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Most of the villagers in the hillside hamlet of Sari Mukti in Garut, West Java, are very small landholders or landless day-laborers, growing and harvesting cabbages, potatoes and tomatoes on land belonging to someone else. Depending on their age and gender, they are paid between Rp 8,000 and Rp 15,000 (90 cents and $1.70) for a day’s work in the fields.

In 2003, conflict raged over land rights in the area. The organizers of the Sundanese Peasants Union were frustrated at their inability to make sense of, or even read, government communications. They decided they needed a school. Without government support or funding, they established their own. There were no chairs, no tables, no proper buildings and virtually no books. Most of the volunteer teachers barely had high school diplomas themselves.

Established in the context of a land dispute and with activists as teachers, the school places a strong emphasis on students’ developing the ability to organize themselves and advocate for their political rights. Students are encouraged to work together in groups to solve school problems. They conduct self-evaluations in peer groups. They are encouraged to present complaints and suggestions to their teachers and discuss them frankly.

In 2006, the first generation of students graduated from the school, achieving a 100 percent pass rate in national examinations. Since then, the school has become a training center for local activists and community workers dedicated to serving the community from which they come.

Pak Inceu is a grass-roots activist from the Sundanese Peasants Union and one of the founders of the school.

I never thought I was going to be a teacher. I just wanted to play music in a band. As a musician, I became involved in community affairs. With other activists, I took part in actions with the farm laborers in land disputes. I joined the Sundanese Peasants Union. One of the issues that always came up at union meetings was education.

At meetings, the villagers felt frustrated that they couldn’t read official documents. They didn’t know how to deal with the government. There was hardly anyone who could play a leadership role. Their lack of education made it difficult for them to organize themselves.

People wanted something better for their children. The villagers couldn’t afford to send their children to school in town. It was too far away, and transport cost too much. They didn’t have the money to buy their children school uniforms. They couldn’t afford to lose a strong young member of the family working on their land.

Since the government didn’t provide high schools for the community, the union worked with community members to set up their own. The union activists established a close relationship with the managers of the village pesantren (Islamic school) . The pesantren people also believed that the children needed formal education, so the community built the school using the pesantren buildings and other basic facilities.

I never thought I was going to be a teacher. I don’t have any formal training in education. I never thought I could do it before I began. We didn’t have any books or chairs or tables when we started. There was no money for salaries, so all the teachers were volunteers. Most of us have a high school education at most. At the beginning, in 2003, we used material from the education department’s correspondence courses. Later, we acquired a small library of books and some blackboards. We got accredited as an educational institution so we could conduct national exams here.

When I began, I realized that formal qualifications aren’t the most important thing. It’s far more important that teachers have a passion to help their students. They have to work with them to encourage and inspire them. Teachers have to be able to understand where the students come from and what their problems are. The volunteers all come from the same background as the students themselves, so there’s no distance between us.

Students here feel that they can criticize their teachers. They do it respectfully, but if they have a complaint, they can bring it up at the school. We encourage the students to complain and argue with the teachers, if they have a legitimate complaint. Those are the skills we want to encourage.

At the same time this school was set up, communities working with the union set up two other schools in other districts. The goal of the union is to produce a generation of students who can provide leadership in the village. We don’t want the students who graduate to move away to the cities to find jobs. If that happened, the only people left in the village would be babies and old people. We want them to study and then work to build up their own village.

The school opened the first grade of junior high school in 2003, so the first generation of students has just made its way through to the end of senior high school. Six have gone on to study at other institutions, most on full scholarships. They all come back to the village when they can. They all help teach in the school.

 

This story first appeared in “Invisible People: Poverty and Empowerment in Indonesia,” published by the National Program for Community Empowerment (PNPM) Support Facility, a government of Indonesia, multi-donor partnership for reducing poverty through community action. The students at the Sari Mukti School run a Web site at sekolahpetani.blogspot.com.