Application of our Indonesia’s Experience

Unfortunately and fortunately, the last day of our practicum has arrived. It commenced in UNISDA and also culminating at where it all began. Today, we are to become resource speakers of an international seminar attended by students of UNISDA who are naturally from Indonesia and a few from Thailand. Today’s them was all about Cross-Cultural Understanding: Assimilation of Indonesian and Philippine Culture and Education.

               We are on our way to the university from Bojonegoro. During the trip, Jeremy and I thought of a game to stimulate interest and fun to the students and we discussed about the content of our talk to make the best use of that one hour and a half travel time.

               We organized our talk in a way that I will first introduce Philippines’ culture and education, language, and religion. Jeremy will then talk about Indonesia’s. Finally, we will take a closer look at the striking differences between the two countries.

               First, in understanding the culture, we have to take a look at the three parts of the whole i.e. education, language, and religion.

               Under education, Philippines is governed by the Department of Education while Indonesia is run by Ministry of Education and Culture. Class size is also one of the glaring contrasts between the countries aforementioned. This also includes the educational systems and although the total number spent in Basic Education is the same, there are differences in clustering the years in Junior High School and Senior High School.

               Language if not the first difference, is the most obvious contrast we can observe. In terms of medium of instruction in education, the language in which the textbooks are written, public advisories and announcements, daily conversation, corporate world and so on, Philippines use English more often than Indonesia does.

               In terms of religion, please see charts below for the differences.

               We ended the talk by asking them how do we get to deal with all these differences to which most of them participated in and answered. Jeremy and I shared our experiences in their country and how well culturally literate the people are. Respect and acceptance and tolerance to the differences made us get along despite and in spite of our personal identities and varied worldviews.

               This is where our journey ends. It was the best experience in my college life so far!