Students in Indonesia are learning science the fun way via a monthly comic magazine that also prepares them for the highly debated national examination.

Named after the smallest particle of matter, ‘Kuark’ science magazine is becoming popular among Indonesian children, including those studying in English-speaking schools in the country.

“By introducing Kuark, we want students to enjoy learning science,” said Sanny Djohan, the brains behind the publication. “Science should be introduced to children at an early age as it helps them to think critically and logically.”

It all started in 2004 after Djohan got frustrated when her son, who at that time was enrolled in one of Jakarta’s elite schools, did not perform well in a science competition.

In October, Kuark launched its English edition based on the demand of its young readers from private schools who wanted to learn more about science. It is exported to the Middle East while the Indonesian version is sold nationwide.

The magazine is published with the guidance of the country’s prominent physicist Yohanes Surya, who wanted to help improve the quality of education in Indonesia.

Surya has been training students for the International Physics Olympiad, an annual competition for high school students, and is hoping that someday an Indonesian will become a Nobel laureate. He laments that Indonesia lags behind other countries in science because, he said, teachers do not know how to make the subject interesting.

Djohan, however, emphasised that it is not that simple to make science fun as it involves the study of fixed concepts. ‘Kuark’ is also finding it difficult to look for journalists who are knowledgeable about science and scientists who can write well.

“Producing the magazine is not easy as we want to maintain high quality,” said the management graduate and mother of two. “Being a scientist and a writer (at the same time) is hard.”

Initially, the plan was to produce science textbooks, but according to Surya, science textbooks are “hard and heavy” for children.

With stories written in narrative form by scientists and teachers, ‘Kuark’s’ main characters are depicted as studying botany, zoology, ecology, physics, astronomy, to name a few. The characters usually ask science-related questions and the answers are explained by their teachers as well as by the magazine’s mascot, a firefly named after the magazine.

Aside from stories, the magazine contains practical experiments and sample exercises for the Kuark Science Olympiad.

“I like to read ‘Kuark’ because it contains fun science experiments and other informative stories,” said nine-year-old Gracia Nadaputri, a member of the Science Club at her school, who is aiming to join the Kuark Science Olympiad next year.

“I enjoy reading ‘Kuark’ because it helps me understand what my teachers are teaching in the class,” said Grade 4 student Amanda Latisha Oesef. “Sometimes, I already know the science topics that my teachers are discussing because I have already read them in ‘Kuark'”.

The Jakarta-based magazine is published in three levels. Level 1 is for Grades 1 to 2 students. Level 2 is for Grades 3 to 4 and Level 3, for Grades 5 to 6. While the Indonesian edition is available to all three levels, its English version is currently only available for Level 3.

Indonesian students also use ‘Kuark’ as reference in passing the much-debated national examination for high school students. A number of controversies such as rampant cheating by students, allegedly facilitated by teachers at times, surround the national exams.

Some educators have urged the Indonesian government to scrap the exams as students who fail the tests are not able to advance to college. Poorly trained teachers and the lack of basic educational facilities also put students at a disadvantage in the national exams. The national exams, they argued, are an assumption that all students across the country have access to the same opportunities and information.

The government requires Grades 6, 9 and 12 Indonesian students to take the exams, where one of the three subjects covered is Science. Mathematics and Bahasa Indonesia are the two others.

“The magazine is helpful to our students,” said Elsie Bait, the vice principal for student development at Binus International School Simprug in South Jakarta, whose elementary students subscribe to the magazine and participate in the Science Olympiad, an annual event organised by ‘Kuark’ since 2007.

A total of 11,000 elementary students across the country participated in the Kuark Science Olympiad in 2007. In 2008, there were 30,000 participants. This year, 58,500 students from 33 provinces joined the competition.

According to Wahono Sumaryono, deputy head of the state-run Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology, the Kuark Science Olympiad can motivate more students to become scientists. “These students have the potential to become the country’s next scientists and researchers,” said Sumaryono during the awarding of the 2009 Olympiad winners in June.

The test consists of multiple-choice questions taken from issues previously discussed in the magazine. Students also answer essay questions based on science experiments published in the paper.

Based on test results, most of the winners came from outside Jakarta and Java. This year’s winner for the level 1 category came all the way from Pontianak in West Kalimantan. For level 2, the student who won first place in the Kuark Science Olympiad is from Surabaya, East Java. For level 3, the gold medallist is enrolled in a school in Bekasi, West Java.

“The results show that children outside Jakarta are as intelligent as their counterparts in the capital if they are given equal opportunities,” Sanny said, adding that “‘Kuark’ can be our tool to educate the world”.

*Asia Media Forum (http://theasiamediaforum.org)

In a country with more than 400 print media outlets, Indonesia’s first and only children’s newspaper is a breath of fresh air.

Now on its third year, the mainly Indonesian-language ‘Berani’ (‘brave’) believes in starting ‘em young when it comes to the love of reading. The 16- page newspaper’s motto, after all, is “A nation that develops is a nation that reads”. Its target readers are elementary and junior high students.

“We decided to come up with this newspaper after finding out that Indonesian children ranked very low among other countries in literacy, with only 30 percent understanding the material they read,” Henricus Witdarmono, a 64- year-old former teacher who is the newspaper’s founder and chief editor, told the Asia Media Forum.

This 30 percent figure came from the 2003 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. PISA is a system of international assessments that measures the capabilities of 15-year-olds in reading literacy, mathematics literacy and science literacy every three years.

Based on the 2003 PISA results, Indonesian students did not do well in three areas — reading, mathematics and science. Highly literate countries include Finland, South Korea and Hong Kong, according to the study.

“By reading the news, children will continue to inquire. They will always ask why,” said Witdarmono, who founded the paper in April 2006 after working for ‘Kompas’, Indonesia’s largest daily, for 16 years. “They will also be aware of what is happening around them.”

For being the first Indonesian paper for children, ‘Berani’ received an award from the Indonesian Museum of Records.

Published from Monday to Friday, it has sections on foreign news, special reports and sports, as well science and technology, literature and values. On the last page, ‘Berani’ features profiles of interesting people. It employs seven reporters, three artists and three designers.

“‘Berani’ is an interesting newspaper to read. It has a lot of good news and big news about the world,” said Karla Margaret Ntalagewang, a Grade 2 student in Binus International School Simprug in South Jakarta, whose elementary students subscribe to the paper.

“Young children like me don’t enjoy reading ‘Kompas’ and other Indonesian newspapers because they are difficult to understand. We should be happy because there is an Indonesian newspaper for us,” stressed Karla, aged seven.

‘Berani’ articles are easy to understand and are written from the children’s point of view. An editorial policy rules that each sentence should not be more than 18 words.

Based on recommendations by a child psychologist, the paper does not publish news about crimes, terrorism, accidents, killings and bombings.

“Berani is informative, but it has to make some improvements. It should feature popular people such as leaders, scientists, and artists, not people whose lives are not interesting,” said Grade 4 Binus student Therese Ken Maya.

A number of other schools use ‘Berani’ as reference and educational reading material.

“It would be much better if Berani had more pages and increased the number of articles written in English. It would also be more fun if we could read more short stories in Berani,” added 10-year-old Therese.

Witdarmono, however, stressed that the newspaper’s thickness is packaged to suit children’s reading span of around 25 minutes in one sitting.

The Jakarta-based daily is sold at 2,000 rupiah (20 U.S. cents) per copy. Subscription rate per month is 39,000 rupiah (4 U.S. dollars) for readers in Java and 45,000 rupiah (4.7 U.S. dollars) for other places outside Java. The newspaper is distributed nationwide, but 80 percent of its circulation is in Greater Jakarta.

Unlike other newspapers, ‘Berani’ is sold in popular bookstores such as Gramedia and Toko Gunung Agung, but not on the streets. “We cannot sell ‘Berani’ on the streets due to safety reasons. Parents won’t allow their children to buy the paper from street vendors,” said Witdarmono, who is also the paper’s chief editor.

About 80 percent of copies go to subscribers, including schools and parents.

Together with ‘Kompas’ and other newspapers, ‘Berani’ is distributed in numerous cities and towns, including Bandung in West Java, Semarang and Yogyakarta in Central Java, Surabaya and Malang in East Java, Medan in North Sumatra, Palu in Central Sulawesi, and Palangkaraya in Central Kalimantan.

Besides articles on current issues, ‘Berani’ contains interesting quotes by famous people, a definition of terms, comics and educational games such as Sudoku, map reading, mazes and puzzles. Based on the newspaper’s survey, readers’ favourite sections are the foreign and sports news.

‘Berani’ has just one page dedicated to English-language articles, uses font size 11, and its size is a bit larger than the U.S. ‘Time’ magazine.

The English page was based on the request of state-owned schools, which needed some English-teaching materials to improve the skills of students. ‘Berani’ also encourages children to contribute special reports or literary articles — with payment — for its Tuesday and Friday editions.

Apart from accommodating student visits to its office, ‘Berani’ organises workshops for teachers as well as students on writing reports, news and features.

The newspaper educates students about current issues and events. In March this year, prior to the Indonesian direct presidential election, it organised a mock election among children to increase their awareness of democracy and politics.

‘Berani’, however, is not spared from readers’ complaints. Islamic schools returned copies of the paper’s edition that featured the scientific evolution of man, because they do not believe in Darwin’s theory that human beings originated from apes.

The newspaper also upset some of its Muslim readers when it published a picture of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with Indonesian students on Feb. 19. Some Muslim conservatives were concerned about the apparent closeness of Indonesia with the United States.

The paper’s aim is to be read by more than 100,000 students in the country, as awareness about the necessity to read remains low among Indonesian children.

“Our competitor is not other newspapers and magazines, but the television. Children prefer to watch TV instead of reading. We hope to change that attitude,” stressed Witdarmono, whose office in ‘Berani’ displays a huge laminated poster that reads “Change, We Can”.

*Asia Media Forum (http://www.theasiamediaforum.org)