International Journal of Indonesian Studies Volume 1, Issue 3 | Page 162

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INDONESIAN STUDIES
SPRING 2016
To create obedient labourers, the colonial government needed to elevate their education,
especially to support their economic exploitation.
In 1899, C. Th. Van Deventer published an article in the Dutch journal de Gids, “Een
eereschuld” (A Debt of Honor), in which he urged the Netherlands government to pay the
debt of all the wealth they had exploited from Indonesia by promoting education for the
indigenous. Only after his death in 1915, with this impetus, the Netherlands set the Ethical
Policy in three schemas: education, irrigation and emigration under Queen Wilhelmina’s
reign (1890-1948). There were two opposing approaches as to how to execute the
education system in Indonesia. The first approach was “elitist” which was supported by the
well-known Snouck Hurgronje and J.H. Abendanon. This view departed from the assumption
of providing a more European-style education in the Dutch language for westernised
Indonesian elites which then would facilitate most of the officials’ duties in the East Indies.
He further expanded the view that “our rule will have to justify itself on the basis of lifting
the natives up to higher level of civilization in line with their innate capacity”. 49 The second
approach favoured more basic and practical education in vernacular languages for the
indigenous lower level. Snouck Hurgronje then advocated a bold policy of education that
“The Indonesian is imploring U.S to give them instruction; by granting their wish, we shall
secure their loyalty for an unlimited time”.50 One of its policies was imposing the learning of
Dutch on the natives as the gateway to the West and learning other European languages as
regular subjects, i.e. German, French and English, which were to be introduced in the junior
high school.
The language of the Europeans which first introduced in the elite education was
MULO-Meer Uitgebreid Lager Onderwijs (Advanced Elementary Education/Junior High
School) in 1914. This was designed for the noble ranked Indonesian, Chinese and Europeans
who had finished their respective primary schools (HIS & ELS). In 1937, MULO, which served
as a follow-up to the Native School Second Class, introduced foreign languages to the
Indigenous East Indies. Local language was used as the medium of instruction, and Dutch
was taught as regular subject in addition to English and Malay. According to Koeswandono
(78 years old, a MULO graduate) and Dwitjahjo (80 years old, a MULO graduate), a MULO
student had to learn Dutch every day, English — a compulsory subject — three to four times
a week, and they still had to choose either German or French, and either Javanese or
Malay.51 In the independent Chinese school in Indonesia, English was the favoured foreign
language to be taught due to its usefulness in business transactions shortly before the
Second World War broke out. The MULO graduates could speak, read and write good
English.52 French was then abolished from the subjects of ELS-Europesche Lagereschool
(European Primary School) when Napoleon conquered the Dutch in Europe and was
49

Vickers, A History of Modern Indonesia, 21-22.
Vlekke, Op. Cit., 330.
51
Sadtono, ELT Development in Indonesia, 4-5.
52
Mistar, “Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) in Indonesia”, 73.
50

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