40 Facts About Kurnianingrat

Raden Ajeng Kurnianingrat Sastrawinata, more commonly known mononymously as Kurnianingrat, was an Indonesian educator and pioneer of the country's curriculum for teaching English as a foreign language.

Kurnianingrat was deputy director of Indonesia's English Language Inspectorate, a branch of the Ministry of Education, Instruction, and Culture, from 1953 to 1956.

Kurnianingrat's first teaching assignment, in 1938, was in Batavia, where she first learned about the growing Indonesian nationalist movement.

Kurnianingrat spent time abroad to further her education; first, a one-year study in Sydney to learn about Australia's education system, then two years at Cornell University in the United States to complete a Master of Arts degree in English literature.

Kurnianingrat formed friendships with a number of foreign scholars of Indonesia, including Herbert Feith and his wife, Betty, Ailsa Thomson Zainuddin, and George McTurnan Kahin.

Kurnianingrat was born in Ciamis, a town near the border of West Java and Central Java, on 4 September 1919.

Kurnianingrat's father was Raden Adipati Aria Sulaeman Sastrawinata, a Sundanese aristocrat who was appointed the of Ciamis by administrators of the Dutch East Indies colony that included Java.

Kurnianingrat married Suhaemi, a schoolteacher from Garut and the daughter of a local landowner, after the death of his first wife from dysentery.

Kurnianingrat was always welcome at the kabupaten and visited daily for a few hours, often accompanying her father on inspection tours of the regency.

Kurnianingrat began attending the village school at age three or four.

Kurnianingrat was then sent to Bandung at age seven to enter a school run by the Ursuline order.

Kurnianingrat followed the training course with a more advanced two-year course, which allowed her to earn a certificate.

In 1938, Kurnianingrat began her career teaching third grade at a Dutch-Chinese primary school in Glodok, the Chinese district of the colonial capital, Batavia.

Kurnianingrat evacuated to the countryside with her family, and, by March 1942, Japanese forces occupied Purwakarta.

The invasion caused her father to lose his pension from the Dutch colonial administration, so Kurnianingrat sought work in Batavia, by then renamed Jakarta by the Japanese military administration, after several months of unemployment.

Kurnianingrat offered her employment at the municipal office, though her salary was very small.

Kurnianingrat first became interested in psychology as a student at the Indo-European Society teacher training school.

In Yogyakarta, Kurnianingrat observed that residents were regularly urged to speak the still-developing Indonesian language instead of a foreign language.

Kurnianingrat was vacationing with family in Purwakarta when news of Japan's surrender to western Allies in 1945 reached the Indies.

In 1946, Kurnianingrat began teaching English at a senior high school and reading English-language broadcasts for the Voice of Free Indonesia radio station.

In 1947, Kurnianingrat was selected as a secretary for the Indonesian delegation to the United Nations-brokered Renville negotiations with the Dutch.

Kurnianingrat continued teaching students in secret with other high school teachers and conducted administrative work for the Indonesian Red Cross Society.

Kurnianingrat returned to Indonesia in December 1950 and was warmly welcomed by education ministry officials eager to hear about her experience in Australia.

Kurnianingrat was appointed the head of a teacher training school and tasked with transforming the Dutch school into a "republican institution".

Kurnianingrat applied to join the inspectorate and was accepted as its deputy director.

Kurnianingrat was joined by its director, Fritz Wachendorff, and a staffer, Harumani Rudolph-Sudirdjo.

Kurnianingrat traveled to the United States to study English literature and linguistics at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York after receiving a scholarship from the Ford Foundation.

Kurnianingrat spent two years at the university and completed a Master of Arts thesis on the history of William Shakespeare in Indonesia.

Kurnianingrat's thesis explored the origins of Komedi Stambul, a form of ethnic folk theatre from the late colonial period, which performed adaptations of works such as Hamlet.

Kurnianingrat lamented the general low level of proficiency in English as few could afford the cost of private lessons.

Kurnianingrat received an offer from London-based Longman to publish a textbook, but she rejected it because the publisher did not want to print the author's name on the cover.

Kurnianingrat taught privately in her later years, but by her 70s she would virtually lose her eyesight and could no longer write unaided.

At the encouragement of Rudolph-Sudirdjo, Kurnianingrat began writing a memoir and included drafts among letters written to historian Ailsa Thomson Zainuddin between January 1991 and June 1993.

In 1940, during Kurnianingrat's first teaching assignment in Batavia, she began a courtship with Jusuf Prawira Adiningrat, a law student.

Kurnianingrat then requested the Ministry of Education to transfer her assignment to Purwakarta, so she could be properly chaperoned.

Kurnianingrat later married the widowed former prime minister Ali Sastroamidjojo, whose wife had died several years prior.

Kurnianingrat encouraged him to complete a memoir, published in 1974.

Kurnianingrat confessed in her later years that she had "learned to appreciate Kartini much more" through Zainuddin's writings.

Kurnianingrat formed friendships with Indonesian Red Cross official Paramita Abdurachman and American historian George McTurnan Kahin.

Kurnianingrat's experience working with these three individuals made her an early supporter of the Australia's volunteers.