Batik : Knowledge Artifact - learning from Yogyakarta

If you have a chance to visit Indonesia, at least one thing you could not forget. "Batik" is a wonder pattern that painted on cloths, and this pattern seem to be as a image of Indonesian. Each pattern of batik told people about thought of indonesian and set of patterns are able to indicate us about history of city in Indonesia.

From my point of view, there are huge knowledge inside these batiks, namely these batiks are as a container of knowledge on traditional products. I beleave that batik is a community capital or let's call "intellectual capital of Indonesian. Very pity, if new generations are not able to perceived their mother's land capital. Do not different from Thailand or other developing countries, we are going to a big pitfall of monetary capital. Poor people hope to be rich in someday, farmers hope that new crop seedling & new agricultural technology will give them higher yield but forget that such new knowledge what got from other e.g. how to produce crop seedling, fertilizer, peticide etc. they have to buy from other. Previously, our forefather have to create own knowledge for their living, working and so on when we know wording of "development" then our falk wisdom be forgotten. Nowaday vast number of people are not able to create knowledge, even people in university or other formal education institute. More development people will be a "Knowledge consumer" more than "knowledge creator" it do not happen as we hope.


Learning from batik, is a one close-source of knowledge and it is a way of learning with local wisdom. There are many questions inside batik, each batik can told you about living style, creation of people, and many many things. Why new generations plan to leave their home community, even in local school never tought pupils to learn about community's capital. Therefore, the question is why new generations do not know how to survive within their home community when they educated.