The Dawn of Corporatist Education

Opinion, The Jakarta Post, 1 December 2007
Published as "The Rise of Privately Funded Education" *

The delivery of education in Indonesia has long been operated by private educational institutions. But more recently, with increasing cost of running an educational institution and funding its programs, and decreasing government subsidies to support such costs, most educational institutions have to rely on private corporations to fund its educational programs. Even public universities have started to become privatized, while more and more corporations have established private educational institutions.

This article attempts to explore the social and cultural cost of privatization of education and the possible danger this may bring to the development of the society. The case of single corporations founding and funding private educational institutions will be discussed in more depth due to its mushrooming growth and especially alarming repercussions.

With the expansion of free market and its campaign for privatization, Indonesia is not the only country that faces the challenges of funding educational institutions. Even universities in the developed countries have to seek funds from the private sectors. Naomi Klein, in “No Logo” (2000) warns that researches being funded by private sectors can compromise the integrity of research findings. She cites a study that “found that companies maintained the right to block the publication of findings in 35 percent of cases, while 53 percent of the academics surveyed agreed that “publication can be delayed”” (Cohen, Florida, & Goe, as cited in Klein, 2000: 112-113).

In Indonesia, private corporations not only fund educational programs and research projects, but single-handedly found educational institutions, fund its whole operation, and seek profit from providing educational services to the society – creating educational systems that I would call corporatist education.

The term corporate university refers to educational programs and institutions founded by corporations to train their employees in core beliefs, operating and value systems of the corporations. But corporatist** educational institutes, the private corporations in Indonesia, go beyond this sphere to form and deliver main stream educational content to those who can afford their ‘services’.

While many of these corporations may found educational institutions out of sincere desire to contribute towards improvement of the quality of education in Indonesia, others may do so for more practical reason that rises from the simple equation of market demand. Still others attempt to bring in more fundamental vision to the kind of community and future generation they seek to form: the ones that would conform to their corporate beliefs and extend their reaches to more fundamental facets of our lives.

These latter corporatist educational institutions run the operation of their educational institutions very similar to the way they would run corporations – with cost benefit factors, marketing surveys, and the running of marketing and management of the institutions by professionals who may or may not have interests in the value of educational and academic quest for development of knowledge. In these institutions, students and their parents are customers whose demands must be met regardless of academic integrity.

Some of these corporatist educational institutions manage their educational institutions the way corporations would manage their offices and commercial areas: highly secured, gated, exclusive communities with their own privately run food courts, parking lots, and students’ dormitories. Every now and then, these institutions would run sponsored and marketing events where other corporations could promote their latest products to students. Some of them even look and feel like the malls, where people who ‘don’t belong’ won’t have access to the educational compound.

In describing the effect of corporate sponsorship to the “re-engineer[ing of] some of the fundamental values of public universities,” Klein mentions that “[m]any professors speak of the slow encroachment of the mall mentality, arguing that the more campuses act and look like malls, the more students behave like consumers” (Klein, 2000: 109).

To make matters worse, corporatist educational institutions polarize even more the already divided social economical classes of Indonesian society. In his book, “Manifesto Pendidikan Nasional” (National Education Manifesto, 2005), Prof. H.A.R. Tilaar describes the impact of consumerism to education: “… most of [national pluses schools] are very elitist because they are very expensive. This consumerist life style is highly contrasted with the everyday realities of many children on the streets, many of whom are homeless … and have no access to education. [It] has dampened our feelings … towards the poverty that majority of Indonesian society is living in” (Tilaar, 2005: 27).

To illustrate the above point, several weeks ago, I was invited give feedbacks to presentations by fourth-year architectural students from one of the corporatist universities. I was stunned by one particular presentation of a student’s point of view about an urban problem she observed, and was even more baffled by her proposal. She noted that the price of a pack of instant noodle was cheaper at Carrefour than at the (illegal) street vendors. However, the (legal) inhabitants by the railroad of the Mangga Dua area she investigated did not go to Carrefour because they had to take a roundabout walk or take the ojek (motorcycle taxi).

Her design proposal was a building that would bridge over the railroad track into the Mangga Dua Mall so the inhabitants could go directly to Carrefour. Thus, in her reasoning, the legal inhabitants of the area would no longer need to purchase items from the (illegal) street vendors or use the service of ojek – because “by law these (illegal) people would have to anyway be evicted from the area.”

In her argument against corporations sponsoring educational events and programs, Klein stated: “When corporations sponsor an event on a university campus [or school] … they cross an important line between private and public space – a line that is not part of a consumer’s interaction with a corporation as an individual shopper. We don’t expect morality at the mall but, to some extent, we do still expect it in our public spaces – in our schools, national parks and municipal playgrounds” (Klein, 2000: 445).

With the lack of national parks and municipal playgrounds in Indonesia, where social exchanges among different social economical classes could occur, educational institutions have become our last frontiers where ideal form of the society could be envisioned, discussed, debated, and continued to be developed. Yet, with the constant growth and encroachment of corporatist educational institutions, could we still hope for such public arena?

Notes
* This is the original, unedited version.
** Not in the original manuscript: The term corporatist is borrowed from Klein's "Shock Doctrine" (2007):

"Corporatism, or "corporativism," originally referred to Mussolini's model of a police state run as an alliance of the three major power sources in society - government, businesses and trade unions - all collaborating to guarantee order in the name of nationalism. ... an evolution of corporatism [can be defined as]: a mutually supporting alliance between a police state and large corporations, joining forces to wage all-out war on the third power sector - the workers - thereby drastically increasing the alliance's share of the national wealth" (Klein, 2007: 86).

Between Work and Family: A Faustian Bargain?

I recently heard from a friend that someone I know is going through a rough family crisis. He is one of the most curious, driven, insightful, and intense architect and thinker that I know in person, and I have always wondered at what personal cost he does these with.

Coincidentally, I am reading Nelson Mandela’s “Long Walk to Freedom” (1994) , and reaching the part where he went through a very rough time in his life, and was about to divorce his first wife. This is what he wrote:

“I wondered – not for the first time – whether one was ever justified in neglecting the welfare of one’s own family in order to fight for the welfare of others. Can there be anything more important than looking after one’s ageing mother? Is politics merely a pretext for shirking one’s responsibilities, an excuse for not being able to provide in the way one wanted?” (Mandela, 1994: 212).

In “Creating Minds” (1993), Howard Gardner studied seven highly creative people: Gandhi, Einstein, Freud, Stravinsky, (Martha) Graham, (T.S.) Eliot, and Picasso and revealed that in their personal lives and relationships, these otherwise geniuses were treating their families and friends from “disregard to simply sadistic”. Einstein just wanted to be left alone to do his work, whereas Picasso was driving several people into psychological trauma and suicides. (!) According to Gardner, these highly talented, top of the crops human seemed to think that they might not be able to achieve what they had in their lives without the luxury of time and unnecessary ‘distractions’ of normal family and social lives.

But I’m wondering whether certain disciplines are also more prone to what Gardner terms as Faustian bargain than other disciplines of knowledge. For example, people in the business- and economic-related fields seem to have more normal family and social lives in comparison with the disciplines of knowledge covered above (politics, science, arts, language). Or maybe I just haven't heard of it.

Do you think there is such a thing as a Faustian bargain between work and family (or social) lives? If so, do you think this spreads across the disciplinary board? Or, are certain disciplines more prone to it than others? And, to bring up and rephrase Mandela’s question: Is it ever justifiable? Or is work merely a pretext?

The Fittest of Human

When you hear about Darwin’s survival of the fittest, and look at your own circle of friends and acquaintances, who do you think would survive in the long run?

I used to think that Darwin’s survival of the fittest means the survival of the strongest, healthiest, and smartest. Among my own circle of friends and acquaintances, I think of those sensible people who are smart and open minded, culturally diverse, environmentally conscious, physically healthy, and financially stable – those who I think would naturally be at the top of our human pyramid.

But more recently, as much as I think those at the top of our human pyramid should survive, the reality of it is that most people in this category are also the least likely to have or want to have many children of their own.

So it suddenly dawn on me that the fittest of human may actually mean those who are fittest in their adaptations to our human social cultural environment; in other words, those who are most in line with the majority of human chain: the middle part of our human pyramid.

Care to share your own thoughts about this?

Indonesian Unemployed Youth: Culture or Laziness?

In discussing the state of Indonesian education with a colleague recently, I was reminded by this statistics in Naomi Klein’s “No Logo”: “Youth (age 15-24) unemployment as a percentage of total unemployment in Indonesia was 72.5% in 1996”. I was shocked by such a high figure, the highest in the list as a matter of fact. As a comparison, in 1997 the percentage was 45.4% in the Philippines, 35.9% in The United States, 29.9% in The United Kingdom, and (the lowest was) 12.2% in Germany (Yearbook of Labour Statistics, from 1980 to 1997, International Labour Office, in Klein, N. 2000: 532).

My hope is that the social safety net in Indonesia is really good, so much so that it allows most teenagers to be dependent upon adults financially. Or is it our culture? Only recently it has become socially OK for Indonesian high school and university students to be employed while going to school. Or maybe the statistics couldn’t get into account the thousands (millions?) of Indonesian youths who work in the informal sectors. Or, to take on the opposite stand: Are Indonesian youths lazier than those in the rest of the world? Or they simply lack the opportunities, education, skills, and systems that could help boost their employability? What’s your take on this?

If you’re wondering if the statistic is still the case in Indonesia, this is what I found: 70% of total unemployment in Indonesia is (still) represented by the youth generation, according to SMERU’s report on “Reducing Unemployment in Indonesia (2007) as quoted in this Media Indonesia article (in Bahasa).

From corpse to dust: One stop burying

In this age of hyper-commercialization, even burying process has become a one-stop service like many others. Within this context, what happens with burial rituals and traditions, and even the process of grievance? Does it matter anymore whether we understand the rituals and traditions we do, or do these have become so commercialized as well that we no longer can tell whether they are real or hyper-real?

***

My uncle passed away. It happened on early morning last Wednesday. When we went to his wake late that night after picking up my dad from the airport, his body was already deteriorating. His casket was closed soon after we arrived at the funeral house, after we were led through some set of traditional Chinese (Indonesian?) rituals which I knew nothing about. A worried thought overcame my mind as I blindly followed instructions from the guy in dark khaki uniform whose name tag pronounced him as Gunawan: What would happen when my generation, whose complete ignorance to all this rituals and traditions, took over?

As I went to my uncle’s wake night after night throughout the week until his cremation yesterday, folding papers to create different forms to be burned alongside my uncle, I tried to gain some information from Gunawan about the meaning of these folded papers. He said that the flat ones served as tokens for the evil spirits to let my uncle’s spirit passed easily into the next world; the rolled ones were the money he would need in the other world; while the ones he taught me to fold symbolized roofs of temples. When I asked why the roofs of temples, and where what about the bodies of these temples, he scoffed. But I found out later that he didn’t know the answer either. I asked him to teach me how to make the intricate lotus paper folding, but after teaching us the basics, he too had forgotten how to do it. So much for my attempt to learn about rituals and traditions, which would have been forgotten by the time my daily routine takes over again.

But apparently I need not worry about not knowing what to do with funerals when my generation eventually takes over. The funeral houses will take care of everything. My uncle’s whole burial process was fully organized by the funeral house. My uncle’s family only had to determine what type of burial they wanted (Buddhist, cremated), when they wanted to hold the flower and prayer night (Saturday, 9pm), when they wanted to leave for the burial ground (Sunday, 8am) and where to cremate him (Nirvana crematorium), all within the family’s budget.

The funeral house arranged for the deceased to be picked up from the hospital by an ambulance, provided the room, the casket, and an attendant (Gunawan) to lead through the chosen Buddhist rituals. On the flower and prayer night they even arranged for a group of Buddhist monk and social workers to lead the extended family, who only had to arrive at the predetermined time, through prayers which meanings only they understood. The same prayer group came again the next morning to lead the moving of the casket from the funeral house to the crematorium, with hired pallbearers, ambulance, truck, and traffic controllers all ready to help along the way. With such convenience, perhaps the hope was for the family to be able to focus more on commemorating the life of the deceased; or was it?

After more prayers and rituals at the crematorium, my uncle’s casket was put on a ceramic plate on an automated, fireproofed conveyor system that led it to the brick incinerator, while we stood beyond the enclosing tempered (showcasing) glass. Once the fireproofed steel door of the incinerator was closed, and the last of the cries and snivels subdued, we were told to sit and wait for two hours while my uncle’s body was cremated. Then out came water, snacks, fruits, and lunch boxes – which were soon consumed by my whole extended family over chatting, catching up, and even laughing out loud with one another. The funeral slowly turned into a family picnic to culminate in a boat ride.

Two hours later, the ceramic plate came out of the incinerator, with distinctly colored ashes (what I guessed as the remains of the casket, the flesh, and other things) and what’s left of my uncle’s still burning bones. Once the bones cooled down, my uncle’s family was handed giant tweezers – with which they could pick up my uncle’s bones, place them on steel pans, and hand them over to the attendants who grounded and placed the bones’ ash inside a small red sack, while the remainders of the ash were shoveled into bigger plastic sack. Throughout this process, the rest of us watched the rituals through the now open tempered glass doors: a showcase of cremation process, quite detached from emotions.

Several minutes later, we were all led to walk towards the conveniently located port from which we took a boat to the open sea, where my uncle’s ash was to be scattered. The precise moments and locations for when to throw papers, flowers, my uncle’s ash, and (take a deep breadth, environmentalists) the plastic and cardboard containers into the sea throughout the boat trip were announced by another man – who was telling us what to do as if he was reciting off directly from that memory strand of his.

By the end of that trip, no one was crying anymore. I wasn’t sure if it was due to the rather long bereavement process, or because the whole experience was just so surreal that we became detached from the fact that the whole procedure that was supposed to commemorate my dear uncle’s life had been conducted by orders of people who were strangers to my uncle.

My uncle was the second to go in my mom’s side of the family. Last year, another uncle passed away. He was buried the Catholic way, which was organized by the same funeral house. May they rest in their respective heavens, while we think about whatever will happen to cultures, traditions and rituals in this instant, convenient, and commercial age.