The UNDP launched the 2011 Human Development Index (HDI). The index places Indonesia at 124th out of 187 countries surveyed. In addition, Indonesia’s HDI ranks lower than five of its ASEAN counterparts, with Singapore leading in 26th place, followed by Brunei (33rd), Malaysia (61st), Thailand (103rd) and the Philippines (112nd).[1] Thence, among the Association of South East Nations (ASEAN) countries according to the UNDP report the Indonesian human resource is still in an unfavorable quality. The following table indicates the position of Indonesia compared with the other five of its ASEAN counterparts:
HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX OF SIX ASEAN COUNTRIES
|
Country |
HDI Value |
Life expectancy (years) |
Mean years of schooling |
Expected years of schooling |
GNI per capita ( US$) |
HDI Rank |
|
SINGAPORE |
0.866 |
81.1 |
8.8 |
14.4 |
52.569 |
26 |
|
BRUNEI |
0.838 |
78.0 |
8.6 |
14.1 |
45.753 |
33 |
|
MALAYSIA |
0.761 |
74.2 |
9.5 |
12.6 |
13.685 |
61 |
|
THAILAND |
0.682 |
74.1 |
6.6 |
12.3 |
7.694 |
103 |
|
PHILIPPINES |
0.644 |
68.7 |
8.9 |
11.9 |
3.478 |
112 |
|
INDONESIA |
0.617 |
69.4 |
5.8 |
13.2 |
3.716 |
124 |
Source: adapted from UNDP – Human Development Report 2011
The first Human Development Report has introduced a new way of measuring development by combining indicators of life expectancy, educational attainment and income into a composite human development index, the HDI. The breakthrough for the HDI was the creation of a single statistic which was to serve as a frame of reference for both social and economic development. The HDI sets a minimum and a maximum rate for each dimension, called goalposts, and then shows where each country stands in relation to these goalposts, expressed as a value between 0 and 1. The HDI-three dimension and four indicators that used to determine the level of Human Development Index (HDI) described as follows:[2]
|
Source: UNDP, Human Development Index
Based on the report mentioned above, Indonesia, although possesses the biggest and the richest natural resources amongst ASEAN countries, but it is still in the lower rank of five other ASEAN founding countries. One of the most important components to be reviewed in the survey was education. This component of the HDI is now measured by the mean of years of schooling for adults aged 25 years and expected years of schooling for children of school entering age. Mean years of schooling is estimated based on the educational attainment data from censuses and surveys available in the UNESCO Institute for Statistics database. Expected years of schooling estimates are based on enrolment by age at all levels of education and population of official school age for each level of education. Expected years of schooling are capped at 18 years.[3] Even though, the criteria used by UNDP is based on the western worldview, the result may be relevant to Indonesia since in many aspects it has formally implemented western parameters either in education, health as well as in living standards. The western outlook and styles coloring Indonesian people of life, despite in some parts people still uphold their traditional principles. The objectives of Indonesia’s education are ideally the creation “good and righteous men and women” who believe in God, has a noble character, mastery of science, technology, arts in order to advance a prosperous and civilized society based on the state ideology Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution. In other words, with respect to its aims, our national education already envisions instilling Indonesian citizens with human values. Those values are indicators of insan kamil, or a perfect and holistic people.[4] Thus, every school’s aim as an education organization ought to follow the aim of the national education laws. Many people are awed by academic achievement. A good school is equated with academic result or a successful school is measured by the total number of students passing the national exams or Ujian Nasional (UN). Hence, the favorite or most famous schools are often judged by these criteria.[5] There are actually plenty of clever people in the country as a result of an academic orientation created either by public or private schools, unfortunately, such achievements do not significantly have good impact to the well-being people at large. In reality, Indonesia is not a developed country; it is still a developing country instead of an under-developed (poor) country. After sixty six years independence, Indonesia is having multi-dimensional problem. |
Besides, the quality of moral and ethics of people cannot be said to becoming better due to the facts that there is a number of bad manners occurring in the country such as riots, people running amok, violence, crimes, unfairness, cheating, bullying and the like. These kinds of behavior are everywhere and almost perfectly distributed in Indonesia. This unfortunate phenomenon indicates that as a majority of the population Muslims have not yet performed a good example (uswatun hasanah) as ordered by the teaching of Islamic values.
Schools have limited abilities to enhance the sublime characters including soft skills of students. So many variables outside classroom influence students. As Dimyati stated that the educational system in Indonesia ought to not separately from family, religious, and social institutions (such as mass media, internet, and the scouts) and other influent organizations.[6]
On the other hand, it found that lots of employees who graduates with high academic achievements cannot be performed well in the workplace, awhile those who have lower academic achievements but possesses soft skills were able to achieve excellent result or to be a star performance. These facts are supported also through several findings of survey and research conducted by the Bandung Institute of Technology in 2005, Cindy, Sak, Guinn, Coudron in 2005 and Goleman in 1995 about the importance of soft skills in the workplace. [7] Presently, soft skills are not being improved in the proper and correct ways in Indonesia.
