Seeing Education in Indonesia: How Movie Represents the Inequality in Eastern Indonesia

There has been significant concern and constant debate about the education inequality in Eastern Indonesia, hence seeing its representation in the movie can be a way of voicing and negotiating the unspoken. This study aims to analyse the condition of education in Eastern Indonesia which is represented in the Indonesian films supported with data from other studies and analyse the correlation of the education condition with the national policies, as well as try to formulate solutions to this problem. The objects under study were the Indonesian films set in Eastern Indonesia including Denias Senandung di Atas Awan, Di Timur Matahari, Tanah Air Beta, and Aisyah: Biarkan Kami Bersaudara. The theory employed is the concept of Spoken and Unspoken of Pierre Macherey. The study went through the following steps: 1) classifying films set in Eastern Indonesia to determine the object of research; 2) analysing the representation of educational conditions in Eastern Indonesia in these films as a form of Spoken; and 3) analysing things that are not represented with the support of data from other research results as a form of Unspoken. The results showed: 1) education in Eastern Indonesia faces problems in terms of the school buildings condition, access to support, and the lack of teachers as teachers; 2) low participation in education in Eastern Indonesia is most likely attributed to poor implementation of the national Education Law, both Law Number 2 (Year 1989) and Law Number 20 (Year 2003); and 3) solution to the problem of education in Eastern Indonesia apart from the implementational issue of the law is the provision of educational scholarships for the best “sons and daughters” from the eastern part of the Archipelago to attend teacher trainings to ensure availability of teachers for their region.