VERNACULAR INTELLIGENCE: COLONIAL PEDAGOGY AND THE LANGUAGE QUESTION IN MINANGKABAU1

Abstract

In the late 1920s the Dutch colonial government resolved to use local languages instead of Malay as the medium of instruction in indigenous schools throughout the Netherlands East Indies. In West Sumatra, this programme was launched in the academic year 1931–1932, and the government required schools to use the first series of textbooks published in the Minangkabau language – Lakēh pandai [Learn quickly], Kini lah pandai [Now I have learnt] and Dangakanlah [Listen!] – written by the Dutch linguist M.G. Emeis. This essay traces Minangkabau resistance to Emeis' works, and examines the confrontation between Dutch colonial policy and local expectations regarding the language of instruction used in the school system of West Sumatra. It also documents the philological efforts of Dutch experts to render the spoken Minangkabau language in a written romanised form, and looks at the scholarly discourse on Minangkabau language in the colonial period. 1An earlier version of this article was presented at Third International Convention of Asia Scholars in Singapore, 19–22 August 2003. I gratefully acknowledge the help of Jan van der Putten, Mikihiro Moriyama, Susan Rodgers, Mestika Zed, Elsbeth Locher-Scholten, Jeffrey Hadler and two anonymous Indonesia and the Malay World reviewers for their valuable comments on the draft of this paper. I also thank Willem Adriaan Emeis for sending me the documents and the pictures of his father that are used as illustrations in this paper. Any mistakes, of course, are mine alone.