Job Discussion Forums

[Chester]

The moderators have moved me to Australia.
mmmmm cool

this is a moderate place
moderately speaking

i willl return to the moderate Surabaya perhaps

soon

rock (moderately)

[ash]

Well, at least Australia is nice and close to Indonesia.
Although, judging by the price of flights, it could be much further.
Maybe we could use this link to discuss the relationship between oz & Indonesia, seeing as how the other thread where the subject came up has been deleted. I was told by a moderator that questions about the "Australians" out there turn threads nasty very quickly.

It's worth discussing, but lets try to keep it civil. I was asking about general attitudes because there is obviously some tension between the 2 countries, politically/geographically/spiritually. This will improve with education, and aren't we all in that game?

Just for the record, I used to work as an interpreter in the courts for Indonesians charged with people trafficking. I also used to interpret for pendatang di Darwin. So don't use this thread as a place to tell me about how bad Australia's policies are or how disgusting the behaviour of Australians in Indonesia is. I know about that. If you want to discuss it, do so with self control & respect for those of us who've tried to help the situation out of a genuinely positive interest in Indonesia.

Before the other thread got deleted, we were talking about language policy. I wrote that the Indonesians are much more savvy when it comes to the politics of language than your average westerner. Thoughts?

[guruengerish]

Hmmm. looks like an interesting forum. As you say, if only we can keep this civil!

I lived in Indonesia for eight years in Java and Sulawesi, and naturally, one forms opinions about certain aspects of the country and its running. Education is my favourite topic, or the lack of it .

| was teaching a group of young university students a few years ago, and I asked them to present to the class, a discussion on "We are training our students to become a nation of coolies", eg by lowering each year the pass marks at Indonesian schools.

I said no more about this at the time, but I could see that the topic caused a degree of tension. The following week, excellent presentations were made, and some apologised for getting up tight, as they had searched the web and found that the topic had been lifted from a well-known Indonesian language newspaper, and that pass marks were being regularly lowered.

They are certainly keen to learn, and it was interesting to see that in just a few years, there was great interest in wanting to study further in Australia and NZ, and there were parental requests for Aussie teachers! Interest in going to other countries had dropped away considerably.

So here's a start, and I look forward to some civil, interesting and informed debate.

[Gurusome]

I think I may have been at least partly responsible for the other thread being nuked, since I was bagging some of Australia's policies. Since I'm Australian, I thought that'd be ok. And as biased as this opinion is, I will say that I think the average Australian is pretty decent but there is a tendency here to follow the path of least resistance. And in general it's not exactly our best and brightest who visit Bali, and only Bali, when they go to Indonesia. There is a general belief in Australia that white people will explode within five minutes of setting foot in Java. Oh, and also the belief that everything bad that happens in Bali is caused by the Javanese.

It seems to me that Indonesians are pretty savvy in most aspects of language learning. Since most people speak Bahasa Indonesia as well as the language of their region, they would have had experience with many of the learning skills and political sensitivity required when they learn English.

And, Guruengerish, I don't think it's only in Indonesia that the standards have been lowered. I don't know about other countries in the West, but it seems to me that here in Australia, education at the high school level has become more and more geared towards teaching students what they need to know to pass the exam, as opposed to teaching them stuff they can use, or teaching them how to learn. In other words, they're giving them a fish instead of teaching them how to fish. They want them to know what they need to know to become qualified to apply for a job. The idea that knowledge is worth pursuing for its own sake seems to be fading.

As far as Australian/Indonesian relations go, I think the best thing we can do is to meet each other as individuals as often as possible. There are far more similarities than differences between Australians and Indonesians. The differences can be pretty unsettling, though. Or really cool.

One person in each car, and five people on each motorbike? That's weird.

Beer available everywhere at all hours of the day and night? That's cool, but probably dangerous.

I think if you can get to the point where you are comfortable doing a number 2 in any WC in Indonesia, everything else should be easy to get used to.

[guruengerish]

Your comments about the kind of person to be found in Bali, or maybe in Kuta to be specific, reminds me of a time when I was working in East Indonesia. We had friends there from the USA, and the only Aussies they'd ever met were aid workers and project folk.

They went on holiday to Bali, and on return, I asked them how they'd found things.

"Well" said my friend, "There sure were a lot of construction workers from Australia there".

He'd summed it up very politely I thought.

However, to be fair, folk go there to let their hair down, and enjoy the local 'culture'. Fosters beer, meat pies and steaks in Jl Legian.

On the subject of language learning, I agree that most Indonesians speak at least two languages, and this is great as it opens the mind to other languages. Maybe this is why it is compulsory to learn a second language in primary schools now in Australia. Bahasa Indonesia was often the first choice, but many parents and teachers didn't want their kids to learn a language from a country percieved to be so violent and devoid of human rights. Hopefully, things are getting better.

I once entered a shop in Bandung, where the owner was speaking to a customer in Sundanese; he switched to Mandarin for the next customer, Indonesian for another, and then greeted me in Dutch. I explained that English was a tad easier for me, so he switched to English. I was amazed! This guy was no high-flying academic - he sold stationery.

In PNG, most of the folk there speak three languages at least, as just a few km down the track, the next village could easily have a totally different and unrelated language.

I'm sure you're correct about what is studied at school. I'm too out of touch to comment. I have recently been teaching university students English writing, and I must say, a lot of Indonesian students knew more about grammar and spelling than they did.

[Gurusome]

Have to laugh at your comment about people not wanting to learn a language from a country devoid of human rights. It seems funny that the country they are talking about was once suffering under British colonialism, and now watches in horror at the various things being done by English-speaking folk to various other people. But you're right. It is a common perception, and not entirely unjustified, even if it is a tad hypocritical.

In general, if you only speak one language, you stop using many of the synapses devoted to learning new languages from the age of around seven. If they are not exercised again before puberty, they get nuked by the synaptic purge that occurs during adolescence. So if you keep learning new languages up to the age of 10-12, you should maintain that faculty forever.

It seems that when Indonesians do English at school, they start with a grammar-based curriculum. There's been a shift away from that in Australia over the last decade or two, I think. They'd rather let kids spell and structure sentences any way they like, rather than have them stop trying. It's probably not a bad thing, up to a point. We've all got spell/grammar checkers now anyway. Sometimes I wonder if our word processors need us at all.

[guruengerish]

yup, my synapses could well do with a rejuvination. I keep forgetting my basic Indonesian, as I started learning 50 years too late.

It is pleasing to know that Indonesian kids are learning English in SD now, and not having it put off until high school. A former student of mine has just been teaching a class of primary kids in Central Java, and she says they had a heap of fun.

In the Netherlands, and no doubt many other European countries, students normally have to learn three other languages.

On the subject of grammar, here's a couple of alterations to the normal tenses that you and I might know. (read on the internet recently)

drag = drug
dive = dove
bring = brang

[ash]

I just finished prac in an Australian secondary school that offers Indonesian via immersion. How cool is that! The immersion staff are all native speakers (ie. Indonesian) and they teach science, maths, social studies and Bahasa Indonesia in the program. The kids enrolled in the immersion program are spoken of as 'the cream of the school', which is otherwise not exactly upper crust. Immersion was so much more fun than my mainstream classes (which were also fun).

You're right about the shift away from grammar in oz. Policy in Oz is under hot debate, because literacy is apparently the lowest it's ever been.

When I learnt Indonesian from a native speaker at uni, we got practically no grammar for the 1st 2 levels.

That multilingual thing: in general we Australians just don't have it, do we? And diplomacy, so closely related...we are the descendants of colonisers and have such a short history in oz. Indonesians were colonised repeatedly and have a looooong history. And lots of Australians, even if they mean well, are ignorant of history and ettiquette (both Australian & Indonesian) when they rock up in Bali. They are the ones, I guess, who spoil it for the rest of us.

[guruengerish]

Wow, that must have been interesting, having Indonesian native speakers running the classes. Sure is a good way to ensure that your day to day skills are on top.

When I did a course at Salatiga, we were sent out shopping. I ended up with some odd stuff; eg I wanted a small packet of tempe goreng, and just couldn't convince the guy that I did NOT want Rp5000 worth! But that's what I got. It was all part of a plot, I'm sure

Now if they were only to do immersion teaching in Indonesia - let's see, 150,000 SD schools, x 4 English teachers per class...

[ash]

[cariduit]

if you were worried about the bags without people billboards, check out the news over the last couple of days. Little Johnny wants to bring in a whole cache of new laws, one of which is to make it a criminal charge to leave your bag unattended at the airport..i'll probably be the first charged, as I am always leaving things behind......

[guruengerish]

I hesitate to get a bit off-topic, but I watched George Negus and Foreign Correspondent Tuesday night, when an Indonesian speaking SBS/ABC reporter interviewed one of those on trial for the Oz Embassy bombings.

Maybe, if responsible teaching of Islam in Indonesia were observed, we wouldn't have people saying that if a country is observed to be anti-Islam (in this case, Australia helping out in Iraq) then it is a legitimate target and the resultant suicide bombers are having a happy time in heaven. Not sure how the latter works, as if they've just been blown to bits, what part is having a good time?

Maybe these people are not capable of looking back to the time of Saddam, and the nasty things he was doing to his fellow Muslims, but possibly this is permitted somewhere.

I can understand little John's concerns about unattended baggage, but can't see what good it would do. There was nothing unattended in London in July.

IMHO, it all boils down to sensible and broad-spectrum education, and Indonesian kids are just not getting that. Put a map up in your classroom and see the immediate attention it gets. At present RI is spending U$14 billion a year on subsidising fuel. Why? Because people don't have sufficiently good education for the country to be paying decent wages, and thus they are dropping behind the 'developed' world, and can't keep up with external costs. Kids drop out of school way too early, as parents can't afford the fees schools set.

It's all a bit 'chicken and the egg'. They need help, they need a decent education, but who's going to make the first move?

I've had high school students tell me they've never read a book in their lives. Comics yes, but not books. A wealthy house can have a Mercedes and a BMW, a driver, a couple of pembantus, but books? Never!!

Maybe the Oz equivalent of the French Cultural attache (found in many big cities) or the contracting British Council (now in only two cities) or the Dutch (at least three cities).

When little John was in Yogyakarta three years ago, he was asked by the Sultan of DIY, if Australia could see its way to starting up a cultural centre, and providing access to a good library and current literature. It was a marvellous idea, but I doubt that anything came of it.

[Gurusome]

Actually, there is a joint Australia/Indonesia literary centre based in Jogja. I'm not sure if it gets any funding from the Australian government, though. They seem to get most funds from the membership fees -- $50 I think.

It's called Paradox Literary Centre. JL Suroto 10 Kotabaru 55224, Yogya.

Ph 0274 520138

The contact name I got was Heather Curnow, though I believe she's in Tasmania now.

There's virtually no info about this group on the web, but I was thinking of checking it out when I get to Jogja again.

I think a large problem with Indonesian interest in literature is that development came relatively late, and TV took hold of the culture before reading could develop in the national psyche as a primary source of information.

Maybe when romance novels start crossing genres, it'll ease them towards reading real literature. Don't hold your breath, though.

[cariduit]

There is also ialf (indonesian australian language foundation) in Bali, Surabaya and Denpasar which does a lot of cross cultural communication - www.ialf.edu and they also operate an English language radio show www.kangguru.org . Listen to it if you get a chance, its not bad and if you are a teacher you can email kangguru and they will send copies of their magazine for you to distribute to your students - it is free. I am pretty sure your students can also email them personally and they will get sent a copy to their homes. The articles correlate with programs about Australia which they have on the radio show as well as with language learning tips (eg aussie slang etc) as well as info about activities they operate. They run teacher training sessions too which can be very good for local teachers.

In Medan there is the Australia Centre which is an english language school but also has a small but decent little library full of books about Australia and from time to time teachers there give lectures at the Uni of North Sumatra about Australia.

On the other side, don't forget that in Australia Indonesian is taught at a lot of schools and along with it cultural information about the country. Valuable insight for Australian students.

It's not true that NO Indonesians read. All you need to do is visit a local Gramedia store and see how busy it is. However, you're right that a love of reading is generally not something promoted in schools. If you've ever looked through the DULL text books students are given, you'll understand why books just don't seem that interesting to them. However, there are some excellent Indonesian writers and a pretty impressive range of translated materials available in Indonesian, for a pretty low price from Harry Potter to Kurt Vonnegut to Kafka...Perhaps something for all of us to promote to the students we teach!

If anyone missed the dateline program (like me!) and wanted to see it, check out the following link, scroll down to the bottom, you can either download a copy of the show or, if like me you lack the computer speed to do so, check out a transcript of the show.

http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/index.php?page=archive&daysum=2005-09-07# [url]

I also saw on the same website a promo for an interesting looking program about 2 woman, one from Sydney and one from Yogya swapping lives for a few weeks. It's on in October, could be interesting to watch. I hope it's screening in Indo too.[/url]

[ash]

Hey! Thanks for that info! I missed the show, so when it's my turn to have uninterrupted computer access I will check it out. And all the other info above is pretty cool too IMHO.

Regarding getting the little darlings to read, isn't it true that lots of Australian kids aren't big readers either? At least the Indonesian students have good spoken language skills (or at least they are exposed to other languages). LOTE in Australian schools meets lots of resistance from some parents, & this trickles down to some students. It's recognised as a key learning area, but still has to be justified in the narrow minds of many. I've checked out an online Indonesian school syllabus & English was right up there.