Indonesia's Battle Against Corruption in a Class All of its Own
06 Apr 2010
Indonesia is stepping up its educational program against corruption, with 17 educators taking a three-week course at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam’s Institute of Social Studies. The 17 educators — 13 high school teachers, three university lecturers and an officer with the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) — are beneficiaries of the Dutch government’s StuNed scholarship program, which is managed by the Nuffic Neso Indonesia office.
Office director Marrik Bellen said the Dutch government was a strong
backer of the Indonesian government’s efforts to combat corruption. Marrik
said including anticorruption education in high school classrooms was
one way of tackling “the corruption culture” at an early age.
The
educators and the KPK member are learning how to develop an effective
anti-corruption campaign module for high school students. Transparency
International’s most recent ranking of 163 countries put Indonesia at
130, with a dismal score of 2.4 out of 10.
This puts it on the
same level as countries such as the Central African Republic, Ethiopia
and Papua New Guinea. The country is mired in corruption
scandals involving officials at the highest levels. A spokesman
for Nuffic Neso Indonesia, Ariono Hadipuro, said that after the 17
scholarship recipients completed the three-week course, they would help
revise the country’s existing anti-corruption module for schools.
The
KPK and Soegijapranata Catholic University in Semarang will host a
two-week meeting for the project. The university helped
introduce an anti-corruption campaign into the country’s classrooms in
2005, but reports so far say it has been ineffective, with schools
treating it as an extra curricular activity.
“The new
anti-corruption module will be introduced first at the high schools of
the teachers taking part in the three-week training course” in
Rotterdam, Ariono said.
Source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/