0 ‘True colors’ of Betawi subject unknown

Traditional Betawi attire for civil servants and the desire to use Betawi characteristics in residential and commercial property designs. In the melting pot that is Jakarta, new Governor Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, himself not a Betawi native, is figuring out how to champion the local culture. He says Betawi should be the capital’s shared identity. Having required the city administration’s civil servants to don Betawi attire on Wednesdays, Jokowi is going one step further and applying the same requirement on students. 

Historian and Betawi culture expert JJ Rizal applauded Jokowi’s move but also says it might be ineffective to expect them to really grasp Betawi cultural values “Betawi is inclusive and has this cross-culture value, in which it assimilates values from other cultures like those of Tionghoa, Javanese, Melayu, Sundanese and many others. It’s suitable for a city like Jakarata where people come from various ethnic backgrounds,” he said recently. “Trying to instill the identity on to these children by forcing them to wear traditional attire that they don’t even understand won’t be effective. 

What we need to do is to teach them the values at school subject and improve existing culture-related subjects.” The city has actually tried to encourage little Jakartans to at least know the city through “Jakarta’s Culture and Environment”, which is taught at elementary and junior high schools. The subject contains information about the city’s regulations and environmental problems, the history of Jakarta, Betawi traditional games, arts and folklore. Rizal said that the subject introduced students to the city’s metropolitan characters more than the values and merits that the Betawi possess. 

Worse still, Rizal said, after reviewing some of the books used at schools, he found the subject had misdirected students from the real values. Rizal cited an “inappropriate” story of “Bang Maman and his mistress” in a student’s worksheet for elementary school second-graders that generated protests from parents and public figures in 2012. It tells the story of Bang Maman, a Betawi native, who intends to separate his daughter Ijah from Salim, who used to be a rich landlord but went bankrupt. Maman hires another woman to act as “Salim’s mistress” to break Ijah’s heart as she refuses to obey his father. 

The worksheet had been withdrawn after instruction from Education and Culture Minister Mohammad Nuh. Annaba Tania, a sixth-grader at an elementary school in East Jakarta, said that she enjoyed learning about Jakarta, but what crossed her mind when she asked about Betawi was only their typical accent. “It’s funny how they change every vowel at the end of a word to ‘e’. [What do I learn] from the subject? I don’t know, it’s hard to recall,” she said while shyly laughing. Tya, 50, a teacher of the subject in SMP 153 in East Jakarta, said when asked if the content taught was appropriate for the students that it depended on what books were chosen by the schools. 

“We have problems in finding [the right] books for the subject,” Tya said. Jakarta Education Agency head Taufik Yudi Mulyanto said his team was still deliberating a new curriculum that would cover all aspects of Betawi culture, to include the food, attire and history, to complement Jokowi’s policy on Betawi attire. “We acknowledge that we still lack Betawi content,” he said on Friday. “The implementation might start this year or next year.” (aml)

source : the jakarta post