Combining structural-legalistic and societal awareness
approaches:
A
thought dealing with the implementation of Indonesian Library Act Number
43/2007
To accelerate reading habit promotion
To accelerate reading habit promotion
A.C. Sungkana Hadi[1]
Cenderawasih University
Abstract
Typical to
developing country historical background, Indonesia as well as other developing
countries were mostly experiencing of high level of illiteracy, stupidity, and
backwardness among their people. Starting from the beginning of its
independence, therefore, Indonesia has to combat illiteracy, stupidity, and
backwardness. These three societal illnesses are basically resulted from the
poor information literacy. Reading habit, therefore, has been regarded as the
most important and strategic factor to facilitate the advancement and the
development of the nation. This is because factually the reading habit among
the most Indonesia people is very poor.
Discussing
reading habit, ones could not neglect the availability and the role of reading
materials which mostly have been organized in a library system. Combating the
above three societal illnesses, therefore, means promoting the maximum and
optimum use of libraries. This program aims basically at the increase of the
eagerness of visiting and using library materials; however, due to the fact
that most Indonesian people and governments have not been adequately committed
in establishing, well-running, utilizing, and developing library and
librarianship, a library act had to be created. The Library Act number 43/2007
aims to enforce the whole nation’s component to be aware on the role of
libraries in improving the information literacy to increase nation
competitiveness. With the Act, therefore, reading habit promotion could be
carried out using the combination of two approaches: structural-legalistic as
outlined in the Library Act, and societal awareness of being more information
literate to become more powerful, creative, innovative, and competitive. Libraries
should take significant roles in this two approaches based program on reading
habit promotion, in collaboration with other respective parties.
Background
When its indepence
proclaimed, Indonesia bravely being a new nation with most of its people were
still illiterate. This illiteracy caused stupidity and backwardness so that
this new nation has been actually very weak in terms of ‘survival of the
fightest’ as there was still no adequate social and intellectual capital to
cost their life. This is because, as mentioned by Prof. Daniel Ramón Ríos,[i] the lack of reading habits in school children has
already been referred to as one of the major structural causes of our
socio-cultural difficulties,
including illiteracy, stupidity and backwardness. During the colonial period,
there were no adequate number of schools through out the country, and the
existing schools were only provided for the very limited students who came from
the rich families. No adequate schooles, therefore, means no adequate reading
habits.
Even if
there were adequate number of schools, it certainly was questionable whether
their parents were eager enough to send their children to schools or rather to
ask them to help finding job and earning money to cost their life. The question
of school first or life first had been becoming the question of egg and
chicken. Similarly, untill several years after the independence, the nation
still had to strugle between the two choices: improving the nation’s smartness
– including the promotion of education program, reading habits, and individual
learning eagerness – or improving its quality of life – including combat for
poverty, low nutrinional food, and illnes. Depending on the political
environmental, this ‘chicken and egg’ question, however, will have to be
answered together. Sharpening the Nation’s mind and improving the welfare of life
have to be carry out hand in hand.
‘Reading interest’ as the basis for sharpening
nation’s mind, therefore, has becoming a strategic issue. Reading interest as
well as reading habits have becoming an endless topic of discussion among
educators, politicians, librarians, and other professional groups, not only in
this country but also in all places in the world. It has also been being reflected
in the literature, especially in the field of librarianship. Almost no edition of
librarianship literature has been being published without topics of reding
interest, reading habit, or reading as a whole. Not only in the developing or
under-developed countries, topic of reading interest has also been discussed
in the developed countries. Even in the United States of America,
there is a special institution named ”Reading is Fundamental” (RIF)[ii]
has been established to
sistematically and consistently develop reading interest promotion and program
among children.
The topic of reading interest, reading habits, or
literacy have also been being discussed in several meetings of librarians,
internationally,[iii] regionally,[iv] or
nationally. Indeed, the object of discussion mostly related to developing
countries, either presented by librarians from the respective countries, or by
researcher-librarians from developed countries. One note from ASEAN regions could be quoted as follows:
“The region’s librarians have
also done their bit for regional cooperation. In the mid-nineties they organized
a series of seminars on ways to improve reading habits and library services in
ASEAN. …”[v]
Conclusions drawn from those discussion, among
others, include the public awareness of diversity factors that affected reading
habits and literacy. Those factors include:[vi]
-
Unconducive
socio-familly environmental condition of reading habits
-
Family life
customs, which spent time mostly on watching TV program rather than reading
-
Limited
reading materials at home
-
Low level of
utilizing public library collection and services.
The term ‘reading habits’ in the
paper refer to individual or social behavior expressing the likeness of
reading, which occur regularly but mainly during the leisure time, driven by internal needs. While the term of country, or nation, means the country and/or the nation of the Republic of
Indonesia. The Library Act,
therefore, also refer to the Library Act of the Republic of Indonesia, which is
the Act Number 43/2007.
Sharpening
the Nations’ Mind, Library, and the Promotion of Reading Habits
As stated in the Preambule of the Constitution of
the Republic of Indonesia Year 1945 – popularly known as UUD 1945 – one of the
most important national objectives is sharpening the nations’s mind. This is
beacuse the country had been suffering many social problems during the colonial
period because of the stupidity of the nation’s people. Combating illiteracy,
promoting reading habits, and persuading people to learn are becoming the most
strategic program fo the nation to carry on.
Reading interest and reading habits are issues
that ussually addressed to the main function and task of librarianship. This is
not abosultely true, however, as the issues have been becoming the issues of
public doamin. It is true, indeed, that the availability of libraries would be
useless if there were no reading interest among society members, and the
contary is also true, that the reading interest and reading habits will not
develop properly without the availability of easily accessed reading materials in
the public libraries. These two subjects, reading interest and reading habits
on one hand, and library development on the other, are indeed the two sides of
the same coin, two sides that have to be mannaged comprehensively and
sinergically.
To ensure that those two subjects are becoming the
concern of the whole nation components, the Indonesian people and government
realized the need of a library act. The act, named Undang-Undang Nomor 43 Tahun
2007 tentang Perpustakaan.[vii]
Chapter XIII article
48-51 of the Act, specifically outline the
subject of reading habits promotion. Besides, some other articles also underscore the
obligation of the government, both central and local, to improve the reading
habits promotion (article 7 paragraph (1) e, and article 8 paragraph d). National
Library, in the meantime, is mandated to carry out library and reading
promotion to embody long life learning society (article 21 paragraph (3) c). Article 51 paragraph (6) underscores the obligation of the central and local government to reward
society member who has been successful in promoting reading habits.
It is acknowledged, however, that the success of
reading promotion program will very much depend on the prove that ones would
get benefits from their reading habits. Reading promotion, therefore, should be
based upon the collective awareness that reading interest and reading habits
will enable ones to mastering information, and in turns will enable them to
improve the quality of life as well as the nation’s competitiveness. This is
because through readings, ones might enrich their knowledge, experience, and
skill which in turns might improve their creativity and innovative-progressive
attitude to earn the life.
To ensure the achievemnet of a smart life for the
nations, therefore, the whole components of the nation should hand in hand in improving
the reading habits among the society member. One of the most important things
to do is improvement of public libraries services.[viii]
Structural-Legalistic Approach
in Reading Habits Promotion
With the availability of the Library Act, there is
also available a structural-legalistic tool for promoting reading habits. We
called it structural, because with the Act no-one and no-body will be free from
the obligation to establish libraries and to promote reading habits. The
obligation is directed to the whole components of the people in the country,
from the highest to the lowest structural level. The reading habits promotion,
therefore, should be an integrated, sinergic national movement.
Besides, it is legal, because the Act is basically
an agreement between the government and the people to settle on a law in doing
or un-doing something. In this case, the Act is an agreement on establishing
and developing libraries along with their services as a law to abide by. It is
a law on the people’s rights to get appropriate library services, and on the
other side it is a law on the government’s obligation to provide its people
with appropriate libraries and their services. The Act, therefore, also
underscores that anybody who actively takes part in promoting reading habits
will be rewarded (article 51 paragraph 6), while anybody who on purposely
disobeys the Act will be punished (article 52). Theoretichally, no chances to disobey the
rules, if there is already an act available. This is because, in Indonesian system
of law, an act is the second highest level of regulation after the
Constitution.
In facts, however, there are some acts that do not
function well. The effectiveness of
structural-legalistic approach in promoting reading habits, therefore,
could be questionable. The situation
might become more complicated if the people, especially those from the
under-priviledged group, prefer to use their limited time to earn life rather
than to readbecause that is their basic human rights. For them,
spending time to read means wasting time because reading will not make their
stomach full with meals. Nobody – let
alone librarians – could argue this statement, and nobody could ensure those
people that spending time for reading might enable them to become more powerfull
in strugling for life. The
problem is that there are still limited awareness among the society member on
the usefulness of reading. Similarly, there are still limited awareness too
about the needs of being information literate.
Social
Empowerment Approach to Increase the Societal Awareness of Being Information
Literate
Even though there is no doubt about the benefit of
having the Library Act, the structural-legalistic approach itself seems to be
unsufficient for reading habits promotion. The Acts, indeed, could instruct the
whole people to abide by the rules; however, the real conditions of some
segments of people in the society – those from the marginal groups, from the
low income groups, from the isolated groups, and those from the
under-privileged groups – enforce them to put daily basic needs as the first
highest priority to fulfill. This is not a conducive factor for the Act to be
successful. Structural-legalistic approach in reading habits promotion,
therefore, should be supported by a social empowerment approach as well.
The last mentioned approach, indeed, would be very
costly as it will be covering a huge number of people in the country, as
mentioned above. Social empowerment will cover a lot of programs to make those unlucky
groups becoming powerful enough to face every problems they have daily. It will
empower them in terms of socio-economic challenges, to empower them in getting
enough financial income to cost their daily life, including to fund the
educational cost for their children. The programs should also empower them in
terms of public health, to enable them to protect from all potential sickness.
There might be a jeopardy, therefore, that there would
be a preferency to put ahead of those programs which are relatively cheap.
Program for social empowerment might be regarded as the lowest priority, so
that there will no options for the poor. If that is the case, it means that there will be no reading habits promotion program delivered
to the poor. It means as well, that only the haves seem to be the only group
who embede a right to become smart. If
the option has been choosen based on the priority scale, it has to be ensured
that there will be the time that programs for the poor will become higher
priority, if not the highest. Besides, it should also be ensured that the haves
– those who had basked in reading habits promotion – must in turn be seriously
serving the poor in promoting reading habits. One of the most beneficial
efforts could be donating a part of their richness to help the poor empowering
themselves.
Social Empowerment Using a Part of
Education Budget
Currently, there are a lot of government program
in the field of social empowerment, especially for the poor groups, even though
it is still not enough. The goverment nowadays has been providing the poor
people with several favor programs, such as Direct Financial Assistance (Bantuan
Langsung Tunai – BLT), rice for the poor (Beras untuk orang
Miskin – RASKIN), Health
Insurance for the Society (Jaminan Kesehatan Masyarakat – Jamkesmas), and so on. These programs, of course, still have to be improved, including
the improvement of their design and mechanism.
It seems to me that now has been the time for
carrying out social empowerment program more seriously, especially in relation
with sharpening the people’s mind. That is because the Constitution has been
odered to allocate education budget up to 20% of the total government
budget. It has been the time to combine the structural-legalistic and social empowerment approaches in smartening
the people through the library services. This is because based on article 40 paragraph (2) b, one of the budget resources for library
operations is “a part of the education budget.”
With a such huge of education budget, the
goverment could spend some of them to develop library collection, to improve as
well as to enlarge library services, either at the school libraries or at the
public libraries. With the policy of financial support for school operations (Dana Bantuan
Operasional Sekolah – BOS), for example, the goverment would have been
lessened the financial burden for the parents, so that they do not have to
spend their whole time to get higher and higher income to cost their children
to go to school. They might then be motivated to use small part of their time
to visit the public libraries, and to read some library materials to improve
their information literacy.
On the other hand, instructed by the public moral
obligations, the public society members – especially those from the have class
– are called for spending their money as well as property to support the
government in increasing the societal empowerment program. Instructed by the
Act of National Education System, they should contribute to fund the cost of
the national education program as well. They might have to pay bigger
educational fee compared to those paid by the poor. Some parts of education
budget, therefore, might be spent for providing school as well as public
library facilities and services.
End Notes
It seems that to
combine those two approaches would be more beneficial to the acceleration of
reading habit promotion. It is an obligation to the whole nation’s citizen
together with the government, to facilitate the possibility in carrying out
those two approaches simultaneously.
Jayapura, December 2008
[iii]Among others: World
Library and Information Congress: 68th IFLA Council
and General Conference, Glasgow, August
18-24, 2002; World Library and
Information Congress: 69th IFLA General Conference and Council, 1-9 August
2003, Berlin; World Library and
Information Congress: 70th IFLA General Conference and Council, 22-27
August 2004, Buenos Aires, Argentina (http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla70/prog04.htm).
[iv]Somsong Sangkaeo, “Reading habit
promotion in ASEAN libraries.” Downloaded from: http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla65/papers/091-114e.htm at 15.20; CONSAL XII, Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam from 20 - 23 October
2003;
[vi] Daniel Ramón Ríos, The
project “Forging Reading Identities.” World Library and Information
Congress: 70th IFLA General Conference and Council, 22-27 August 2004, Buenos Aires , Argentina
Downloaded from: http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla70/prog04.htm
[vii] Undang-Undang Republik Indonesia Nomor 43 Tahun 2007 tentang
Perpustakaan (Jakarta
[viii]Cf. Hadi, A.C. Sungkana (2003), Menanti Lahirnya Undang-Undang Perpustakaan:
Upaya Meningkatkan Budaya Baca dan Kualitas Hidup Masyarakat Melalui
Perpustakaan, Makalah disajikan pada Temu Kerja RUU dan Kelembagaan
Perpustakaan, Jakarta
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar