Natasia Christy Wahyuni – A prominent physicist has decried the country's new school curriculum as being scant on science, in the latest criticism leveled against the Education Ministry's much-derided push to scale back the number of subjects students learn.

Yohanes Surya, whose Surya Institute advocates advances in science and technology education, on Wednesday said the ministry's concession to maintaining some semblance of science in the curriculum for elementary school students, by integrating science lessons into other subjects, was a bad idea.

If anything, he argued, the ministry should be increasing students' exposure to science. "More science lessons are needed from primary school all the way through to senior high school," he said.

"The amount of science learning in the school curriculum has dropped each year since 1988. If you were to give a student a science test from 1998 today, they wouldn't be able to do it. And the government's response to all this is to go even easier on the students."

Under the new curriculum, science will be taught indirectly in Bahasa Indonesia classes for all students in grades one through six.

Yohanes, who helped draw up the new curriculum, said he had opposed this, and only wanted the integrated lessons to run from grades one through three, with dedicated science classes being available for students in grades four through six.

Critics contend that dropping science and social studies from the primary school program and integrating the two subjects into Indonesian language classes makes no sense.

The curriculum will be implemented in the new school year that begins in July. It has been met with mounting opposition from educators and parents alike, who argue that it puts too much emphasis on Islamic and moral education and not enough focus on science and English.

They argue that it will make Indonesian students, already lagging their regional counterparts, even less competitive globally and discriminate against parents who cannot afford to send their children to private English and science tuition centers.