As part of a new resolution to learn more about the contexts of each (of my) doctoral researcher(s), I am now reading Pisani’s account of travelling around Indonesia in 2011-2012. As I do so, I am mindful of everything Fitri has told me about her professional and personal world over the years. And I am aware that I am responding to the book as an outsider reading the account of someone who although an outsider has lived and worked in Indonesia for more years than she has lived anywhere else. So, for sure, the nuggets of information I highlight on in her published highlights from her travels are just that, things that I find interesting. I am looking forward to listening more attentively than ever to Fitri’s account in coming weeks and to have my points of interest challenged, extended, clarified, etc \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, here’s one quotation that struck me: <\/p>\n
“Given the geopolitical challenges of this scattered nation, it’s something of a miracle that Indonesia actually manages to educate 55 million children a year. Nine out of ten children get through junior high school, and almost everyone aged between fifteen and twenty-four is functionally literate. More impressive still, Indonesia has the smallest number of pupils per teacher of any country in its income bracket. Indeed, if you look at international league tables, class sizes are smaller in Indonesia than they are in the United States or Britain. And yet Indonesia kids consistently come close to the bottom in international tests of reading comprehension, science and maths. In the internationally standardised TIMSS tests in maths, just 0.4 per cent of Indonesian fifteen-year-olds reached the ‘advanced’ benchmark score indicating that they could organise information, analyse it and draw conclusions from it. More than half did not even make it to the ‘low’ benchmark indicating that they have ‘some knowledge of whole numbers and decimals, operations and basic graphs’. Of 65 countries included in the PISA international tests for fifteen-year-olds in 2012, Indonesia came 60th in reading and 64th maths and science. Just 0.3 per cent of Indonesian students made it past the advanced benchmark in that maths test. Not one of the universities in the world’s fourth most populous nation is rated as among the 100 best in Asia.” (pp.159-160)<\/p>\n
Fitri, what would be your take on the situation? Impossible to summarise here maybe \u2026..<\/p>\n
Khwan, be warned, am reading up on Thailand too so expect in due course some provocative quotation !!!<\/p>\n
Where next?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As part of a new resolution to learn more about the contexts of each (of my) doctoral researcher(s), I am now reading Pisani’s account of travelling around Indonesia in 2011-2012. As I do so, I am mindful of everything Fitri has told me about her professional and personal world over the years. And I am aware that I am responding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[378],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p865eh-21b","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7761"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7761"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7764,"href":"https:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7761\/revisions\/7764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}