Vocationalizing Education: The Dangers of Link-And-Match Paradigm
5.1 Introduction
Ideology and politics—including the notion of political economics—have important roles in directing the aims of the national education system all over the world (Apple, 2004). In the Indonesian context, the influence of such ideologies in education can clearly be seen in two different political regimes. First, Indonesia under Soekarno’s presidency where nationalism and socialism have a considerable impact on all aspects of the nation, including the education sector. The euphoria after Indonesia’s indepen- dence from Dutch colonialism and Japanese occupation, and the strong leadership of President Soekarno became the backdrop of the Indonesian national education system at that time which was characterized by the spirit of nationalism and socialism. For example, Panca Wardhana as one of the main education policies at that time aimed at developing students to become nationalist and socialist citizens (Subkhan, 2018).
Second, after the fall of Soekarno’s regime, Suharto dramatically changed the aim of Indonesia’s national education system, namely, education as the engine to boost economic growth under developmentalism ideology (Suradi Hp. et al., 1986; Tilaar, 1995).
In this regard, developmentalism has been identified by scholars as one of Suharto’s key political ideologies which resulted in the strong and massive develop- ment of Indonesia’s economic sectors at that time. Instead of economic liberalism and the spirit of modernism, developmentalism in Indonesian contexts has unique characteristics influenced by the authoritarian politics of Suharto’s regime for about 30 years. Suharto named his regime the New Order which sought political stability and economic growth (see Aspinall & Fealy, 2010; Kawamura, 2008; Rock, 2003).
E. Subkhan (
B
)Department of Curriculum and Educational Technology, Faculty of Education, Universitas Negeri Semarang (UNNES), Semarang, Indonesia
e-mail: [email protected]
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Z. Sakhiyya and T. Wijaya Mulya (eds.), Education in Indonesia, Education in the Asia- Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects 70,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1878-2_5
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Consequently, the education sector was directed towards supporting these goals by re- arranging the national education system aims and practices. One of the key moments was when the Minister of Education and Culture, Wardiman Djojonegoro introduced the link-and-match paradigm as the basis for the national education system develop- ment and implementation. This paradigm encourages education sectors to serve the demand of the industrial world in addition to serving the national interest. Although this view was relatively new at that time, the government considered the link-and- match paradigm appropriate for the more general national development programs (Asnan, 2018; Khurniawan & Haryani, 2015).
This paradigm espoused an education that is “linked and matched” with the demand of the industrial world because it considers the main role of education is to produce skilled workers for the industrial world. Different from conventional views about the relationship between education and the economy where education is the supplier for the industrial world, link-and-match paradigm promotes an educa- tion that is demand-driven. The implementation of link-and-match paradigm during Suharto’s era resulted in various reforms in educational policies. These policy reforms moved in the same direction, that is, attempting to close the gap between education and the industrial world (Soesilowati, 2009). Following the basic concepts of link- and-match, this paradigm was underpinned by the notion of market-driven educa- tion where the market drives the direction of education. Here, the link-and-match paradigm resulted in the decreasing autonomy of education and the increasing role of market interests in the education system. In this way, the implementation of link- and-match paradigm evidenced the initial neoliberalization of Indonesian education system, in which education was constructed as an apparatus to support free-market ideologies (see more discussion about neoliberalism and education in Hill & Kumar, 2009).
A more obvious form of market-driven educational reform in Indonesian contexts was the emergence of what is called the vocationalization of education. This reform promotes Indonesian educators to design curricula and learning experiences that focus on equipping students with the knowledge and skills needed to be skilled workers. Further, such reform encouraged all types of Indonesian educational prac- tices to be treated and managed like vocational schools (Lauglo, 2009; Lauglo &
Lillis, 1988; Pring, n.d.). It is important to note here that vocationalization of educa- tion is different from vocational schools. The latter refers to schools that aim to produce skilled workers by teaching and training students in more practical lessons, for instance, to be a mechanic, clerk, waiter, chef, programmer, etc. The former refers to the intention that all types of education, including general education, should also teach and train students with the knowledge and skills needed to be employable after they graduated. This reform was in line with the notion of link-and-match because both have the same goal, that is, to close the gap between education and the economy by equipping students with knowledge and skills needed by the labor market (see also Gaus & Tang, this volume).
In academia, such market-driven education has drawn the attention of scholars, both of whom agree and disagree with this phenomenon. Some criticism arose, for
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example in an edited book by Ross and Gibson (2006), that market-driven educa- tion reduces learning into bits of information and skills and decreases the support for public education in the USA. Previously, Kearney and Arnold (1994) argued that market-driven education has little definitive empirical evidence to substantiate that it has improved a school’s program flexibility, innovation, and equality. Other scholars have also demonstrated that market-driven education precluded radical advocacy movements in the USA (Scott, 2011), disadvantaged students with disabil- ities (Dudley-Marling & Baker, 2012), commodified higher education, and changed student’s perception as a consumer who should compete to get the best services (Tomlinson, 2015), eclipsed equity (Fallon & Poole, 2014), and could not deliver excellence and equity in schools (Savage, 2014). There were also some attempts to open up spaces within market-driven education to make it more socially just by promoting democracy, equity, and respect (Kerr & Ainscow, 2022; Larkin & Staton, 2001; Veldman, 2018).
In Indonesian contexts, studies on market-driven education have been conducted using different terminologies such as liberalism, neoliberalism, and link-and-match education in addition to market-driven education and vocationalization of education.
In this regard, scholars who used the terms neoliberalism, neo-liberalization, and market-driven education are inclined to criticize it, on the other side scholars who used the term link-and-match education mostly tend to support it. For instance, Adriany and Saefullah (2015) focused on early childhood education, and other scholars who are concerned with general education and higher education such as Nugroho (2002), Darmaningtyas et al. (2014), Mulya (2016), Subkhan (2016, 2022), Rakhmani (2019), and Susilo (2018) criticized such market-driven educa- tion in Indonesia. On the other hand, there were also studies that support link-and- match education; they mainly focused on vocational education with little interest in analyzing general education, for instance, Disas (2018), Johan et al. (2019), Rahayu et al. (2020), Azman et al. (2020), Prabowo et al. (2021), Yoto et al. (2022), and Asrin et al. (2022). Only a few scholars criticized and gave more attention to the relationship between link-and-match education and liberalism or neo-liberalism, among others, Precalya (2022) and Precalya and Darwan (2021).
Moreover, only a limited number of previous studies used the term vocational- ization of education or vocationalizing education in the Indonesian context, both in Indonesian language and English publications. In general, vocationalization of educa- tion in Indonesia manifested in two forms, (1) the revitalization of vocational school programs and (2) competency-based curriculum for all types of formal education.
Despite the oft-stated benefits of linking education and the labor market, it appears that vocationalization of education remains unable to solve the problem of unem- ployment and the mismatch between education and market demand. In early 2019, for example, the national survey showed that the unemployed category consists of mainly vocational school graduates (Februari, 2020: Tingkat Pengangguran Terbuka, 2020). While empirical evidence might not be available yet, there have been some considerations that low level of Indonesian student literacy and numeracy skills (Literacy Emergency Among Indonesian Students, 2019) was related to the vocation- alization of education. These considerations emerged because since the early 2000s
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Indonesia’s education system implement competency-based curriculum which overly emphasized work-related skills in preference for conceptual engagement and critical thinking. Therefore, it is important to analyze critically the notion of link-and-match education in the form of vocationalization of education in the Indonesian context, mainly because it appears to perpetuate the existing problems, and even raise more problems.
This chapter aims to expand the discussion of vocationalization of education underpinned by the link-and-match paradigm, specifically its potential dangers for students’ future. Two forms of vocationalization of education are analyzed in this chapter in order to reveal what the problems are, how such problems disadvan- tage students, and what possible alternatives to overcome the problems are. Critical analysis is employed, that is Critical Curriculum Studies analysis which considers curriculum as always related to power, politics, and human interests. In analyzing Indonesian educational policy documents as the object of analysis, the current chapter demonstrates how the curriculum has never been a neutral site; on the contrary, it is a battlefield of various interests and ideologies. Within this understanding, curriculum produces and reproduces knowledge that may maintain certain advantages or disad- vantages for students. In other words, the curriculum could perpetuate inequity, oppression, discrimination, and injustice; but it could also empower the students and change society to be more democratic and socially just (for more discussion see Apple, 2004; Au, 2012).