CH8.Ewout Frankema.education.pdf

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For the Belgian Congo statistics do not allow for a breakdown between expenses onEuropean education and subsidies to the Catholic mission schools. But it is clear that themissionary societies remained its primary financiers, at least until WWII. Protestantmissions received no subsidies until 1947 and among the Catholic schools governmentfunds were distributed rather unequally, with a strong bias towards the schools in themajor urban centers. These central schools had to be better equipped because of theirstrategic importance: they trained the next generation of clerks and typewritersnecessary for administrative tasks, the medical assistants, technicians and agriculturalexperts necessary to develop the rural economy and also the catechists and soldiersnecessary to evangelize and secure order (Depaepe and van Rompaey, 1995, pp. 63-69).The financial involvement of the Belgian Catholic missions in the Congo played acrucial role in the 1925 convention with the Belgian state. The catholic schools wouldreceive more financial support in exchange for extra efforts to spread mass educationacross the colony. The contract was not signed until 1929, however, because themissions rejected the proposal of a state inspection that would monitor and guaranteethe quality of colonial education. The fact that the Catholic missions eventually wonthis battle tells a lot about the balance of power: the Catholics exerted a de factomonopoly on the development of colonial education which they held on to until 1948(Depaepe and van Rompaey, 1995, pp. 60-63).Yet, the rise in government expenditures during the second half of the 1920s onlysufficed to meet the increasing costs of enrolment expansion. And there is much reasonto assume that the financial hardship even increased during the interwar years. Thenumber of mission schools and students expanded at a much faster rate than thedomestically raised funds of the Christian missions. Local communities thus had tomake substantial contributions in kind, such as food, clothing or the supply of unpaidlabour on the mission fields or in construction work. Agricultural field work was astandard part of the curriculum in the rural mission schools and served a doublepurpose: it helped to teach discipline, docility and structure, while it generated anadditional source of revenue to finance local missionary activities. Girls’ educationfocused on housekeeping skills, child care, hygiene and the importance of suchChristian values as monogamy.In the Dutch East Indies money also made the difference. The quality gap between theIslam schools, mission schools and desa-schools on the one hand and the Europeanschools (gouvernement scholen) was obvious. The applications for Dutch languageschools were far higher than the available seats. European schools could hire bettertrained teachers, reduce class size and buy more advanced teaching equipment. Fromthe Koloniale Jaarcijfers (1934) it appears that pupil-teacher ratios were considerablylower in the European schools: in 1932-33 they counted 31.6 pupils per teacher against49.4 in the desa-schools and 50.7 in the Dutch-Chinese schools.Yet, in both colonies the village schools provided the backbone of mass education. Thekey distinction between the desa-schools in Indonesia and the rural mission school inthe Congo relates to the secular nature of the curriculum in the former and the emphasison religious and moral instruction in the latter. In the desa-schools reading and writing13
(in the vernacular) and calculus formed the core subjects. The curriculum wasstandardized, graded and subject to state inspection. The primary objective of themissions in Congo was to spread Christianity. Concerns to ‘overeducate’ the nativepopulation existed in both colonies, but with a crucial difference: in the Congo themissionary-teachers themselves experienced a tension between advanced education andsocialisation, in the Indies these concerns were especially held by the Dutch colonialelite, but not so much by the Indonesian teachers who supplied the education inpractice.6. Education for self-determinationThe Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies (1942-1945) contributed much to thediffusion of strong anti-colonial sentiments among the Indonesian population. TheJapanese occupation uncovered the military and political weaknesses of the Dutch. Thelarge scale mobilization of the Indonesian youth in the armed forces under Japanese ruleconnected an enormous amount of human energy to revolutionary ideas and militarymeans of power. Moreover, the tyrannical rule of yet another distrusted foreign powerendorsed the desire among the Indonesian people to determine their own future. Indeed,the declaration of independence in 1945 was a logical consequence of the retreat of theJapanese.The spirit of independence and revolution unleashed an enormous demand forschooling. Mass education now opened the doors to socio-economic mobility which hadremained closed for as long as people remembered. Job opportunities in the civilservices expanded enormously and were highly attractive to students and formersoldiers. Politicians were eager to hand out higher income jobs in turn for politicalsupport. The Indonesian language became the standard throughout the education systemand was also used in all official communications of the state and the mass media. It isone of the major accomplishments of the early Sukarno regime that they managed tofacilitate this great expansionist wave without a complete overhaul of the system. Graderepetition and pre-completion drop-out rates remained very high in primary education(ca. 60% in the 1950s), but they did not prevent the progress of a rapidly growing groupof students into secondary and tertiary education (Ricklefs, 2008: p. 274-5).Universities were erected in various parts of the country and some of these institutionsachieved respectable standards. The roots of the University of Indonesia (UniversitasIndonesia), which is one of the top rated institutes, go back to a school for medicalassistants established in 1851. In 1898 the colonial government transformed this schoolinto STOVIA (School tot Opleiding van Inlandsche Artsen) with the purpose to trainhighly specialized medical doctors. The education program consisted of 9 years andcombined aspects of high school and university education. The Bandung Institute ofTechnology, another top institute, is the oldest technology-oriented university inIndonesia and evolved out of the Technische Hoogeschool in Bandung established in1920.The early graduates of these institutes were to fulfill a key role in Indonesia'sindependence movement. Sukarno himself was very much the product of the Indo-14
Page 1: State and Missions: The comparative
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