The Development of Education in West Papua

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Congress ‘Education in Papua’, Gau, Friesland, The Netherlands, 30 January to 1 February 2009 1

Education in West Papua At Ipenburg2 Summary

The paper discusses and evaluates the development of education in West Papua. It wants to answer questions about the type of education that is most effective for Papua and for the Papuans. What are the lessons to be learnt from history? How can Dutch organizations help in an effective way in education for Papuans from Kindergarten to university? The paper looks at formal and non-formal forms of education and training and also analyzes the political and social context in which education takes place. 0. Introduction We can distinguish five periods in Papuan history and for each period we will analyze the role of education. These periods are (a) early period till 1900, the period where traditional education dominated, (b) The period 1900 to 1950, the early beginnings of mission education, mainly to train evangelist and gurus for the simple village schools, (c) The period 1950 to 1962, where the Dutch Government tried to make a giant leap forwards in education to prepare the Papuans for self government and independence. (d) The period 1962 to 1998, the introduction of an Indonesian curriculum, stressing the values of the Orde Baru Government of Soeharto, (e) The period 1998 to present, a period where there are new margins for improvement of the effectiveness of education, for foreign assistance and fro an adaptation of the curriculum to the local conditions, including the introduction of the mother tongue in the first years of the primary school and for literacy classes. Papuan culture is characterized by extreme diversity. On the island of New Guinea over 1,000 different languages are spoken, divided into 60 language families. In West Papua 271

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I will use West Papua for the Western part of the island of New Guinea. Previous names for this territory were: Papua Land (Tanah Papua), Nederlands Nieuw Guinee, Irian Barat, Irian Jaya and Papua. Since 2003 the Province Papua has been divided into the provinces of West Papua (the Bird’s Head and the Raja Ampat islands West of the Bird’s Head) with the capital at Manokwari and Papua with the capital; at Jayapura. 2 At Ipenburg (1945), studied political science, African history (doctorate) and systematic theology in Amsterdam, London (SOAS) en Pretoria (UNISA). Ministerial studies in Leiden. Worked as lecturer and pastor in the Netherlands, Zambia and Indonesia (West Papua). Taught from 1995 to 2002 anthropology, sociology and ethics at the Theological College Izaak Samuel Kijne of the Evangelical Christian Church in Papua Land (GKI), also Director of the Master’s Program Missiology and minister of the GKI. Board member of HAPIN; candidate for D66 Democratsw at the European elections of June 2009.

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