This essay was written by Kelly Soegiantoro, age 16, from Indonesia in response to the 2021 Global Voices essay contest in Southeast Asia. Kelly was awarded honorable mention for this entry.

Education is the tool to empower the marginalized. Education is the foundation of success. Education is the movement from darkness to light. So universal are these notions that no one can seem to argue against them today. Equally indisputable is that education appears to benefit those who have more than those who have less, favor individuals with one X and one Y chromosome over those with two X chromosomes, and pamper children living in a peaceful environment but not those in a conflicted one. In Central and South Asia, for example, despite the active promotion of school enrollment, students from low-economic families experience low-standard education and attain minimum proficiency levels in reading and mathematics (UNESCO, 2017). In Afghanistan, girls are not allowed to go to school with boys even though only 16% of Afghan schools are currently girls-only, exacerbating low enrollment of females in education. In Yemen, a conflicted Middle Eastern country, two million children, more than a quarter of the school-age population, have no access to schools because of airstrikes. This is the current state of education, a state in which inequity flourishes, and my country, Indonesia, is no exception.     

Indonesia is an archipelago country with a population of 272 million people. Indonesia’s New Order led to centralization in its capital, Java, with 56.01% of the citizens living there, because the country’s growth in infrastructure and education mainly starts from Java. After the New Order ended, the government attempted to promote equality through decentralization, providing local governments the authority to manage their areas according to their needs. 30 more years have passed, and inequity still lingers through increasing poverty, geographical disparity, and gender inequality.

Students from poor households are five times more likely to be out of school than their wealthy counterparts. Children in remote areas of Papua are severely isolated from education with nearly 50% of over 5-year-olds never having attended school in contrast to just 5% in urban areas. In addition, 70% of secondary school dropouts are girls, a consequence of early marriage and society’s stereotypical mindset on gender roles. In this technology-driven era, only 29% of rural schools have access to electricity, 17% have access to the internet, and 39% have access to textbooks. In addition, rural schools still withstand gender inequity along with poverty, gender norms, and traditional patriarchal views, which is well represented by a popular Sundanese proverb “awewe mah tara cari ka Batawi'' which implies that a woman’s job is not to earn money but to nurture her husband. Consequently, women’s higher education is deemed unimportant, leading to early marriage that is reckoned as a way to alleviate their financial stress. 

To bridge the learning gap in Indonesia, improving teacher quality in rural areas is crucial to ensure every child’s proper education. Currently, as many as 34% of teachers are high school graduates because going to university is not economically feasible for them. To address this issue, I have formed partnerships with ten high schools all across Indonesia, a branch of Congregatio Missionis–a worldwide Catholic congregation–in Indonesia, and recruited donors to offer scholarships to students who aspire to teach in rural areas. To qualify, high school graduates must show excellent academic achievement and agree to return to their local areas to teach for a minimum of three years after they graduate from university. Thus far, the program has helped 24 students enroll in universities and seven of them are currently serving their mission, educating marginalized people in five provinces in Indonesia. In the long run, we hope that this small act can slowly bridge the education gap between rural and urban areas.

To scale my intervention in education, it is crucial to acknowledge that one big deterrent for people to become teachers in rural areas is their low salary. On average, permanent teachers only earn about $200 per month while contract teachers only earn $40 per month. This poor pay has resulted in a teacher shortfall in rural areas. Further exacerbating this, their payment is often delayed because of a lack of funds that results from both the government’s complicated bureaucracy and the prevailing practice of corruption. Understanding these dire circumstances is the first step to remedy, and supporting teachers’ welfare in remote areas is next. Therefore, I desire to provide a platform for teachers to save money and receive subsidies based on how much they deposit and the number of days they have taught relevant materials from their teacher journals. To execute this program, I will submit a proposal for the government to fund this project using the state budget. Also, government funds will be used to empower women through an online campaign with influential women who have fought gender norms and achieved higher education. They will share their stories through a streamed podcast on the state radio to demonstrate that girls are capable of accomplishing anything.

Now and then, I raise questions about why the utopia of equality in education has not been accomplished. I have my doubts, wonder if I was being quixotic, and if it were indeed a utopia we would never witness in our lifetime. But none of that matters. What matters is to keep going, to always have this force for good behind this struggle, one that aims to alter inequity for the better no matter how small the impact is.