Comparative Studies in Special Education

8. Indonesia

8 Indonesia CONNY SEMIAWAN Indonesia consists of 13,677 islands curved across the Indian Ocean from Borneo to the north of Australia. Six thousand of the islands are inhabited although in parts there are minimal transportation facilities, especially to the smaller and more remote islands. As one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world, Indonesia has almost three hundred ethnic groups and as many languages and dialects among its population of 179 million. Bahasa Indonesia is the official language. With a moderately high population growth of 2.1 percent, more than half of the population of Indonesia is under the age of twenty, and large numbers of children need education. A new cabinet and a different policy in education, giving priority to extending educational opportunities to the largest, or "normal" group of Indonesia's thirty million school children, began in 1985. The Second Law on the National Educational System was passed in Indonesia in 1989. With this law, equality of opportunity in education has been underlined as being of importance for education in a democratic society. By 1992 almost 100 percent of normal elementary school age children were receiving education. Only 56 percent of junior secondary school-age children were enrolled, however, which is why the government has introduced compulsory schooling for children from seven to fifteen years of age, beginning with the Sixth Five-Year Plan in 1994. As Indonesia still struggles to implement compulsory education for all children ages 7 to 15 (formerly 7 to 12), it has mandated that public schools About the Author • Dr. Conny Semiawan is chairperson of the Indonesian National Consortium on Educational Sciences; directorate general of Higher Education for the Ministry of Education and Culture; and professor at the State Graduate Program, University of Indonesia and at the Institute for Teacher Training and Educational Science, Jakarta. 121 122 EMERGING SPECIAL EDUCATI()N take all the necessary steps to provide schooling and regular educational programs for "normal" children as a first priority in providing equality of education for all. Thus, the concept of equality in educational opportunities being expanded to include children with special needs has taken a back seat to the greater national goal of first enrolling all "normal" children. Prevalence of Children with Special Needs In Indonesia, general health statistics are either unavailable or unreliable. By one estimate, there are 300,000 children with handicaps, a little over 1 percent of all elementary-age school children (Carpenter 1987). A 1982 World Bank document estimated the incidence of handicapped children in the seven to eighteen age range with blindness at .9 percent, deafness at .3 percent, and mental retardation at .4 percent. There seems to be a high incidence of blindness, up to 1.2 percent of the country's entire population. In the absence of reliable data on the prevalence of handicaps in Indonesia , one study devised a rough screening method, separated into handicap category (with the exception of those emotionally disturbed or gifted, which require more detailed testing techniques), as a first step in determining how many special needs children there were throughout the country. Due to the prohibitive expense of employing professionals (particularly psychologists) to conduct this testing, a simple screening measure was devised to be used by laypersons. It was hoped that the results of this testing would lead to the establishment of a national data base containing reliable statistics on the educational, social, and physical status of special needs children. Initially all 27 provinces, all regions, and all districts of Indonesia (3,229 in all) were surveyed. A more detailed survey was subsequently undertaken of one rural village, Blanakan, in the Ciasem subdistrict, Subang district, and in one urban village, Srengseng Sawah in the Pasar Minggu subdistrict, metropolitan Jakarta. Initial screening in all provinces was carried out by laypersons, but the more detailed diagnostic evaluation in the two selected villages was conducted by doctors and other medical personnel. The medical specialists concentrated on the detection of handicaps in the seven-to-twelveyear age group, covering the areas of low vision and blindness, hearing impairment, mental retardation, physical handicaps, and cerebral palsy. This evaluation was done to develop a basis that could be used in placing special needs children in the most appropriate educational setting. This diagnostic evaluation was carried out over four days in Blanakan and fourteen days in Srengseng Sawah. The findings of the survey conducted by laypersons on the number of special needs children and their assessed handicaps were compared with the findings of...