Perspectives on the Use of English as the Language of Teaching in Indonesian Schools

After independence from Dutch colonial rule, Indonesia adopted Bahasa Indonesia (BI) as the national language spurred growing nationalistic, political and practical concerns. Consequently, BI has overtaken Javanese and Sundanese as the nation’s lingua franca for administrative, education, trade, culture, science, technology, and mass media purposes. However, the dawn of globalization and internationalization has imposed English language on many facets of contemporary Indonesian society. This has raised salient questions about the proliferation of English and by extension the fate of BI in Indonesia. Consequently, the main objective of this paper is to identify, examine and highlight the prospects and challenges of adopting English language as the medium of teaching in Indonesian schools. The paper finds that the challenges of adopting English as a medium of teaching and instruction is hampered by political, socioeconomic and most significantly historical factors due to colonialism and the Sumpar Pemuda proclamation of 28th October 1928. In spite of this, the author considers English adoption in schools has several Socioeconomic, Cultural and Geopolitical benefits. The paper concludes that training the nation’s future leaders in bilingual or multilingual curricula will strongly position Indonesia on the path to greater socioeconomic growth and sustainable development.