Alhamdulillah. Akhirnya setelah beberapa lama menanti, kerja keras membuahkan hasil. Menurut rencana dari penerbit Nova Publishers, buku On Language, Education, Politics, and Identity: A Cross-Linguistics Perspective akan segera terbit tahun ini.
Ada tiga artikel dalam buku ini yang merupakan bagian dari sebuah payung penelitian: ‘Dinamika bahasa dan budaya Belanda di Indonesia tahun 1950-an-2000-an’ atau dalam bahasa Inggrisnya ‘The Dynamics of Dutch Culture and Language in Indonesia 1950’s-2000’s’. Penelitian tersebut dilakukan pada tahun 2018. Ketiga artikel tersebut juga telah disajikan dalam konferensi International Young Scholars Symposium on Humanities and Arts (Inusharts) 2018.
Tiga artikel tersebut ditulis bersama mahasiswa dan saya menjadi corresponding author. Ketiga artikel tersebut adalah ‘Being Multicultural: Representations of Diversity in a Dutch Language Textbook’, ‘The Downfall of the Dutch-Language Press in Indonesia 1950-1957’, ‘Dutch Language in Education in Post Sovereignty Indonesia: 1949-1950s’. Sebenarnya dari aspek yang dibahas dalam penelitian, persoalan budaya masih belum digarap secara maksimal dan beberapa rumpang periode, seperti tahun 1960-1990-an masih perlu diteliti.
Berikut abstrak dari ketiga artikel tersebut.
1. ‘The Downfall of the Dutch-Language Press in Indonesia 1950-1957’ ditulis bersama Alitalia Jeanny.
After the Independence of Indonesia on August 17, 1945, the Dutch-language press re-published in Indonesia. Some newspapers were the newspapers that had published before the Japanese occupation. The situation changed on December 1, 1957, when Soedibjo, the Indonesian Minister of Information announced a nationwide ‘General Strike Day’ followed by the prohibition of all Dutch-language newspapers, magazines, and films in Indonesia, including all Dutch publication from the Netherlands.
This chapter discusses the situation of the Dutch-language press before and after the minister’s announcement. This study is can contribute the historiography of the press in Indonesia’s decolonization period, a topic of which there are only few studies. This issue is also very worthy of attention because the Dutch language had a special place among Indonesian elites who made and issued policies. The method used in this chapter is historical methods consisting of heuristics, source criticism, interpretation, and historiography. We use the primary source of Dutch-language newspapers published in main cities Indonesia (Java Bode, Het Nieuwsblad voor Sumatra, De Preangerbode, De Vrije Press) and in the Netherlands (Algemeen Handelsblad, De Volkskrant, De Telegraaf, De Tijd, Het Vrije Volk, Nieuwsblad van Noorden, De Waarheid, Gereformeerd Gezinsblad). Another primary source that is used is the inventory of the Antara news agency, a collection of the National Archives in Jakarta. The collection is important because since December 1, 1957, Dutch-language newspapers in Indonesia has been banned from publishing. Therefore, situation in the aftermath of the ban can be obtained from Antara.
The results show that before the announcement on December 1, 1957, there had been several cases of press offenses made by the editors of Dutch-language newspapers whose sanction ranged from prison to expulsion to the Netherlands. Among these cases, some are rooted in political issues, especially anti-Dutch sentiment due to the West Irian dispute. After the announcement on December 1, 1957, Dutch newspapers were banned, Dutch newspaper editors were expelled to the Netherlands, and director and publishing company employees were dismissed. We argue that the development of the Dutch-language press began to fade in the mid-1950s and gradually disappeared after the announcement on 1 December 1957. A political factor related to West Irian prolonged anti-Dutch sentiment, which was embodied in the prohibition of Dutch-language publications, and this factor was the driving factor of the disappearance of Dutch-language press in Indonesia.
2. ‘Dutch Language in Education in Post Sovereignty Indonesia: 1949-1950s’ ditulis bersama Natasia Nadia.
After the transfer of Indonesia’s sovereignty on December 27, 1949, there was no place for Dutch in Indonesia to be the language of administration or the medium of instruction, especially in education. Dutch was then replaced by Bahasa Indonesia. However, there were still Indonesians who mastered the Dutch language and read textbooks published in Dutch. This signifies a problem in the implementation of educational activities in Indonesia at the time.
There are not many discussions about the Dutch language in Indonesia’s education in the decolonization period as existing research mainly focus on education per se. Therefore, the significance of this study is to reveal the role of language in Indonesian education, especially in the decolonization period. This chapter reveals the situation of the Dutch language in Indonesian education from the transfer of Indonesia’s sovereignty on December 27, 1949 to the 1950s.
To reveal the situation on the period, this work applies historical method, which consists of heuristic, source criticism, interpretation, and historiography. The work also benefits from various primary and secondary sources, such as the archive inventory of the Republic of Indonesia’s period in Yogyakarta (1949-1950), the inventory of the Prime Minister’s Cabinet of Yogyakarta (1949-1950), and news from Antara news agency. These sources are obtained from the collection of National Archives of the Republic of Indonesia, Jakarta. Other primary sources include news and articles on the Dutch language in Indonesia’s education from Dutch-language newspapers published in Indonesia and the Netherlands in 1949-1950s, such as De Vrije Pers, De Preanger Bode, De Java Bode, De Locomotief, Het Nieuwsblad voor Sumatra, Algemeen Handelsblad, Nieuwe Courant, and Nieuwsblad van Noorden.
The result shows that several issues are related to the Dutch language in Indonesia’s education, such as the Dutch language still being used in secondary school and college, the use of English in education, and the translation of Dutch textbooks to Indonesian.
The argument of this chapter is that the aftermath of the transfer of Indonesia’s sovereignty on December 27, 1949 was the low point of the Dutch language in education in Indonesia. The application of Bahasa Indonesia as the medium of instruction and anti-Dutch sentiments were important catalysts for the downfall of Dutch language usage in Indonesian education. In practice, there were various efforts to defend and eliminate Dutch from the realm of Indonesian education.
3. ‘Being Multicultural: Representations of Diversity in a Dutch Language Textbook’ ditulis bersama Stella Estee Samantha dan rekan saya Fajar M. Nugraha.
According to the Centraal Bureau voor Statistiek (CBS) data, the number of immigrants in 2014 and 2015 in the Netherlands had reached 306,000, a number dominated by Polish workers. Since January 1st, 2016 there are 1,800 Syrian children aged under 4 years, 6,100 Syrian children aged 4 – 12 years, and 3,400 Syrian children aged 12-18 years (Volkskrant: 10-1-2016). Even so, long before the 21st century the Dutch was already home to many foreign workers from Argentina, Italy, Turkey and Morocco in their effort to rebuild a nation ravaged by the Second World War. This fact is ground to observing multiculturalism found in the Netherlands. The Dutch language is certainly a major element in the process of instilling the values of multiculturalism, and immigrants are the main target of planting these values, carried out through textbooks used for learning Dutch as a second language in the Netherlands.
Learning foreign languages cannot be separated from learning the target culture. Target culture content must be inserted in language teaching materials. The aim is not only to facilitate the learning of target languages, but also to introduce target cultures to foreign speakers. Contact! Nederlands voor anderstaligen (Contact!) as a Dutch language textbook not only offers a full explanation of the language and rules of use of the Dutch language, but also displays a complete illustration of Dutch culture. One aspect of Dutch culture that is highlighted in the textbook Contact! is the multicultural culture.
This paper discusses the Netherlands as a multicultural country portrayed in three Dutch language textbooks: Contact! for levels 1, 2 & 3 (2014). Roach (2005) in Berkes (2010) reveals that multiculturalism is a cultural and political platform for various principles, concepts and guidelines. The aim is to promote equally and fairly, the presence of all cultural groups and create a balance between either race or language. This paper uses content analysis methods to observe the various multicultural culture content presented in all three Contact! books. How the textbook Contact! 1, 2 & 3 represents the Dutch society that is dynamic and multicultural through its variations of skills training is dissected using the representation theory.
The results of the analysis show that most multicultural cultural content is present in the illustrations and conversational dialogues. The presence of cultural content in the textbook Contact! manages to illustrate the Dutch people living peacefully and in harmony without social problems among races.
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