Nurfika Osman – Fancy an evening in front of the TV after a hard day at school? Not an option if you're a student in Depok.
A controversial new bylaw in the Jakarta satellite city requiring students to study at night has education activists up in arms about its purported merits and questionable effectiveness.
The bylaw, passed by the Depok City Council, stipulates that children must study between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. During that time, they are also required to study the history of the city. However, the curriculum on local history is only expected to be available in 2012.
Sri Rahayu, deputy chairwoman of Depok City Council's Commission D overseeing education, and a wife of the ever-controversial Communications Minister Tifatul Sembiring, said the bylaw had been passed to promote scholarship.
"Studying should be part of our culture," she said. "We shouldn't have to push ourselves to study."
She also called on parents to make sure kids stay on task by "turning off cellphones and other entertainment devices such as radio and television sets during that period."
She added there would be no punishment for anyone failing to comply, but the community was encouraged to support it. "Neighborhood and community heads are expected to participate in creating an atmosphere conducive to studying," she said. "They can create study groups and bring in teachers."
However, a parents' association has rebuffed the measure, calling it laughable. "Any bylaw can only be effective if it's supported by the community, and we don't see that happening with this new bylaw," Jumono, chairman of the Alliance of Parents Concerned About Education, told the Jakarta Globe on Monday.
"Besides, the monitoring of the implementation remains the big question here. Who'll be in charge of monitoring the children to ensure the bylaw is being enforced?"
Arief Rachman, an education expert and the head of the Indonesian National Commission for Unesco, also questioned how this was to be enforced.
"Where are the children expected to study? If it's at home, who'll be in charge of ensuring the bylaw is effectively implemented?" he said.
"This bylaw is meant to improve the education system, but if it doesn't work, it'll backfire on the Depok administration."
The bylaw has also not gone down well with Nahdlatul Ulama, the country's largest Islamic organization.
Neni Anggraeni, head of education affairs at the NU council in Depok, said the bylaw would be useless as long as it prescribed no punishment for those failing to adhere to it. "The community will simply ignore the bylaw because there are no sanctions," she said.
Neni also shot down the notion of learning Depok history, saying it would overburden students. "It'll be enough for them to learn it from their teachers once the subject starts getting taught in class," she said.
National Education Minister Muhammad Nuh said he had not yet heard of the bylaw, but believed students should not need a such a measure to motivate them to develop better study habits.