Tradition & Cultural Elementary School

For several decades, even since the Dutch colonial period in Indonesia, our education center has been the West (Europe) with literature and references in the form of European people's lifestyles, as well as industrial city life patterns. To this day, we still often view culture and tradition as a symbol of backwardness. In fact, the design of Nusantara education by Ki Hadjar Dewantara has a basic spirit that refers to efforts to empower and liberate humans in creativity, as in the past our ancestors initiated various local wisdoms in the form of traditional rituals, the spirit of mutual cooperation, to speech to be in harmony with nature, so that they can survive. The achievement of locality by previous ancestors is a legacy that reflects the adab of a group of knowledgeable humans (Homo sapiens) who have learned the process of communicating, cooperating, and adapting.

The journey of our ancestors in adapting to the surrounding environment, is translated into various traditional speeches or poems that often guard various traditional rituals. The speech summarizes beliefs, expectations, and rules that might make humans wise in their behavior towards those around them. This reminds us of a myth which, when examined further, is not merely a prohibition or a mysterious story, but a warning to guard human behavior so as not to do things that can harm the environment, such as how our ancestors venerated the land, water, and air by believing in the existence of the process of communication between humans and nature that is delivered by chanting traditional poetry. This can be said to be the product of the ideas of our ancestors in aligning themselves with nature, as a first step to knowing more about various natural phenomena. Living side by side with the sun, moon, rain, and even thunder is not an easy thing for anyone who has not been armed with wisdom before the birth of science. So the essence of these various forms of adaptation gave birth to various forms of traditional rituals which we can still see today in the archipelago, as in the land of Marapu..

The heritage of tradition and culture was then viewed by Ki Hadjar Dewantara as a form of human independence which would later be able to free the natives of Indonesia from colonialism. He links the essence of culture with the 'independence' of studying at Taman Siswa - the fruit of his ideas studying from various continents, so that superior seeds are born that are able to harmonize civilization in the field of education from the West with the cultural locality of the archipelago. The mix between Eastern wisdom and accelerated Western education becomes a living pedagogy that can be harmonized with the daily lives of Indonesian people.

Ki Hadjar Dewantara also believes that education is basically the main need to become a complete human being, there is a cultural process that shapes the personality of a human being. Cultural education is in line with character education in the sense of Ki Hadjar Dewantara.

Today we are reorganizing the Indonesian education system and pattern, it is time for us to return the direction of basic education to the philosophy of the previous ancestors. We tried to convey ideas about the world of education in the momentum of the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale (Italy) in the Inbetween Boundaries program initiated by Budi Pradono Architect by presenting the concept of Sumba Tradition and Culture Primary School.

Local wisdom is a major part of the Sumba Tradition and Culture Elementary School curriculum, where Local Content will be one of the main subjects in it. The design of various spaces in the school concept is intended as a creative studio and 'laboratory' that allows children to continue to carry out various cultural arts activities, such as weaving, carving wood and stone, dancing, rhyming, to playing traditional musical instruments, with a different approach. more exploratory and observative of the philosophy that surrounds it. It is hoped that there will be generations of weavers, dancers, architects, archaeologists, anthropologists, writers, teachers, and other professions capable of producing the authenticity of ideas and works rooted in tradition and culture.