The Jungle School: Towards a National Policy on Indigenous Education

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-350-4_33How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Contextual Education; Indigenous Education; Cultural Preservation Orang Rimba; Indonesia

Abstract

This study looks into the implementation and impact of contextual education strategies among the Orang Rimba, an indigenous community in Indonesia. It uses a combination of experiential and systematic research methods to draw on data collected during field visits, interviews, and workshops with Orang Rimba and educational facilitators from the Sokola Institute. The research focuses on the educational model’s three primary stages namely basic literacy, applied literacy, and internal organization. Our investigation reveals that the Orang Rimba’s traditional knowledge and oral culture have a significant impact on their perception of formal education. Basic literacy efforts concentrate on fundamental skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic that are tailored to the community’s current needs and cultural context. Furthermore, by expanding these abilities to useful domains like health literacy and financial transactions, applied literacy shows how important education is to day-to-day living. Lastly, the internal organization stage aims to empower the community by fostering self-sufficiency and internal educational leadership. The contextual education model developed by the Sokola Institute is showing encouraging results in closing the knowledge gap between formal education and indigenous knowledge. The blending of traditional knowledge with contemporary teaching methods preserves cultural identity and gives the Orang Rimba the necessary tools for interacting with the outside world. The study emphasizes how crucial it is to use culturally sensitive teaching methods to support indigenous communities’ inclusive and sustainable development.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Semiarto Aji Purwanto
AU  - Dodi Rochdian
AU  - Aditya Dipta Anindita
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/01/15
TI  - The Jungle School: Towards a National Policy on Indigenous Education
BT  - Proceedings of the 1st Joint International Conference on Social and Political Sciences: Challenges and Opportunities in the Future (JICSPS 2023)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 334
EP  - 344
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-350-4_33
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-350-4_33
ID  - Purwanto2025
ER  -