Raising the Profile of Indonesian in Primary Schools – a framework for action
Pamela Davies
St Clare of Assisi Primary School, ACT Australia
Today I can bring together my three passions, teaching, psychology and Indonesian.
I have worked as a Primary school teacher, an educational psychologist, a counselling
psychologist, a teaching principal and I now teach Indonesian in Australia’s capital city,
in a large Catholic Primary School and run a psychological practice.
My aim in this presentation is to tie these three strands, teaching, psychology and
Indonesian into a coherent whole for you to weave through with your unique tapestry of
personal experience to find your own approach for raising the profile of Indonesian.
Teachers of bahasa Indonesia are a rare and perhaps even an endangered species. We
frequently feel isolated. We teach a subject that is outside the understanding of many of
our professional peers. Unlike any other language, it is fraught with current political
overtones. If you teach at Primary level, it seems the permutations and combinations of
job description for the teacher of Indonesian are endless. It sounds like our situations
may be so disparate as to suggest a lack of common ground but I believe that there are
sufficient commonalities for us to draw upon to learn to help ourselves and in the
process, raise the profile of bahasa Indonesia in the Primary School. I believe that we
need strategies which strengthen professional connections and help us become more
visible and more valuable. We need to look at ourselves in context. So where to begin?
I suggest starting with professional self-esteem.
Reasoner (1986) suggests there are five components of self-esteem which we can use as
a framework for thought and action. It is all in your hands.
In common with other primates, human beings have an opposable thumb. This means
we can pick things up and manipulate them as tools in a way which separates us from
most other animals. For this reason, the thumb can stand for Personal Competence. We
need a sense of personal competence to feed our professional self-esteem. Consider
your own professional competence. You can probably do something no one else in your
school can do. But there’s more to your ability than that. Remember that learning
another language requires the appreciation of another thought-world, so you can see
things from a different standpoint. From your experiences in Indonesia, you can get a
sense of what might be behind the newspaper headlines. You can make alternative
interpretations. There are more ways to improve that personal sense of professional
competence and those of other Indonesian teachers as well. eg. Come to conferences!
Meet in collegial groups and share success stories of approaches to topics, plan units of
work and teaching materials together &c. Vow never to miss another meeting, not only
from what you can get but also what you can give. Your ideas act as springboards, you
become catalysts for energy and enthusiasm.
In Australian culture at least, people can use the pointer finger to show the way to go.
For our purposes, we will use it to cue us to a second component of self-esteem,
a sense of purpose, where purpose implies a goal. Our professional self-esteem can be
fed by our sense of professional purpose. I doubt you need reminding why you are
teaching Indonesian. The best reason for me is that I never have to do the same thing
twice; I can teach the same concept in such a variety of social and cultural contexts that
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I am never bored! The best reason for the students is that it is exotic and fun but there
are reasons that are even more important.
The teaching of bahasa Indonesia allows our children a second chance at learning many
basic concepts – some because they are the same as in English, like writing of the letters
of the alphabet, basic conventions of punctuation, the concept of place value,
pragmatics of language such as turn-taking, appropriate response patterns like a
question requiring an answer form. We can give children a second chance at learning
basic concepts when concepts differ, as with the Indonesian conventions of time use in
greetings, and seasons if we teach the English concept first.
If teaching bahasa Indonesia does anything special, and I believe it does, it can be an
important adjunct in the teaching of reading. Early readers can have a vocabulary
sufficient for providing context, they can have sufficient sound-awareness for word
attack, but still be less-than-successful early readers. The whole reading process is
greater than the sum of its parts. I suggest what is missing for many of these children is
what speech pathologists call metalinguistics, or more usefully, language awareness.
For the process of reading to come easily, children need an underpinning of language
awareness, an understanding of how their language works, to have a working
knowledge of syntax and semantics which although implicit can be accessed to provide
a framework for prediction. Even those of us who are old enough to have learned
English grammar will have had our metalinguistic understanding of English stretched
and increased by learning bahasa Indonesia in its more advanced stages as we struggle
with affixes and other linguistic features. Those lucky children who have a sense of
language, who pick up bahasa Indonesia as if it were second nature rather than a second
language, have a highly developed metalinguistic sense. It is not just that they have
good memories and can imitate. It is their innate sense of how language works which
allows them easy entry into another language and also provides the necessary
foundation for the reading process. Metalinguistic knowledge in the early stages of
reading is implicit and it seems that, developmentally, it is inappropriate to make much
of it explicit in the early years of schooling. For those children who miss the boat with
reading learning in the early years of school, the most natural place to teach about
metalinguistic features of their own language in the later years is in the teaching of a
second language; teaching bahasa Indonesia with its regular sound-symbol relationship
and relatively simple beginnings opens the door for a second chance in the acquisition
of language awareness. Not only can children with poor language awareness be readily
identified in the bahasa Indonesia classroom but their metalinguistic development can
be noticed and nurtured.
If we teach the reading of Indonesian from the earliest years rather than make the
exercise wholly spoken, we have the opportunity to reinforce visual-aural learning, to
reinforce sound-symbol relationship of those consonants which are the same in English.
Today, in the early infants’ classroom, there is some … but for some children, not
enough … attention paid to how to make the sounds. It is rather more commonly
expected that young children with sound distortions will either grow out of them or can
receive Speech Therapy. Learning how to make the sounds of bahasa Indonesia allows
us to make explicit the mechanics of the formation of at least 27 sounds which
approximate the sounds we can use in our speaking of English, and give those children
who need help another chance. The process of sound-symbol relationship comes well
out of teaching bahasa Indonesia; although the vowel sounds are not strictly the same as
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in English, to use both vowel and consonant sounds in word attack would often allow a
close enough approximation to word recognition with other supporting factors.
Extending the sound-symbol to a process of syllabification allows the child who lacks
confidence an easy handle on long words. I like to give my classes long words which
they baulk at spelling, and even saying, by asking children to build words, syllable by
syllable, eg Co-kro-a-mi-no-to, rehearsing with each successive addition eg Co, Cokro,
Cokroa, Cokroami Cokroamino, Cokroaminoto. They have a wonderful sense of
achievement saying these long words, and I like to wind them into a story – the one I
usually with Cokroaminoto is my visit to the Salvation Army Children’s Home in Jalan
Cokroaminoto, Denpasar. Well worth a visit if you don’t know it.
Teaching
syllabification – “Na ma sa ya” – is a quite legitimate way to teach since we also need to
teach that bahasa Indonesia has syllables of generally equal stress.
There will be those children, who, having heard the phrase “Nama saya..” will never
make a mistake in word order, will make the connection between “nama” and “name”,
will be able to work out the many meanings of “saya” from the phrases used, may over
time even deduce that Indonesian-English dictionary will be smaller because there need
be fewer discrete entries; they are the children with highly developed metalinguistic
ability. We all know those – they are ones who learn despite us, not because of us!
Then there are those who need us; those children who are not so lucky will have a new
opportunity through bahasa Indonesia to learn these metalinguistic features. They are
the ones who need rainbows. These rainbows not only show word order in bahasa
Indonesia but also in English. We are showing that words in an utterance have an order,
we are making the implicit explicit. Therefore, you can see it is because of these
children, those who are more needy that I suggest you have an important role to play in
their general education, not merely in bahasa Indonesia.
The process of visualization is said to be central to comprehension. And for the
learning reader, effective and efficient comprehension is the goal. I do not believe it is
important to have accurate pictures, merely pictures which serve the purpose of
crystallising understanding. These pictures provide hooks on which to hang new
information, they provide a context for the new information and a coherent framework
for the whole; they make information able to be manipulated. I spend the last few
minutes of each lesson with a story, about my adventures in Indonesia.
I always aim to create vivid word pictures, to incorporate humour, and to show myself
in a less-than-perfect light, as the learner who is willing to take risks, to make mistakes,
to slip into sawah! With the younger children I try to incorporate actions to support the
content, especially those which support socio-cultural aspects, like opening and eating
my little paper packet for makan siang of nasi goreng. Another story concerns a little
brown duck who met us on the way to the waterfall beyond the ancient candi at Gunung
Kawi, an absolute must if you have not been there. Older students are also captivated by
the observations of Birute Galdikas in her “Reflections of Eden”, her account of life
with the orangutan of Kalimantan. This book also opens the door on alternative cultural
perspectives.
A third component in this view of self-esteem is a sense of professional identity.
I have a choice of packaging, the sort of choice which is not open to most regular
classroom teachers. I can either say I teach only 3 days a week to provide 30-45mins of
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the RFF for full-time classroom teachers and I don’t have my own classroom or I can
say I hold the 0.6 FTE LOTE (Indonesian) position in my school. Which one of these
would you put on your CV? But how often do we choose to underplay our role,
especially when talking with people? In my three days, I teach 650 children and go to
21 classrooms. What an opportunity for an overall view of a school! Be careful how
you package yourself – it gives messages to yourself as well as to others. Give yourself
credit where credit is due. It is more than likely you are unique in your school;
remember your uniqueness. You are obviously keen to further your knowledge and
connections in your subject area beyond the confines of your own country. Do not
forget to give an account of this conference to a staff meeting – even if you are not
required to do so. Stand up and be counted.
Let’s choose the Western culture ring finger to represent the fourth component of
professional self-esteem, that of a sense of belonging. This is one of the aspects often
highlighted by Indonesian language teachers in the Primary school environment when
they say they feel isolated and marginalized. They say that on a bad day; on a good
day, they are more positive. They can use their position to decide how much belonging
they actually want to do, choosing when to really belong or when to position themselves
less centrally with their school staff. But they can also belong to Indonesian teachers’
associations – and through the magic of Internet, can meet virtually or in real time and
space. Of all the modern languages taught in ACT, only Indonesian has its own website – being an active part of such a dynamic group is a boost to the professional selfesteem. And then there are the connections which can be made with the Indonesian
Embassy – they are wonderfully supportive through their cultural section. There may
be an opportunity for you to become a member of AIA with its mascot, the Kangaruda.
Our need for belonging can be met at the local, state or country level. But do not wait
for something to come to you; if this is still an unfulfilled need, seek to fill it yourself.
Our last finger is the smallest, the ‘pinkie’, the baby finger. We can use it to symbolize
our need for a sense of professional security. At one level, of course, we are all
employees. Whilst ever bahasa Indonesia is politically in favour, we will have jobs.
But the political winds can and do change. In New Zealand, it would appear that the
winds of change are blowing the teaching of bahasa Indonesia away at least at the
tertiary level. It is tempting to say there is nothing we can do, but we can shore up our
own hold on our positions by making the job we do appear as both valuable and visible.
If you have a weekly newsletter, use it. If you have a weekly overview of the whole
school student population, use it. In the area of learning disability, discussions which
you can initiate about ‘ways in’ to help particular children become valued by both class
teacher and support teachers. Your value as a teacher of Indonesian is enhanced by your
own efforts – the observations you make, the effort you make in communication, the
students whose learning you support.
You can use these five components of professional self-esteem to run a check on
yourself. What do you need to do to help yourself? At the end of the day, as adults your
professional self-esteem is your own responsibility - whilst some of the needs may be
met systemically and without much effort on your part, that is your good fortune. Only
you know what you need; using your hand for a checklist, take an inventory, find your
needs. Then, get those needs met and in so doing, raise the profile of Indonesian. I
wish you all the best in your endeavours.
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