesian-nation have been the children or
grandchildren of elementary school teachers.

Indonesian elementary school teachers therefore
have participated in building the country and the nation
from its conception. Today, then, they should be called
to participate in setting up the pre-conditions in village
life so that the country can reach the take-off stage of
economic development. They are needed now, since at the
present time, they are the first educated young people who
have frequently visited the villages.

As an illustration, in the village of Harapan in
1970 the villagers were still basically what they had been
for centuries: sycretistically religious corn and tobacco
growers. Only 8 out of 293 Harapan families have part-time
traders, and these were the economically stable families
in Harapan. The religious teacher in the elementary
school was one of these. He taught religion but after
school hours was a skillful trader, using his high school
education among the illiterate corn and tobacco growers.
He is not tied by the land in the traditional sense. His
education is far beyond that of the village officials or
the kadji, the Moslem-oriented leaders. He borrows money
to form capital, and then invests in corn, tobacco or
radios, and sells them when the price is right. When the
writer asked him, why he lived in the village, while most

of the educated young villagers did not go back to their

 

   

222

home villages, his answer was short but convincing.- He
said he could not compete in the urban areas, but in the
home village and its surrounding area, even the old people
would respect him, since he was considered to know much
about religion. Often he was invited to lead the prayers
at "slametan" ceremonies. He knew much more than the vil-
lagers about the implementation of the law of supply and
demand. He was the only young man in the village who had
the initiative to invite the writer to visit his home,
whereupon he asked many questions about the camera, radio,
typewriter and any other urban goods that might aid his
trading business in the village setting. Even the house
he lived in, had been chosen with economic rationale.

In Ambangredjo the writer used to observe how the
elementary school teachers spent their time after school
was over. There were three kinds of elementary school
teachers in this respect. First came the part-time poli-
ticians, and secondly, the sports activists, who played
soccer, volley ball, badminton, or became instructors at
the "karate" club. Once a week in the afternoon, about
25 young people under the guidance of the elementary school
teachers circled the town of Ambangredjo in their karate
costumes, before or after going to their gymnasium. The
third category contained part-time traders or businessmen.
Here the writer saw two attitudes, those who quit teaching,

and those who stayed. In Indonesia actually many private

 

 

  

223

employers or army officers who have teachers diplomas have
quit teaching in order to earn better incomes or more
prestige. In Ambangredjo there was one who had become a
butcher, and sold his meats in the market. He married a
woman trader; his house is big and made out of brick; he
owns cars and other luxury items. And the other teacher,
who continued teaching also is not unique, as the writer
can recall such teachers in other localities and among
different ethnic groups. The man in Ambangredjo was
actually a principal, a quiet middle-aged man. After
school was over he went directly to his store located near
the market the way the Chinese do. He only went home in
the evening. Both were too busy to talk but did the busi-
ness. They were like local Chinese, who talk about
recreation but actually only have time for business. They

were also like Pak Kadji in matters of religion, but spent

 

their effort on the business. The trading business in-
volves more hard work and economic decision-making; it is
more demanding than preaching the way the priests or the
kijai, religious teachers do, than talking the way the
politicians did, or than explaining the way the teachers
must.

These thoughts still need to be developed more
systematically, especially in setting up in-service train-
ing programs for elementary school teachers. The Indonesian

teachers have learned religion(s) and politics and even how

 

 

 

224

to fight for independence as others did, perhaps it is

high time now for them to learn how to build private busi-
ness among the villagers so that their teachings are more
functional economically, since-traditional agriculture is
not sufficient anymore. Although the elementary school
teachers are organized locally and nationally as a member
of the World Confederation of Teaching Profession,5 these
organizations still cannot do much in terms of improving
their professional specialization or their salaries.
Traditional culture says that teaching is really a "mission

sacre,‘ and thus they could not strike. Business and
teaching does not fit, they say. But they do not realize
that those who teach religion, are also good businessmen.
And various foreigners are good businessmen; those who
colonialized Indonesia were good businessmen. Frustrations
and complaints alone do not solve these problems. Though
they ask to have their salaries raised, the Government is
still too weak financially. In 1967, the public debt was
more than U.S. $2 billion caused by mismanagement; when
the first five-year plan began in 1968, the Indonesian
Government had to borrow U.S. $2 billion more from foreign

countries, so she started not from zero but from U.S. $2

billion below zero. Therefore elementary school teachers

 

5See The World Confederation of Teaching Profession,
Education Panorama (Washington, D.C.: WCOTP, 1969),
vol. XI, No. 2.

 

 

225

should learn to pioneer in building economic entrepreneur-
ship in the village settings who they serve. The
Government should give loans instead of raising salaries
all the time, and these loans should be used to form capi-
tal together with the villagers. Experience could teach

us which teachers can become entrepreneurs after they have
attended in-service training programs for this purpose.
Loans should be based on potential planning for the local
setting; those who succeed should be encouraged to develop,
and those who do not, should be stopped.

For the next decade and perhaps more, the vil-
lagers' progress depends greatly on what the role of
elementary school teachers is in the villages. Indonesian
history has taught us that, aside from village leaders,
the first army officers or political leaders were the
elementary school teachers in the local setting. The
teaching profession would develop "naturally," in the
right time, if the economic pre-conditions have been prop-
erly set up. Most elementary school teachers who left the
army in 1949 to go back to the educational profession,
were still colored by the political world. Perhaps it is
time now to help the maintenance of stable government, by
building economic entrepreneurship in the village setting.

A human being only lives in one generation and not
every man is successful, but educational planning for vil-

lage development which does not include building

 

 

226

entrepreneurship in the economic sense will result in many
generations of failures. Who are the first relatively
educated people who have had contact with village life for
years, beginning with independence and continuing into

l97l?--The elementary school teachers, from whom village

 

children learn to understand the economic urban setting.
We, the Indonesians have to succeed in overcoming

our economic problems, so that our children or perhaps

our grandchildren, as yet unborn, will have to pay the

smaller, and not the bigger, part of the public debt which

 

they did not make.

 

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