57 language in discussing politic, economy, science and technology, social event and
so on. The style of language provided in mass media can become the standard of language used in society. On the other hand, the power of mass media can be used
in preserving certain ethnic languages. In some province in Indonesia like in West Java, many newspapers socialize Sundanese language into their community. So
again, the power of newspaper can both support and destroy the cultures which become the identity in a community.
F. Developing Reproductive Machine of National Knowledge
Based on the title above, we may infer that there is something wrong with the machine of knowledge in Indonesia. This inference may lead us to some questions:
what is happening with our educational system? Is there something wrong with our school? How are our scientists and experts? These questions seemingly will be
discussed in the last part of this book.
Discussing what is actually happening with our educational system, as a matter of fact, the standard of our national education is still low especially when it is
compared with the countries in the world. We can prove this by seeing the quality of our human resources. Actually, Indonesian country is rich for its natural resources,
but we can not explore the resources because of our lack of human resources. We still need help from foreign country to explore and to exploit our natural resources.
As the result of this policy we can just get a little from what we have.
The data from UNDP 2005 shows that Indonesian human development index HDI is in the range of 110 from 177 of countries. Meanwhile, our neighbor
countries like Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia and Thailand, each of them are in the range of 25, 33, 61 and 73 Furqan, 2006. This data shows us that the educational
system in Indonesia is not success yet. Our education can not upgrade the quality of our human resources. It means that the machine of knowledge through education in
Indonesia can not effectively produce qualified human resources.
Alwasilah in this case classifies the component of reproductive machine of knowledge into fives; they are the supportive situation for the activities of writing,
the available sources of information, the ability of critical reading, democrat policy in helping students and junior lecturer to be able to write, and the mastery of
English. From this classification, Alwasilah stresses the reproductive machine of knowledge on the ability of writing especially academic writing. He believes that as
long the lecturers or the intellectuals are active in academic writing, the knowledge will never be lasted.
In my opinion, the main stream of all what Alwasilah proposes above is the commitment from the stake holder of education in Indonesia especially the
government. If there is a serious commitment from the government to improve the quality of education, the component of reproductive machine of knowledge in
Indonesia will ideally run well. As a matter of fact, however, the allocation of educational budget in Indonesia is far from ideal or still low less than 20. This
policy doesn’t support to improve the quality of education in Indonesia.
Back to our experience from the previous regime of New Order that is blamed by Alwasilah couldn’t plant a good basic of educational system in Indonesia, in my
opinion it is not completely true. The condition of educational system now is not better than what happened in New Era regime. I still remember that when Soeharto
became a president of Indonesia, there were many schools built in almost all over the country of Indonesia. The school fee on that time was not as expensive as now.
58 Many students and lecturers were sent to abroad to study in many top universities in
the world. On the other hand, many students from abroad also study in Indonesia which shows the quality of our education.
Today, the education in Indonesia is very expensive especially at university. Only the people who come from wealthy families can get a good education. They
who do not have much money can only follow the education until primary school. The result is the wealthy will be richer, and the poor are poorer. All of these
happened caused by the complexity problems faced by Indonesia from the economic until the morality crisis.
Actually the crisis happened in Indonesia can not be separated from the unsuccessfulness of education in Indonesia. The educational system can not
strongly plant the morality to the students. I agree with Alwasilah that our education should build up cultural literacy to the students, but in my opinion the strong planted
of morality is more important. The cultural literacy should be the target of education in Indonesia. To overcome the crisis problems, however, the cultural literacy only is
not enough. The educations also have to plant the morality to the students. The basic knowledge and skills in joining their social interaction in their community
have to place the morality forward.
The culture literacy that places the morality will be the basic foundation in revitalizing the culture and develop the quality of education in Indonesia. The
society will be creative in finding the alternatives solutions through critical thinking, judging the value which is suitable to the situation or time, and improving the
quality of life and adaptation in facing the modernization and globalization era.
G. Conclusion
