IO, Purwokerto – Universitas Soedirman (Unsoed) in Purwokerto, Central Java, held an International Conference on Culture, Education, Linguistics & Literature in the Java Heritage Hotel, Purwokerto, Monday (05/8). This year’s conference took the theme of “The Role of Humanities in Preserving Local Wisdom in Industry 4.0”.
Keynote speakers at the conference included Prof. Hywel Coleman (Great Britain), Prof. Chen Yiping (China), Mr. Philippe Grange (France), Dr. Mohammad Zain Sulaiman (Malaysia), and Muhammad Ahsanu (Indonesia). Deputy Rector for Student Affairs and Alumni/WR III, Dr. Kuat Puji Prayitno, SH, M.Hum, in his opening speech stated that entering the Fourth Industrial Revolution, information and communication technology could no longer be separated from everyday life.
“We have also become part of the citizens of the world, where barriers between nations are increasingly becoming invisible. From this, it becomes interesting to study, how meaningful ‘local wisdom’ becomes in such a globalized era,” he said to the media on Monday (5/8/2019).
The deputy rector also conveyed his appreciation for the holding of the seminar and his hope that the forum could serve as a space for dialogue which brings ideas and concepts to life, to answer the needs of the times.
In the conference, speakers discussed the use of the Indonesian language in an attempt to increase national unity. However, the high usage of Indonesian also impacted the 668 regional languages and its thousands of speakers, which were often at risk of dwindling to extinction. Another cause of the loss of languages includes urbanization and mixing of the population.
The role of educational institutions/ must be integrated, in order to minimize the extinction of regional languages. In the Fourth Industrial Revolution, regional languages as a form of “local wisdom” in their efforts to strengthen the national identity are balanced by education of the humanities based on said “local wisdom”.
With this understanding of “local wisdom”, it is expected to be able to strengthen and contribute to the progress of the nation. (*/est)