Sekolah Bogor Raya

After teaching for three years in Indonesia, I wasn’t expecting severe culture shock when I moved to a school near Guangzhou in southern China. I was mistaken. I found China to be as different from Indonesia as it is from my own home country, the UK.

Arriving in China from Indonesia one of the first things that hits you is the modern infrastructure. Guangzhou has a brand new and efficient airport, express highways and toll roads, and an underground Metro system that shames many European capitals. The fast and effective response of the Chinese authorities to the recent devastating earthquake also shows modern China at its best. Many people owe their lives to good road, air and rail links that allowed rescuers and aid to reach the affected area without delay.

Once I got used to the modern infrastructure, however, I found there were aspects of life in Indonesia that I missed terribly. One of these aspects was access to information. Yes, I know we all complain about the volume of trashy Sinetron on Indonesian TV, but at the same time we can rely on the news programmes to keep us updated of local and world events as they happen. Until you have lived for a while without an independent news media it is difficult to appreciate how valuable an asset it is.

At my school in China all students in the junior and senior high school units were expected to have a laptop computer for schoolwork. They had been following that policy for the previous two years. All of our classrooms had wireless internet base stations for the students and all had big screen TV monitors and a sound system that the teacher could use during lessons. There was something missing, however: large parts of the internet were not available because those websites were blocked or filtered at local, regional and national level by what has become known as the ‘Great Firewall of China’. Information is one of the most valuable commodities in the modern economy but from what I saw China is not doing its best to educate the nation’s youth in how to use and profit from that commodity. I think that is a pity.

The ‘one child policy’ which has been in place since 1974 in China means that almost all of my high school students (and quite a few of the teachers) had no brothers or sisters. The policy was implemented to counter a population problem at the time, but its effects are far-reaching. Imagine a class of 25 students who have been the centre of their parents’ attention since birth and who have never had to share anything with brothers and sisters. Imagine the pressure for success placed on those children because they represent the parents’ one and only chance for the next generation of the family. Imagine a world where all new parents were themselves only children, too. Perhaps surprisingly, very few of my students behaved like ‘little emperors’ and most seemed to emerge from this unique form of childhood perfectly well, but after teaching Indonesians and Europeans I found the effect of the one child policy was still very noticeable.

Once you can see past the pot-holed roads and creaky public services, Indonesia actually has a lot going for it as a place to live now and in the future. I’m glad to be moving back to Indonesia, and Bogor in particular, after my year in China though I’m grateful for having had the opportunity to experience life in a very different type of society. I remain very impressed by the technological and economic achievements that I saw in the new China and I hope that the citizens of Indonesia can find a way to enjoy the benefits of economic development while at the same time keeping hold of all the good qualities that make Indonesia special.

David Booth joins our science dept after a year in China.