We are cognizant that the term ‘critical’ is a contested notion—scholars in different fields employed the term differently. Here, we refer to ‘critical’ approaches broadly, that is, theoretical gestures in which social justice is a concern. It may include the application of critical theories such as post-structuralism or Marxism to analyze the operation of power. It may focus on identifying and destabilizing underlying structures, dominant discourses, and hegemonic knowledge, policies, or practices.
It may also highlight data evidencing inequities, inequalities, or injustices in the Indonesian education system. As unfolded throughout the chapters in this volume, such multiplicity of critical analyses and their philosophical undertones manifests in a range of different ways of examining Indonesian education; but with a common commitment for a more socially just education system.
Drawing upon this broad understanding of critical approaches, this volume seeks to demonstrate how education is not a neutral, objective, and mechanistic process;
instead, it is a battleground in which competing visions, ideologies, discourses, reli- gious values, and political interests struggle for dominance in a given society. In this sense, critical perspectives are useful to identify and evaluate the ‘blind spots’ of dominant policy discourses and their social and pedagogical consequences. A better understanding of the inextricable relationship between capitalism and education, for
1 Introduction: Education in Indonesia—A Critical Introduction 9
example, may shed light on the persistence of educational inequities across schools, regions, and socioeconomic statuses in Indonesia (Irhamni & Sahadewo, Chap. 3) or the insistence on all-pervasive, market-oriented reforms (Gaus & Tang, Chap. 5;
Subkhan, Chap. 6). Politically, Indonesia’s post-1998 democratization enabled new discourses to enter the educational arena including decentralization (Hariri et al., Chap. 10), human rights (Rosser & Joshi, Chap. 9), inclusiveness (Yulindrasari et al., Chap. 4), and gender and sexual justice (Pangastuti, Chap. 2; Wijaya Mulya, Chap. 12). Tensions between these recently arrived concepts and the remnants of the previous authoritarian regime still characterize educational discursive contesta- tions in contemporary Indonesia; such historical inertia may impede the progress toward a more socially just education. The rise of new religious conservatism since the 1998 democratic reformation may also pose a different form of challenges for Indonesia’s education and social justice (see Isbah & Sakhiyya, Chap. 8). More intricately, oppressive power relations gave rise to social injustices in education also operate at a personal level, that is, through identity politics. The micropolitics of subjectivation—that is, the discursive constitution of the sense of self—evidently play an important role in the power-imbalanced dynamics of everyday educational practices (e.g., Adiningrum, Chap. 7). Moving forward from the identification of the roots of socio-educational injustice, critical educational scholars also explore possi- bilities for advancing social justice through critical pedagogies in different fields and contextual specificities, including homeschooling (Nugroho, Chap. 13), and critical reflective praxis (Mambu & Kurniwan, Chap. 11). Not intended to be exhaustive, this volume at least offers a degree of critical awareness about various socio-historical- political forces operating underneath the Indonesian education system, policy, and practice; which would allow researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to better understand, and in turn, locate and tackle the roots of social injustice in education.
The chapters in the current volume are presented in four parts, highlighting four main key issues discussed in this volume: inclusiveness, neoliberalism, the state apparatus, and critical alternatives.
The first part—Equality and Inclusiveness in Indonesian Education—draws attention to the persistence of marginalization of certain groups and identities within the Indonesian education system. Injustices against poor women, for example, are scrutinized by Pangastuti in Chap. 2 where she critiques the fast-growing Indone- sian Early Childhood Education (ECE) projects as reimposing women’s traditional caregiving role and unpaid labor. She further points out that international donors such as the World Bank are complicit and even taking advantage of gender injustice in this case. Using large quantitative survey and interview data during the COVID- 19 pandemic, in Chap. 3 Irhamni and Sahadewo unpacked the ways learning from home accentuates and exacerbates the existing educational inequality across income and across schools with different poverty levels in Indonesia. Their analysis shows how the class is still a critical factor influencing educational attainment. Irhamni and Sahadewo demanded that the Indonesian government urgently address this socioe- conomic condition to reduce educational inequality. Pushing further social inclusion agenda in education, Yulindrasari, Adriany, and Kurniati in Chap. 4 criticize the discourse of school readiness underpinning ECE policies and practices in Indonesia.
10 Z. Sakhiyya and T. Wijaya Mulya
Such a discourse, they argue, potentially excludes and discriminates against chil- dren and teachers of economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Alternatively, they propose school readiness to be understood as the school’s and society’s readiness to accept and respect the diversity of students’ conditions.
The second part—The Neoliberalization of the Indonesian Education System—problematizes the political-economic nature of knowledge production, dissemination, and human resource management in the Indonesian education system.
Chapters in this part illuminate how neoliberal ideologies have shaped the ways educational knowledges were produced, educational policies were designed, and curricula were implemented in Indonesian contexts. In Chap. 6, for example, Gaus and Tang identified the shifting orientation of teaching and research in Indonesian higher education which was previously embedded in the notions of democratic, cultural, and moral values to corporate ethos, such as efficiency, competitiveness, effectiveness, and individualism. Gaus and Tang demonstrated how such ideolog- ical reorientations from critical pedagogy to ‘bare pedagogy’ have been widespread among Indonesian higher education institutions. At the secondary education level, in a similar vein, Subkhan (Chap. 5) explains the trends of vocationalization of Indonesian schools where link-and-match (of education and the market) paradigm has perpetuated inequity and oversimplified the purpose of education into merely the production of skilled workers. Further highlighting neoliberalized reforms in human resource management in universities, Adiningrum in Chap. 7 draws atten- tion to the casualization of academic jobs in Indonesian higher education where precarity and inequity characterize the nature of employment. Widely practiced in Indonesian academia, the work of casual lecturers was often associated with teaching-only responsibilities and structural disadvantages including lack of access to facilities, research funding, knowledge production, and remuneration system.
Discursively constituted as second-class academics, the subject position of a casual lecturer evidently provides cheaper labor for the increasingly neoliberal Indonesian universities.
The third part—Education and the State Apparatus—considers the role of various state apparatuses in the transformation of contemporary Indonesian educa- tion, such as religion, justice system, and local politics. As no education system exists in a socio-political vacuum, it is crucial to understand how the structural and historical contexts of post-authoritarian Indonesia have both enabled and constrained (certain versions of) educational reform. This part begins with Chap. 8 by Isbah and Sakhiyya who scrutinize the long history of Islamic boarding schools in Indonesia, pesantren, and how such a model of education maintains its relevance, aspired visions, and marketability. Taking a critical role as an alternative education, pesantrens continu- ously contribute to the inclusion of those of lower socioeconomic status in the Indone- sian schooling system. In terms of the legal and justice system, Rosser and Joshi in Chap. 9 argue that litigation has been part of broader struggles over education policy, inequality, and the capture of educational institutions by political and bureaucratic forces in Indonesia. Using evidence from recent court cases, they found that litiga- tion has often served the interests of the poor and marginalized, although gains have largely come through better access to education while issues of improving quality
1 Introduction: Education in Indonesia—A Critical Introduction 11
have been less prominent. In Chap. 10, Hariri, Izzati, and Sumintono examine the implementation of decentralization—as a part of Indonesia’s democratization—in the education sector. They demonstrate how tensions between the central govern- ment (i.e., Ministry of Education), local education offices, and school leaders have characterized Indonesia’s educational decentralization in the last two decades.
The fourth and the final part—Strengthening Democratic Practices, Exploring Critical Alternatives—documents and explores alternative forms of critique and resistance against the dominant educational discourses in contemporary Indonesia.
It begins with Mambu and Kurniawan’s analysis in Chap. 11, in which they crit- icize how the dominant ways of producing knowledge on literacy practices have ignored the crucial role of social class and the agency of the students. They inten- tionally disrupt the ostensibly neutral process of English learning in Indonesia by reflexively ‘praxizing’—in a Freirean sense—with English language learners from an underdeveloped region in West Kalimantan. Another form of ideological resistance can be found in the increasingly popular practice of homeschooling as an educa- tional choice, particularly for parents whose educational values are in opposition to those of public (mass) education. Nugroho specifically discusses this in Chap. 13, where she documents the struggles and the successes of homeschooling movements in Indonesia as a critical engagement against hegemonic educational discourses. In Chap. 12, Wijaya Mulya problematizes the absence of official sexuality education in Indonesian curricula which promotes sexual justice and inclusion of sexual minori- ties. Considering sexuality is a battleground for various social-political-religious ideologies, he proposes a sexuality education that focuses on opening up discursive access, space, and contestations which might enable Indonesian young people to be critical, ethical, and responsible sexual subjects.
To sum up, the current volume engages with social justice in education through critical perspectives in contemporary Indonesian contexts. While it scrutinizes various facets of the Indonesian education system through multiple critical lenses and disciplinary perspectives, the current volume does not attempt to be comprehensive, generalizable, or offering finality. Instead, it seeks to be contextually situated, crit- ically provocative, and progressively disruptive; with the hope of advancing social justice in, and, through education in Indonesia.