WISDOM

Well as we all know I have virtually no Wisdom but that aside Wisdom is going to be the theme of this post. This week I've been attending the WISDOM Conference on Science, Education and Culture at UGM. This UNESCO run conference (originally scheduled for the week we were evacuated because of Merapi erupting) is an international prepatory conference for the World Cultural Forum in Bali 2012

Basically, the theme of this conference was to discuss attitudes towards science, education and culture in Indonesia and the world and discuss how these attitudes can be improved in the future. It featured keynotes speakers from around the world and I feel privileged to be able to attend (thanks for the freebie ACICIS)although I have walked out disappointed.

I chose to focus on education as I will be studying it next semester and I was interested to see what experts were saying about Indonesia's education system and there proposals for changes in the future. It included a panel of researchers who presented papers and discussed Indonesia's education system. It was interesting but I still feel unsatisfied with the responses. Maybe my expectations were too high but I felt they focussed too much on history and had no satisfactory ideas for the future.

One expert suggested that Indonesia needs to focus more on Indonesian language and ethnic language acquistion rather than English or international trade languages. And whilst I believe native languages are important I felt it was a rather ignorant response in an increasingly multi-cultural and multi-reliant world. AND THIS WAS THE ONLY SPEAKER I REALLY THOUGHT HAD ANYTHING OF VALUE TO SAY.

Needless to say I left feeling unsatisfied and annoyed that these so called experts came in promoting what I felt were their own agendas without thinking about the future. Hopefully by 2012 more clarity can be brought to the forum and real solutions can be discussed. And the food was delicious