Directions

BOOK REVIEW
C.E. Beeby, Assessment of Indonesian Education: A Guide in Planning.
Wellington: New Zealand Council for Educational Research in
association with Oxford University Press, 1979, 349pp.
Dr C.E. Beeby needs no introduction to the peoples of the South Pacific.
Between 1940 and 1960, as Director of Education in New Zealand, he
was responsible for educational development in Western Samoa, the Cook
Islands and the Tokelaus. Since then he has been one of the foremost
authorities on educational planning and administration in Third World
countries. As recently as September, 1981, he visited Fiji and also spoke
at a seminar in Apia on regional cooperation in teacher education.
Moreover, it was in Western Samoa in 1945, that, to quote his own wor-
ds, his career as an 'international education busybody' began.
Between 1967 and 1972 he worked as a Ford Foundation consultant to
the Indonesian Government on its National Assessment of Education
Project.
The subject of this review, his latest book, is based on the fin-
dings of that study and his reflections on its broader significance. The
book's rather belated appearance in 1979 was due mainly to the fact that
it was virtually rewritten after the dramatic rise in oil prices in 1973-74.
At first glance the title of the book might discourage the Pacific reader.
Indeed, the author is known to have had some misgivings about the even-
tual wording. Moreover, it might well be asked why one should choose to
review the book in 1982 for a journal principally concerned with
education in the South Pacific. The answer lies in the second half of the
book's title — A Guide in Planning. Most of the data on Indonesian
education on which the book is based is now dated and of little more than
academic interest to Pacific educators but the book was never intended to
be solely about education in Indonesia. What is of far more lasting and
universal significance for educators everywhere is what the author has to
say about why money alone does not solve the major qualitative problems
in education and why schools are so resistant to change. Indonesia
provides the context for a case study but it is important to re-emphasize
that this is not a book solely about education in Indonesia. What Beeby
has to say is relevant to education systems throughout the Pacific and
ought to be compulsory reading for all educational administrators,
teachers and lay people associated with the management of schools.
Greatly enhanced oil revenues in the early 1970s enabled the Indonesian
Government to make substantial increases in the development budget for
38

Book Review
education. This meant that a far greater emphasis could be placed on im-
proving the quality as well as the quantity of schooling. But this raised the
important question of what money can and cannot buy in the qualitative
improvement of teaching and learning. Consideration of this issue provides
the central theme of Beeby's study. He suggests that there are two prin-
cipal barriers to the qualitative improvement of schooling — material
needs which money can overcome and 'a subtle group of restraints not
immediately responsive to rapid injections of finance.' At the time of in-
dependence, Indonesia espoused lofty educational ideals but the gap is of-
ten wide between them and what goes on in the ordinary classroom when
the door is closed and the teacher is left alone with forty or more
children, a blackboard and a few old textbooks.
The Indonesian project was designed to assess the education system's
potential for growth, or its capacity for change to meet new demands.
Beeby's analysis of this provides an extension of his now celebrated theory
of the stages of growth, as outlined in his earlier work. The Quality of
Education in Developing Countries.1 More money can obviously
facilitate change, but what teachers teach and how they teach seems to
depend primarily on a complex array of psychological and administrative
factors — what Beeby terms, the subtle group of restraints. For example,
money can be used to replace bare, crowded and overworked school
buildings, but it does not, by itself, alter the long-term effect on teachers
of working in such conditions. The habits, attitudes and methods of work
encouraged — or even imposed — by poor material facilities do not
necessarily disappear when the physical conditions are improved.
Likewise, with books. Money can provide them but it cannot determine
how they will be used. How different should new textbooks be from the
old? If students are to be taught to think for themselves they need texts
which will help to develop such skills but a teacher who has not been
taught to search out facts for himself or to think about them independen-
tly can scarcely be expected to use new books effectively in training
others in these difficult skills. Moreover, it takes energy, courage and
strong motivation to desert the habits of a lifetime for methods that tempt
a class to come alive. Changes in the behaviour of teacher and taught, do
indeed, as Beeby asserts, lie far beyond the touch of a mere Midas.
It is Beeby's capacity to feel the pulse rate of an education system that
makes his writing especially significant. He once remarked to the reviewer
that anyone wishing to reform schooling had to have an intuitive feel for
the capacity of the schools to respond effectively. It was no use deman-
ding more of the teachers than they could cope with both intellectually
39

Book Review
and at the practical level in the classroom. Considerations of this sort,
based on a lifetime's experience, have contributed to his belief that suc-
cessful educational planning and administration (he draws no sharp distin-
ction) is very much an art — something caught as much as taught.
The Indonesian study is divided into three parts. The first provides a brief
background to the country and its schools. The second outlines the main
findings of the project, while the third part examines the aims of
education in Indonesia and future strategy for qualitative change. In part
two, which amounts to about two-thirds of the book, Beeby examines a
wide range of factors in relation to their impact on the quality of
education. These include the shortages of buildings, equipment and books
— 'of all the problems which make it difficult for teachers to break
through to more meaningful methods of teaching, the lack of books is the
most urgent,' methods of teaching and the state of the teaching profession
— 'many teachers in all school systems are not ready and eager for
change,' professional leadership and supervision — 'the transition from
centralized control to local initiative is far from simple,' incentives for
teachers, the unity of the education system, examinations — 'there is no
more immediate incentive for teachers to modify their methods of teaching,
and students their methods of learning, than gradually to decrease the
proportion of examination questions that can be passed by glibly
memorizing notes and increasing the number which demand real thinking,'
teacher-training and the curriculum — 'the educational aims of officials
may be quite different from those of parents and little is changed simply
by rewriting the syllabus of instruction.' The flow of students through the
school system and the educational demands of the consumers of
education are similarly analysed along with the structure of the school
system and the administrative framework of education. Part three examines
in detail, the often conflicting aims of education in developing countries and
the relationship between politics and educational planning.
As with all Beeby's writing, the presentation is well-structured and a
model of clear concise prose. The format of the book, and especially the
distinctive batik design on the dust-jacket, is also a tribute to the con-
sistently high standards of production maintained by the New Zealand
Council for Educational Research.
As one reviewer remarked shortly after the book was published, 'there is
so much of value in the book. Just please read it. You will enjoy it and
profit from it.'2
Clive Whitehead
University of Western Australia
40

Book R e v i e w
1. Beeby. C.E The Quality of Education in Developing Countries. Harvard
University Press. Cambridge, Mass. 1966.
2. T. Neville Postlethwaite, Australian Journal of Education, 3, 1979, p. 316.
41