Anies Baswedan Highlights Outdated Education System in Indonesia

October 6, 2025 | 10:23 pm

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Former Minister of Education and Culture, Anies Baswedan, asserted that Indonesia’s education system is outdated and no longer relevant. He made these criticisms while speaking at the ASEAN for the Peoples Conference at The Sultan Hotel, Jakarta, on Sunday, October 6, 2025.

Anies was initially asked by the moderator what educational reforms were necessary for Indonesia to achieve its goal of becoming the world’s fourth-largest economy by 2045.

The former presidential candidate in the 2024 election identified two key issues regarding the current organization of education in the country.

The first issue is that the current education system is outdated. The existing system, curriculum, teaching methods, and even classroom settings still adhere to old patterns.

"We have children of the 21st century. However, our school system still operates with the mindset of the 20th century," he said.

Anies went on to say that the current system was originally designed for the industrial era. Education from that period emphasized obedience, memorization, and uniformity.

According to him, this approach is entirely unsuitable for the modern digital age. "This system was not designed for the digital network era and rapid changes like today," he stressed.

The second issue Anies raised is that education in Indonesia is still hampered by a series of access disparities. These include differences in access between children living in urban and rural areas, as well as between children from wealthy and poor families.

Anies argued that the problem goes beyond disparities in access to teachers, facilities, and schools; the most critical issue is the disparity in access to opportunities to dream and envision the future.

He recounted his experience visiting rural areas and speaking with children from poor families. He noted that their answers regarding future dreams and aspirations were significantly different from those of children who grew up in more affluent, urban circumstances.

This difference, he explained, is due to the limited access children from poor families have to knowledge beyond their daily lives. Consequently, their imagination and dreams are confined. "If students don't know what a pilot is, then they can't possibly dream of becoming a pilot," Anies exemplified.

Based on this analysis, Anies believes that Indonesia’s path toward becoming the fourth-largest economy by 2045 must begin by addressing these two problems. "First, reforming our school system from the 20th-century mindset to the 21st-century mindset, and second, addressing not only skill disparities but also imagination disparities," he concluded.

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