Abstract
For the past 20 years, early childhood education has undergone changes that have resulted from an alteration in Indonesian socio-political situations. One of the changes has resulted in the emergence of the internationalisation of early childhood education in Indonesia. This paper unpacks the complexity of the process. Three teachers from three different kindergartens in Bandung, Indonesia were selected to participate in this study. Drawing from postcolonial theories, the findings of the study illuminate the extent to which international schooling perpetuates the legacy of colonialisation, while at the same time sustaining the legacy of neo-liberal policy. However, the findings also suggest that the schools have become a hybrid space where global and local values are interacting and negotiating with one another.
Introduction
Since the fall of the New Order’s 1 regime, Indonesia has undergone changes in its political, economic and social structures. Many have argued that the country is now moving towards a democratic society as there now exists greater freedom of speech, more calls for governmental transparency and accountability (Brenner, 2011) and a marked shift from centralisation to decentralisation (Amirrachman, 2012; Brenner, 2011). The country has also experienced rapid economic development and growth (Asian Development Bank, 2016). It is without any doubt that the neoliberal economic policy that emphasises the country’s development, in terms of economic growth and gross domestic product per capita is evident (Gellert, 2015). Unfortunately, the economic distribution is unequal, and thus, while some groups can have access and benefit from it, others have in fact been marginalised (Yusuf et al., 2014).
The process of change is taking place in every field, including education, which during the New Order government was characterised by a top-down policy whereby the government set the curriculum for all schools. In addition, schooling was also used by the government as an apparatus through which the state ideology PANCASILA 2 was promulgated. During this time, children were taught to become good citizens with a strong emphasis on obeying the rules. Classes were very structured and teacher-centred teaching was a part of the fundamental features in the classroom (Parker, 1992).
With the fall of the New Order government, the value of PANCASILA was then questioned and contested (Amirrachman, 2012). Education was no longer centralised. In the post-New Order government, several new education laws were passed. Laws No. 20 (2003) and government regulation No. 19 (2005) provide a space for decentralisation by allowing each school to develop its own local curriculum, a curriculum which is based on local diversity (DIKTI, n.d.).
The new practices of education in Indonesia are therefore characterised by deregulation, privatisation and the state’s withdrawal from many aspects of social provision (Harvey, 2007a). These apparently illuminate the influence of the neo-liberal policy, which can be defined as a political approach that minimises the roles of the state and optimises entrepreneurial freedoms within individuals (Harvey, 2007b). It is within the neo-liberal discourse that the state’s intervention will be lessened and individuals’ roles will be optimised, except in some targeted communities (Penn, 2002). In the field of education, neo-liberal policy is evident when education is no longer the sole responsibility of the state.
Early childhood education (ECE) in Indonesia has also undergone these changes. One of the indications of neo-liberal policies in ECE in Indonesia is its privatisation. Many kindergartens are organised by private organisations with a link to international agencies. It is without any doubt that an internationalisation process is occurring within ECE in Indonesia.
There are various forms of internationalisation of ECE. The first form takes place when ECE becomes the focus of international donors or agencies like the World Bank, United Nations and UNICEF (White, 2011). Using a human capital discourse, these international agencies see ECE as a vital resource for a country’s development (Adriany and Saefullah, 2015). The second form is evident from the penetration of international models and curriculum of ECE to the local ECE (Newberry, 2010). Finally, the last form of internationalisation is demonstrated by the franchising of schools all over the globe (Dýrfjörð, 2012).
Even though not all internationalisation is based on neo-liberalism, the proliferation of neo-liberal policies will perpetuate a colonising tool. While internationalisation can be broadly defined as the process of integrating international, global and multicultural dimensions into the aims, functions and delivery of education (Knight, 2004), in this paper I am focusing on the process of internationalisation as a means for promoting a neo-liberal agenda through the use of international models and franchising of ECE.
The first form of internationalisation of ECE in Indonesia is evident from the intervention of international agencies, such as the World Bank (World Bank, 2012), Australia’s Agency for International Development (AusAID) and the International Child-Saving Organization, PLAN (Newberry, 2012), in the practices of ECE in Indonesia. The World Bank, through collaboration with the Indonesian government, launched the Early Childhood Education and Development project in 2004 (Hasan et al., 2013). Their first project was launching a pilot project in 11 districts in Indonesia (Adriany and Saefullah, 2015). They expanded it in 2006 by including more than 50 districts and targeted more than 500,000 children in villages to enrol in ECE (Human Development East Asia and Pacific Region, The World Bank, 2012). While this programme initially aimed to reduce inequality between children in rural and urban areas, Adriany and Saefullah (2015) argue that it was in fact perpetuating the inequality. The projects benefited only children in areas selected as the pilot-sites, hence it could be argued that this made the inequality between children in the rural areas more severe. Penn (2002, 2008) also believes that the neo-liberal policy brought in by those international agencies brings with it a negative effect on countries in the South. She argues that, instead of including more children, the policy is in fact further marginalising others.
The second and third forms of internationalisation of ECE in Indonesia can be seen with the growth of market-driven pre-school programmes and non-profit NGOs (Newberry, 2010). The emergence of the former marked the country’s shift to more neo-liberal policies (Adriany and Saefullah, 2015; Newberry, 2010). Many are franchised from global international programmes, such as High Scope, Tumble Tots, BCCT (Beyond Circle and Centre Time) etc. The existence of international programmes in ECE is celebrated in Indonesia mainly because many educators and parents believe that it provides more humanistic and democratic approaches in viewing young children (Newberry, 2010).
It is a fact that the penetration of the global market to ECE is not only taking place in Indonesia. It appears to be a worldwide phenomenon. In other Asian countries, such as India (Viruru, 2005) and Korea (Yoon, 2007), the influence of global marketing in ECE is also very pervasive. Thus, ECE institutions that are franchised or have some international features flourish in Indonesia. DýrfjörÐ (2012) labels this phenomenon as the McDonaldisation of Education. The basic idea in this process lies in the fact that education can be franchised from one country to another country. Not only can international kindergartens be licensed in Indonesia, one private kindergarten was in fact successful in persuading the Indonesian government to sign a contract with the founder of the BCCT programme, to implement the programme in all ECE institutions in Indonesia (Adriany, 2013). At the heart of programmes such as BCCT, the idea of the active, liberal and rational child is promoted (Newberry, 2010). Here, the construction of children in the programme seems to resonate with the new democratising Indonesia. Even though the contract between the Indonesian government and BCCT ended in 2013, the process of how BCCT was implemented in Indonesia illuminated the penetration of international as well as neo-liberal forces into local practices of ECE in Indonesia.
The Indonesian government has attempted to tackle the issue related to internationalisation of education. The Ministry of Education and Culture launched the Minister Regulation No. 31 (2014), which unfortunately only focuses on the managerial aspects in running an international education centre, such as requiring international schools to have local students as well as local teachers, while also making it compulsory for introductory Indonesian to be taught to international students.
As mentioned above, the influence of global markets on the practice of ECE may also perpetuate the legacy of Western colonialisation towards countries such as Indonesia (Adriany, 2013). The ECE philosophy brought by Western programmes is derived from the Western discourse on childhood that assumes it to be universal and following the same pattern of development (Viruru, 2005). It is obvious that the construction of childhood disseminated by Western agencies or Western education models is predicated on the developmentalism discourse. Developmentalism is based on the belief that all children will undergo a similar pattern of development (Edwards et al., 2009; Macnaughton, 2005; Walkerdine, 1998). While the idea may appear to be harmless, assuming children’s stages of development to be universal may yet create conflict with the local construction of childhood (Burman, 1996), which is very often perceived to be inadequate and thus it is considered as ‘the other’ in the discourse of child development (Walkerdine, 1998). As Macnaughton (2005) argues, when researchers find children do not achieve their prescribed developmental stages, they will automatically consider their development to be delayed. This is also evident in Indonesia. Many Indonesian children in rural areas, for example, were tested and measured using internationally validated instruments such as Early Development Instrument from the World Bank (Hasan et al., 2013). Children who could perform better in the test would be regarded as ‘normal children’ while those who fail to score well would be seen as having delayed development (Adriany and Saefullah, 2015). It is not very surprising that the majority of the Indonesian children who take the test get a very low score. This process has created the process of ‘othering’, when children in the Global South are continuously seen as ‘different’ from children in the Global North countries (Penn, 2002, 2011).
There are several studies that aim to explore the process of the internationalisation of schooling (Huang, 2013b; Miyahara and Miyahara, 1994; White, 2011). Yet, with all the complexity surrounding the neoliberal legacy within ECE in Indonesia, research that attempts to explore how neoliberal measures of internationalisation have impacted ECE remains very limited. Thus, this paper aims to fill the gap in the current literature by exploring more about the internationalisation of neoliberal measures of ECE in Indonesia from teachers’ points of view. This paper focuses on the process of internationalisation that takes place in international schools because they demonstrate the pervasiveness of international forces in educational practices in Indonesia.
Applying postcolonial theories to research on early childhood education
In doing this research, I was informed by postcolonial theories. Ashcroft et al. (2002: 2) define postcolonial as ‘all the culture affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonialisation to the present day. This is because there is a continuity of preoccupations throughout the historical process initiated by European imperial aggression’.
Postcolonial theories carry multiple meanings. Childs and Williams (1997) argue that the key element in the postcolonial condition could also refer to a situation where colonial discourse affects the minds of the colonised people. In this sense, the postcolonial approach indicates a legacy for colonialisation. Young (2001), however, believes that postcolonial theories go beyond colonialism. Within the postcolonial approach, there exists a space for struggle and resistance for the colonised. Spivak (2000) defined the colonised as the subaltern, ‘the space of difference’. While within Gramscian theory (Green, 2002), subaltern refers to a group of people from certain races, social statuses, genders and cultures that are considered subordinate, Spivak (2000) believes that the subaltern does not have to be necessarily oppressed. In fact, it is a group of people who can only speak using the language of the coloniser (Landry and Maclean, 1996). Language here is not confined to a system of spoken words or representation, rather my understanding of language is informed by my understanding of discourse (Foucault, 1984), in which language is seen as a set of system of thought that controls the way people think and act.
The subaltern, however, can possess agency within hybridity. Bhabha (1994) believes the unequal power relations between the coloniser and colonised have resulted in hybridity as a means for the subaltern to challenge this. Because hybridity opens up a new possibility for the colonised to challenge the hegemonic discourse of the coloniser, the postcolonial theories of hybridity ‘do away with the old dichotomy of colonizer/colonized’ (Prabhu, 2007: xiii). Thus, within hybridity, the relationship between the colonised and coloniser is not always binary. They are both in the process of negotiating and transacting between one another (Gupta, 2006). Hybridity undoubtedly creates a space for the colonised and coloniser to meet, exchange cultures and open up what Bhabha (1994) described as ‘the third grey space’. For this reason, postcolonial theories have been widely used by scholars, particularly scholars from Third World countries, because they give space for them to speak, to be heard, and to construct their identity as non-Western scholars. As Srinivasan (2014: 10-11) argues, ‘there are constant arbitrations, negotiations, and contestations between individuals and groups loyal to their collective identities, on claiming ownership of that illusive construct, the national subject’.
Many researchers have attempted to use postcolonial theories to discuss ECE (Gupta, 2006; Srinivasan, 2014; Viruru, 2001, 2005). Viruru (2005) claims they have mostly been used to understand elective and oppressive practices within ECE. Elective practices occur when a researcher tries to identify the practices of the subaltern and make a comparison of the extent to which these practices are similar to the practices of the coloniser (Viruru, 2005). Research by Gupta (2006), for example, illuminates the extent to which educational philosophy and practices in Indian schools share certain commonalities with those in America, while at the same time highlighting forms of resistance. The oppressive practices involve a process whereby a researcher challenges and questions the dominant practices of the coloniser, mostly Western discourses within ECE (Viruru, 2005). Research conducted by Walkerdine (1998), Burman (2008), Huang (2013a) and Adriany and Warin (2014) has attempted to question the extent to which the Western discourse of education, such as child-centredness, has become a ‘regime of truth’ in ECE.
The postcolonial approach is also very pertinent due to the effect of internationalisation on ECE (Gupta, 2006; Viruru, 2001, 2005). Internationalisation is believed to be a new form of colonialisation and imperialism (Kennedy, 2006). Its effect has created the privatisation and businessfication of education, and the commodification of childhood (Viruru, 2005), by allowing transnational companies to franchise their educational systems in other countries (Newberry, 2010). In the case of Indonesia, these companies have been able to gain support from the government (Adriany and Saefullah, 2015; Newberry, 2010).
Postcolonial theories are also particularly useful in understanding the effect of neoliberalism on ECE. Neoliberal policy is evident when we see marketisation, privatisation and an emphasis on human capital development (Harvey, 2007a, 2007b). Research conducted by Newberry (2010) has revealed that marketisation and privatisation are very pervasive in ECE and, consequently, the government’s roles are minimised.
Methods
This study uses a qualitative case study approach because it allows me to understand the complexity of the problems and also lets me explore the matter deeply (Swanborn, 2010; Yin, 2008).
In conducting this research, I have tried to be consistent with the postcolonial approach that frames my theoretical framework. The fact that I am Indonesian, conducting research in an Indonesian context, yet my theoretical framework is nevertheless the result of my engagement with Western theories has situated me as a postcolonial researcher. Narayan (1997) emphasises three approaches postcolonial researchers can adopt in their studies. They are emissaries, mirrors and authentic insiders (Narayan, 1997: 121–157). In the emissary approach, a researcher will become less critical of her own culture because she will see Western discourse as inherently problematic. The second approach – mirror – is one in which a researcher is less or not critical of the Western discourse, using a Western lens in understanding her own culture and, hence, perpetuating Western domination in her culture. The last and final approach is that of the authentic insider, whereby a researcher will attempt to be critical and cautious in using Western theories while at the same time remain critical of her own culture. In my study, I attempt to use the last approach as I believe it will allow me to go beyond the binary between the West and the East and, hence, I will be able to see a hybrid space, ‘a third grey space’.
In selecting the participants, snowball sampling was used, which is very common in qualitative research (Griffith et al., 2016). I contacted a teacher I know, who introduced me to the other two female participants; all teach in different international schools. The first teacher is Indra, a male teacher at Stone School; the second is Ina, a female teacher at Freedom School; and the last is Mela, a female teacher at Up-Hill School. The information from the teachers was collected using informal interviews, which were transcribed. These were returned to the teachers so that they could see whether I had accurately recorded their opinions. Each teacher was interviewed once or twice. Each interview lasted between one and two hours. All the interviews took place either in the teachers’ schools or another place they chose. In collecting the data, I adhered to ethical principles by observing the privacy and confidentiality of the teachers and the schools. Thus, all of the names used in this paper are pseudonyms.
The data were then analysed using a constructivist grounded approach (Charmaz, 2006) as it allows me to listen to the data while at the same time recognising my subjectivity, which may shape my understanding of it. The transcripts were coded, and compared to see what themes were revealed. The data analysis yielded a theme of education as an investment. Within this theme, three subthemes emerged. They are the construction of Indonesian upper class, neoliberal policy and the human capital discourse.
Research setting: introducing the schools
Stone School
Stone School is a franchise school from America. According to Indra, this school is operated under the management of a corporation and, hence, it is profit-oriented. The school specialises in teaching children from zero to four years old and focuses on stimulating children’s gross motor skills. Each class lasts for 45 minutes and runs four times a month. In a month, parents have to pay Rp.600,000 (US$45) as well as Rp.3,000,000 (US$225) for the admission fee and Rp.300,000 (US$23) for the annual fee. These fees are relatively expensive if we compare them with the national poverty level at Rp.200,262 (US$15) per month (World Bank, 2012). Stone School has spread to four big cities in Indonesia: Jakarta, Bandung, Cirebon and Surabaya. Since 2006, the school has expanded by opening up a new kindergarten programme. When the research was conducted, the school was in a transition period because it was no longer going to be able to use its original name. According to Indra, the contract with the central school in America had expired. They could not renew the contract because of several factors, including the decline of Indonesian currency values compared with American dollars. Despite this, the activities will remain the same. Indra believes that in a way this provides a sense of freedom because they can now use their own programme and not merely model it on the central school in America.
Up-Hill School
Up-Hill School was established in 2001. The school follows a rigorous programme in line with the Singapore curriculum. It provides education from pre-school to junior college levels. At the end of their secondary education, students sit for the International General Certificate of Secondary Education and the International ‘A’ Level examinations offered by Cambridge University. Up-Hill School is in five cities in Indonesia and the teachers come from various countries. The languages of instruction used in the school are mainly English and Chinese. The annual fee for each student ranges from US$4000 to US$5000. The school is associated with schools in Singapore and has a strong emphasis on Chinese values, as reflected in the hours of Chinese language taught in the school. Most of the children who attend the school are from international and Indonesian Chinese descendants.
Freedom School
Freedom School offers English medium education from pre-school to diploma level. Its ECE programme is for children aged three to five years old. The school’s annual fee is around US$5000 per year. It follows the International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Programme (PYP) for children aged three to 12 years old. The aims of IB PYP education are to develop the critical and whole child. In order for the school to be authorised as an IB school, it must undergo certain procedures and pay certain fees. If it wants to use the IB assessment system, additional fees are required. The teachers in the school come from various countries. Around 70% of the students are children of expatriates and around 30% are local.
Findings and discussion
Education as an investment
The analysis of the data reveals that the theme of education as an investment is strongly articulated by all the participants. Within this paradigm, education is perceived as a form of investment, and any money that is spent on ECE is believed to bring a higher return in the future (Nolan, 2013). The notion of education as an investment is also closely related with the notion of human capital (Adriany and Saefullah, 2015; Formen, 2017; Formen and Nuttall, 2014). It is believed that there is a relationship between ‘education and economic gains, global competition, and the future economic contribution of today’s children’ (Formen and Nuttall, 2014: 26). The theme of education as an investment also highlights three neoliberal perspectives: prestige of dominant cultural human capital, quality of schools, and educational achievement equalling later economic success. Under this theme, several subthemes are developed: the construction of the upper class in Indonesian society, the emerging neoliberal policy and the neoliberal and developmentalism discourses.
The construction of the Indonesian upper class
All of the teachers in this research agree that one of the most apparent reasons parents enrol their children in these schools is related to the construction of prestige. As Indra said in the following interview: ‘Erm, I think this kind of [international] school has to do with lifestyle. Yes, lifestyle. “Which school does your child go to?” “Stone School” and people will say “wow”. Even though this school is not the most expensive school in town…there are other schools, which are more expensive. So, when parents send their children to this school, it will automatically increase their prestige and things like that. Yes, that’s what I think, this is my personal opinion.’ ‘I think it is just due to prestige. Really, it’s all coming down to prestige. If they [the parents] are gathering with their friends and somebody asks, “which school does your kid go to?” and you say an international school, everybody will think “wow”. Last time I had a reunion with my friends, and we all talked about how many kids you have, where do they go to school? And if you mention [she mentions the name of an international school in Jakarta, Indonesia], everybody will be like, “What? That school, you know…and you have three kids and all are going to that school. You must be very very rich!”[laughs].’
The construction of an upper class in international schools is predicated on the fact that the admission fee, as well as the annual and monthly tuition fees, is very expensive for Indonesian standards. In Up-Hill and Stone Schools, for example, the annual fees for kindergarten are almost 15 times more expensive than the admission fee in a public kindergarten in Indonesia and equivalent to Bandung’s income per capita, which is around US$4200 per year (Badan Pusat Statistik Kota Bandung, 2015).
Even though the notion of quality is a contested term, with such tuition fees, the schools can obviously provide high quality facilities and learning resources, and all comply with the Directorate of ECE’s requirement for a small ratio of pupils to teachers (Rubiyantoro, 2015). Therefore, the children and their families will have social, economic and cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986). Hence, the social reproduction resulting from memberships of the international school will be produced and reproduced. In a situation where most lower class children are entering the ‘educational race’, middle and upper class children who have access to an international school will obviously benefit much more (Waters, 2006). Education here, as Collins (1972) and Bourdieu (1986) argue, becomes a means of exclusion that perpetuates social class reproduction in modern society. It is undoubtedly true that school is a tool that produces and reproduces inequality.
This can be seen in Bandung, where the growth of shopping malls is evident, but at the same time the slum areas have continued to spread; whereas the international schools are mostly located in exclusive geographical areas, signifying inequality and the neoliberal legacy within society in Indonesia, and illuminating the increasing economic and social gap between the upper and lower classes.
Neoliberal policy
The teachers in all of the three schools, however, believe that such expensive education is necessary in order to get good quality education. They believe that the money spent by the parents on schooling is a form of investment. With good ECE, children will be able to enter good primary schools and even go to good universities abroad. Indra, for example, argues that the sizeable tuition fees collected can be spent on providing teachers with decent salaries – something that most teachers in ECE in Indonesia struggle to achieve – and therefore, he believes it will eventually improve teachers’ motivation to teach better. The salary in Freedom School, for example, is around Rp.6,000,000– 20,000,000 (US$450–1500) per month depending on educational background and years of teaching. These salaries are much higher compared with those for teaching in the government kindergartens in Indonesia, which range from Rp.1,500,000 to Rp.9,000,000 (US$112–675). To complicate the picture, the salary of teachers in non-formal ECE is even lower than that, approximately between Rp.0 and Rp.300,000 (US$0–22.5) (Yulindrasari, 2014).
The money from the parents is also used to develop infrastructure and provide learning resources for the schools. Mela asserts that the international schools fill the gap left by the Indonesian government. The government’s inability to provide accessible, good quality education has enabled schools such as Stone, Up-Hill and Freedom to emerge. ‘Education is not cheap. It can never be cheap. There is money that needs to be spent for paying teachers’ salaries, improving teachers’ quality, developing programmes, providing all facilities. Not to mention, we have to pay the rent for the building. Teacher’s welfare is important; we have to make sure we give them [a] decent salary…so no, education cannot be cheap. I think the government really needs to work hard in order to ensure that they are improving the quality of education by paying attention to these factors.’ (Interview with Indra)
Human capital discourse
Human capital discourse, in which education is seen as an investment that will bring higher economic benefits to society in the future (Penn, 2008), is very pervasive in schools. This is often based on an assumption that any money spent on ECE will be returned with interest in the future.
Human capital discourse emphasises economic value. Education is seen as a form of investment and, thus, its objective is to create an individual who can assist his/her country in furthering its economic development. In all of the schools in this study, the teachers clearly emphasise the link between ECE and a successful future. All three teachers who participated in this study strongly believe that the foundation that the children receive in these schools will help them to compete in the future, to prepare them to become ‘global citizens’. ‘Erm…the world is becoming more globalised; if we don’t equip our children with sufficient preparations, they won’t be able to compete on a global level. This is why teaching English is becoming very important. It helps them to become global citizens.’ (Interview with Indra) “Erm…I am not quite sure about the other schools. But in this school, the [academic] load is quite overwhelming. Surprisingly, all the children in this school come to school happily…Children have to learn languages. In a week they have 10 lessons on language, and each lesson lasts for 30 minutes. Imagine! Not to mention they have to learn and speak Chinese as well. Yet they seem to be very excited about this…erm, early years is a golden age. It will only happen once. Thus, we have to make sure the children are stimulated so that they can develop fully.’ (Interview with Ina) ‘Here, we offer so many things that public schools cannot offer. Pupils in this school, for example, will have an opportunity to visit Cambridge University and experience a private tour of the university. Then, we also have another programme. We want to make sure that later on the children will be ready for entering a global world…that one day, they can enter good university abroad.’ (Interview with Mela)
Developmentalism discourse
The notion of education as an investment can also be found in the discourse of developmentalism in the school. Within developmentalism, the notion of child-centredness, play based learning and developmentally appropriate curricula are promoted (Burman, 2008; Henriques et al., 1998; Jahng, 2013; Marsh, 2003). Most of the theories and research on developmentalism are conducted in Global North countries. For this reason, developmentalism is often criticised as promoting Western values. In Indonesia, as previously mentioned, developmentalism is perpetuated through international agencies like the World Bank, or international learning models such as BCCT, and disseminated by the Ministry of Education and Culture in the guide books for ECE teachers (Departemen Pendidikan Nasional, 2006, 2007a, 2007b) and the Indonesian Ministry of Education’s regulation number 136, year 20014 (permendiknas 136/2014). This justifies developmentalism as an extension of neocolonialism.
However, my interviews with the teachers demonstrate how the concept of developmentalism has travelled and been understood differently in local contexts. Despite the teachers’ claim that they are promoting developmentalism, their understanding and practice of it appear to be quite distinct. One of the basic ideas in developmentalism is all children will undergo certain stages of development and adults should not focus on activity well beyond a child’s developmental level. A child should not be engaged in any activities that are too problematic for his/her developmental stage (Jahng, 2013). Yet, my interviews revealed that the teachers, to some extent, have in fact challenged children’s developmental stages. Up-Hill School, for example, has a very strong emphasis on academic and Asian values (Gupta, 2006). As previously mentioned, Mela is even convinced that the insertion of strong academic values into the school’s curriculum has become its strength and their emphasis will be beneficial for the children and will equip them to enter primary school compared with children from other schools. As a result, hours of activities are spent on children doing paperwork and the activities are very much teacher-centred. In this sense, the practice in the international schools becomes no different from the practice in local schools, where they also focus on academic learning. To even complicate the picture, the practice in the school is similar to the practice of kindergartens during the New Order government.
Mela, however, claims that, in spite of the fact that the school focuses on academic values, it does not take away the joy of learning. She believes that existing theories of child development somehow underestimate children’s ability to learn. ‘I think even though pupils in our school have to learn three languages, but they seem to be ok. In fact, they seem to have a lot of fun. They are always excited to go to school every day. Well, I am not an expert, but I do believe children can be stimulated to do many things.’ (Interview with Mela)
Conclusion
This paper attempts to unpack the internationalisation that is taking place within ECE institutions in Indonesia. The findings of this study illuminate the complexity of international schools. On the one hand, they have become an apparatus that perpetuates inequality in society; on the other hand, they exist because there is a gap unfilled by the government. The government’s lack of spending on education is seen as being responsible for this. From the three teachers’ point of view, international schools provide high quality education for middle class children that is not provided by the government. Hence, these schools can also be perceived as a form of critique from middle class families that are demanding their right to a good education. However, while middle class parents are able to offer good education to their children, parents from lower class families will not be fortunate enough to have access to this type of education. Thus, the existence of international schools should be seen by the government as a challenge to spend more budget on education to provide high quality education for everyone, regardless of their background.
The findings of this paper illuminate the ongoing effects of colonialisation in ECE. They suggest that in order to have prestige and receive a high quality education that later will determine his/her success in the society, a child must receive a Western education. Here, Western education is seen as a form of investment that will bring higher returns to a child.
The findings of this paper also show that despite the penetration of Western values into international schools, teachers are still able to create a hybrid space. Despite the fact that Western education ideologies such as developmentalism are consistently perpetuated in the schools, the teachers manage to expand the meaning and adapt it to the local values of the schools to include academic learning. However, while it becomes a form of hybridisation, the schools at the same time fall into the trap of human capital discourse, with its emphasis on academic and economic values. These messy pictures demonstrate that there is no single hegemonic discourse in the schools. Rather, they are places where the juxtaposition of multiple meanings is produced and re-produced.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
