International Journal of Indonesian Studies Volume 1, Issue 3 | Page 172

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INDONESIAN STUDIES
SPRING 2016
Suharto Regime: English Language Teaching (ELT) gaining its stronghold (1965-1998)
The onset of the 1965 revolution raised the spectre of the so-called PKI members and many
other innocent citizens into a brutal massacre which cost around one million lives.
Curriculum developments in schools succumbed to the negative image of the so-called PKI
and communism. School textbooks were designed under the aegis from the perspective of
the one sidedness of the Suharto regime as much a product of the Cold War as of its own
trajectory since the Revolution. Education was strictly monitored by the Government which
was installed at all levels of the education system. During Suharto’s reign, High Javanese
language gained more political weight compared to other languages. After several years of
decline during Sukarno’s presidency, the English foothold was gaining power in Indonesia.
The former Ford program was continued in the era of Suharto who advocated “openness”
to his “New Order” of Indonesia to replace the Marxian insurgency. Despite exercising
constant and close supervision of the Leftist movements, the Suharto regime also
suppressed the political insurgency from the Islamic groups which were called Right wing.
Islam in Indonesia will never be a single narrative. Suharto’s frame of political action was
how to maintain and play those two poles in a beneficial position into his mastery. The two
poles were always being contested opposite to western capitalistic values. In the era of
Sukarno, the teaching of Dutch was terminated. And, in the 1990s, facing the end of Suharto
reign and the arrival of the internet, German and French were no longer taught in
Indonesian senior high schools. Suharto’s regime advocated the literacy of foreign languages
as its main prerequisite. English then played the most dominant role among other western
languages such as German and French. In the last phase of Suharto’s reign, Indonesia issued
Law No 2 Year 1989 about National Education System which enforced English language as
one of the obligatory subjects in the Elementary Education in Chapter IX, Kurikulum, Verse
39, Point 3, Article m70:
The content of elementary educational curriculum should contain (minimally) the
following subjects:
a. Pendidikan Pancasila (Pancasila Education);
b. Pendidikan Agama (Religious Study);
c. Pendidikan Kewarganegaraan (Civic Education);
d. Bahasa Indonesia;
e. Membaca dan Menulis (Reading and Writing);
f. Matematika (termasuk berhitung);
g. Pengantar Sains dan Teknologi (Introduction on Science and Technology);

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Undang-Undang Republik Indonesia Nomor 2 Tahun 1989 tentang Sistem Pendidikan Nasional, Pp. 1-4.

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