Women of Indonesia's Magetan Learn to Read

THE WORLD BANK: MAKING A DIFFERENCE

Women of Indonesia's
Magetan Learn to Read

Wati was much younger than the rest of the class. Her father hadn't been able to afford to keep her at school, so she dropped out before she had learned to read. She was married at 17, and now at the age of 25, wanted to be literate so she could help her son with his homework, and perhaps even teach her husband to read. She was doing well, methodically mastering the texts. It seemed to give her confidence, making her more animated and outgoing.
The women, dressed neatly and in bright colors, sat at a table in the cramped classroom, attentive as a volunteer teacher read slowly from two booklets. One was about religion in Indonesia–how Moslems, Buddhists, Christians, and those of other beliefs should try and live together happily; the other was about which healthy foods to buy in the markets. The mood was formal and persuasive in that gentle Indonesian way.
Another of the women, Kademi, wore a blue and white dress, rubber sandals and had her hair swept back in a bun. She twisted a white handkerchief with a green border round and round in her hands. Brought up like Wati in Magetan, a small town in eastern Java, she had dropped out of school to look after her younger brothers and sisters. Now in her forties, with a farmer husband and three sons, she was also learning to read and write through the government’s literacy campaign. Her ambition was to go on to take specialized courses in health.
The Indonesian government has put massive funds into all levels of education, with the World Bank as the largest single external supplier–around $1.5 billion since 1969. In no other country has there been a lending program of such size for a single sector like education. Loans specifically for "non-formal" education–including literacy campaigns have totaled $128 million.
About 95 percent of Indonesians were believed to have been illiterate at the time of independence in the late 1940s. That figure is now down to about 20 percent. About 70 percent of illiterates are women.
The government's ambitious campaign is based on a series of 100 illustrated booklets known as "Package A." The booklets become progressively more difficult. Indonesians speak many languages (it is estimated there are between 150 and 400, some being regional dialects of the same language), but literacy classes are in the official national language, Bahasa Indonesia, a variant of Malay. The decision to teach Bahasa Indonesia was part of a government plan to strengthen national unity. So becoming literate for most students means reading and writing in a language other than their own. One incentive to keep students studying is to give out small loans to start businesses. The loans are withdrawn if the students fail to stay in class.
Running a countrywide literacy campaign to include all ages is a huge and seemingly endless task; drop-out rates are usually high. Research shows that while children learn quickly, adults over the age of about 19 usually learn slowly.
But Indonesia has the structure, the dedicated teachers and administrators, the political will, and financial help from the World Bank and others, to keep on going. It's a question of just never letting go.
Becoming literate is transforming the lives of women such as Wati and Kademi, and Indonesian society will probably change as well as more and more people, women especially, learn to read. And studies have shown that educating women is probably the single most useful act a developing nation can do in its fight against poverty and misery.