ABSTRACT
A variety of Indonesia's distinctive characteristics exert a strong influence over the type and extent of the country's early childhood education. The nation's 931 inhabited islands form the world's largest archipelago, spreading across Southeast Asian seas for 3,194 miles east to west and 1,180 miles north to south. The islands straddle the equator, so the entire country is in the tropical zone, with its heaviest rainfall in the west, diminishing gradually toward the east. Preschool education during the colonial period was initiated by the Dutch during the second decade of the twentieth century but subsequently was also sponsored by Indonesians under a new nationalist schooling movement in the early 1920s. During World War II and the subsequent four-year Indonesian revolution against the returning Dutch colonial forces, preschools as private enterprises continued to operate but they decreased in number. Throughout the post-revolutionary period there was great variation in the quality of preschools.
