ABSTRACT
Fundamental economic, social, and cultural changes have taken place in Indonesia since 1998. The decline of the 32-year-long rule of Soeharto paved way for the establishment of a new regime called the Reform era. This change of regime could not resolve all the problems that arose from the transition of power. Education was one of the most severely affected sectors under the new regime. Indonesia’s education system, which was based on nationalism, is integrated with the values of neoliberalism. The poor education system, low competitiveness of human resources, and globalization are the reasons why Indonesia’s education system began to adopt the values of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism resulted in Indonesia’s education system being based on meeting the needs of the industries. Because nationalism and neoliberalism are incorporated in Indonesia’s education system, this study aims to reconstruct and compare the practice of nationalism and neoliberalism during the Reform era in Indonesia. In order to achieve this objective, a descriptive qualitative analysis was conducted on 18 Indonesian presidential speeches from 1998 to 2016. We used Fairclough’s three-dimensional frameworks incorporating linguistics.
