Dutch East Indies - Education

Education

The Dutch school system was extended to Indonesians with the most prestigious schools admitting Dutch children and those of the Indonesian upper class. A second tier of schooling was based on ethnicity with separate schools for Indonesians, Arabs, and Chinese being taught in Dutch and with a Dutch curriculum. Ordinary Indonesians were educated in Malay in Roman alphabet with "link" schools preparing bright Indonesian students for entry into the Dutch-language schools. Vocational schools and programs were set up by the Indies government to train indigenous Indonesians for specific roles in the colonial economy. Chinese and Arabs, officially termed "foreign orientals", could not enrol in either the vocational schools or primary schools.

Graduates of Dutch schools opened their own schools modelled on the Dutch school system, as did Christian missionaries, Theosophical Societies, and Indonesian cultural associations. This proliferation of schools was further boosted by new Muslim schools in the Western mould that also offered secular subjects. According to the 1930 census, 6% of Indonesians were literate, however, this figure recognised only graduates from Western schools and those who could read and write in a language in the Roman alphabet. It did not include graduates of non-Western schools or those who could read but not write Arabic, Malay or Dutch, or those who could write in non-Roman alphabets such as Batak, Javanese, Chinese, or Arabic.

Some of higher education institutions were also established. In 1898 the Dutch East Indies government established a school to train medical doctors, named School tot Opleiding van Inlandsche Artsen (STOVIA). Many STOVIA graduates later played important roles in Indonesia's national movement toward independence as well in developing medical education in Indonesia, such as Dr. Wahidin Soedirohoesodo that established Budi Utomo political society. De Technische Hoogeschool te Bandung established in 1920 by the Dutch colonial administration to meet the needs of technical resources at its colony. One of Technische Hogeschool graduate is Sukarno whom later would led Indonesian National Revolution. In 1924, the colonial government again decided to open a new tertiary-level educational facility, the Rechts Hogeschool (RHS), to train civilian officers and servants. In 1927, STOVIA's status was changed to that of a full tertiary-level institution and its name was changed to Geneeskundige Hogeschool (GHS). The GHS occupied the same main building and used the same teaching hospital as the current Faculty of Medicine of University of Indonesia. The old links between the Netherlands and Indonesia are still clearly visible in such technological areas as irrigation design. To this day, the ideas of Dutch colonial irrigation engineers continue to exert a strong influence over Indonesian design practices. Moreover the two highest internationally ranking universities of Indonesia, the University of Indonesia est.1898 and the Bandung Institute of Technology est.1920, were both founded during the colonial era.

Education reforms, and modest political reform, resulted in a small elite of highly educated indigenous Indonesians, who promoted the idea of an independent and unified "Indonesia" that would bring together disparate indigenous groups of the Dutch East Indies. A period termed the Indonesian National Revival, the first half of the 20th century saw the nationalist movement develop strongly, but also face Dutch oppression.