Volksonderwijs — popular or village education — was one of the principal instruments of H. N. A. Swart’s pacifying administrative work in Atjeh between 1908 and 1918: elementary education for the people with, alongside it, a more extended education for the sons of the chiefs, and — increasingly — schooling for Acehnese girls.
Initial resistance
The Koloniaal Verslag for 1908 recorded the obstacles: “the spread of education among the Acehnese youth is viewed with regret by a very influential part of the population. In the first place by the Teungkoes, who, although they must admit that this education is not in conflict with the hoekom (Muhammadan law), nevertheless fear that the intellectual development of the young people will make them averse to learning the recitation of the Koran.”
It began with the chiefs’ sons. The same report noted: “in general the opportunity, offered practically free of charge, of giving their sons a better upbringing met with more approval from the fathers and guardians than from the mothers; it often cost those fathers and guardians persuasion to obtain the consent of their wives” — “the Acehnese woman is not easy!”
Girls’ education
Elementary education for the Acehnese girl was almost equally indispensable, “for the Acehnese woman is no outcast, no mere beast of burden; she takes her own and by no means insignificant place in Acehnese society.” It was therefore necessary to convince the chiefs of the need for girls to go to school as well as boys, “to learn there domestic work and hygiene alongside writing, reading and a little arithmetic. For the former village-school pupil, and above all the educated chief’s son, would later (and that was the lesson of Java) want a more developed wife at his side.”
Girls’ education had the full interest and support of Mevrouw Swart. Swart himself said: “that is why my wife and I have striven to bring the Acehnese girl to school and to teach that girl cleanliness and hygiene and to make of her a better housewife.”
The following decades confirmed the judgement: what was at first applied by a few chiefs merely to please the Governor “slipped from their hands in practice as a mere means: the intelligent Acehnese, and above all the younger Acehnese, did indeed value it and began to give preference to such girls.”
The teacher problem
There was in the beginning a painful shortage of good teachers, as everywhere in the barely opened Buitengewesten. Building the school was easy enough — “the population could put up a simple wooden or bamboo building without much difficulty. But those teachers…”
Van Heutsz, “the father of this popular education, or better still, the man who made the village school financially possible,” solved the problem in his own pithy way. Twenty thousand little schools were reckoned necessary to combat illiteracy on Java alone, at a cost of more than half the Indies budget. Van Heutsz therefore charged Ziesel with a trial of simple schools, arguing: “in my grandfather’s day the master of the village school in the Netherlands was also sexton, bell-ringer, postman, barber, cupper and so forth. Education that was good enough at the beginning of the nineteenth century for Dutch villages is also sufficient to help us out of our difficulty for the present in the Javanese village. If need be, the children need learn to begin with no more than a little reading and writing and the four rules of arithmetic. For such a curriculum teachers can certainly be found. In that time the department of education can see to the training of teachers.”
Since “a bad teacher spoils so much precisely in a beginning period that ten good teachers can afterwards scarcely make it good again,” a Normaalcursus was founded at Koeta Radja in 1910, which brought the necessary improvement in quality.
The figures
In 1908 twenty-one village schools were opened in Groot Atjeh. For the whole province the growth was:
| Year | Village schools | Pupils | Girls’ schools | Girl pupils |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1911 | 106 | — | — | — |
| 1912 | 125 | 6,000 | 3 | — |
| 1913 | 151 | 6,800 | 6 | 240 |
| 1914 | 165 | 8,200 | 6 | 280 |
| 1915 | 184 | 10,700 | 6 | 418 |
| 1916 | 196 | 11,300 | 9 | 704 |
| 1917 | 220 | 12,261 | 10 | 1,140 |
| 1918 | 250 | 14,751 | 20 | 1,321 |
It was, du Croo noted, “no simple matter in that primitive and conservative Acehnese society to get the child to school and to keep it at school, even in the rice-planting season, even when father and mother thought that herding buffaloes came before school, even in the face of excuses, routine and suspicion. But it succeeded” — though at the outset “vaderlijke bemoeienis” and dwang, “that hated compulsion, condemned behind every writing-desk,” could not be dispensed with.
Later development
Jongejans, writing in 1938, recorded: “Two-year courses for the training of village schoolteachers were established in various places, whereby the quality of the staff at the village schools could be improved… the position is now already such that of the more than 600 village teachers, a good two-thirds belong to the Acehnese or to another people native to this province.”
Jongejans stressed the dependence on the chiefs: “If, however, even for boys’ education little can often be achieved without the vigorous support and co-operation of the oelèëbalang, this holds in still stronger measure for girls’ education… many schools, particularly in the countryside, stand or fall with the support of the territorial chief, without whose encouragement or evident appreciation the majority of parents would not think of giving their children any education other than the old tried religious instruction of the teungkoe.”
By 1938 there were 328 village schools in Atjeh with more than 600 teachers and more than 36,000 pupils, but the percentage of literates at the census of 1930 was still only 1.1 per cent, against 5.5 per cent on Java.
Higher and specialised education
An agricultural school was opened at Pedir on 12 February 1914: “although the population does not yet fully grasp the significance of an agricultural school, it understands enough to see that an attempt is being made here to raise the level of agriculture.” The Atjeh correspondent of the Nieuwe Courant also noted in 1918 the great success of the Hollandsch-Inlandsche schools and the native trade school in the former military encampment at Peuniti. The younger generation of chiefs was trained at Bandoeng or Fort de Kock.
Significance
In the Sumatra Post interview of 1914 Swart said: “It is remarkable how the old objections to popular education are beginning to disappear. It is increasing rapidly. The growth of the girls’ village schools must also be considered important. These were at first met with great distrust. But this has been entirely overcome.” He added of the Acehnese: “That is why the Acehnese also have a feeling for education that enables them to achieve something. One may safely say that they are intelligent people, and that in intelligence they are ahead of many other peoples in the Indies.”
The letter of the Acehnese chiefs of 1933 named education, “which forms the pillar on which the culture of a country rests,” among the benefits they attributed to Swart’s governorship.
See Also
- H. N. A. Swart
- Joannes Benedictus van Heutsz
- Het Pacificeerende Bestuurswerk 1908-1918
- Sarekat Atjeh
- J. Jongejans
- Normaalcursus
- Oelèëbalang
- Mevrouw Swart
Source
Generaal Swart, Pacificator van Atjeh (“General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh”), by M. H. du Croo, Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with the collaboration of H. J. Schmidt, Titular Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with a foreword by His Excellency Lieutenant-General K.N.I.L. (retired) G. K. Dijkstra (Maastricht: N.V. Leiter-Nypels, 1943), Chapter XIII, pp. 133–135; Chapter XVI, p. 150.