Anies Baswedan:
Education Should be a Pleasant Experience, not a Misery

PHOTOGRAPHS of elementary school students hang on the walls of the Ki Hajar Dewantara Building of the Elementary and Secondary Education and Culture Ministry in Jakarta. Most of them show children in remote areas, wearing shabby uniforms but genuine smiles on their faces. The photographs were put up at the request of the new minister, Anies Baswedan, who asked that they be hung everywhere, including in all meeting rooms. "So that when we meet, their faces will remind us that we work for them," said Anies, in his office last week.

Barely two months into his new assignment, Anies has created a buzz in Indonesia's education sector. He changed the function of national school examinations from determining a student's passing grade to merely a tool to measure the quality of education. A recent bombshell was when Anies halted the Curriculum 2013 and reverted to the Curriculum 2006 on December 6. He rejected the new curriculum because he noticed that teachers and schools were not ready to use it. "It's like being told to suddenly switch to an iPhone when you're used to using BlackBerry," Anies explained.