SHOULD ENGLISH BE A COMPULSORY SUBJECT IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS?

and Culture no. 060/U/1993 it was stated that English could be intro-duced to the fourth grade students of primary school as a local content subject. As a result, English is now treated as inseparable from the school curriculum as many schools feel the needs as well as the must to teach it. The most current issue on English at primary school in In-donesia at present is whether English should be included as a compul-sory subject in the curriculum. This paper tries to discuss facts about young learners, the requirements needed for teaching English to young learners, and the practice of the teaching of English in primary schools which hopefully help answer the issue. Key words: English, primary school, local-content subject. In a seminar on English teaching held in 1986 by the Ministry of Educa-tion and Culture it was recommended that a national survey on the teach-ing of English in secondary school be conducted (Huda, 1999). In re-sponse to this recommendation, two surveys involving parents, teachers, and students of both public and private secondary schools were conducted. The first survey involving 8 provinces was conducted in 1988 and the second one conducted in 1989 involved 27 provinces. The results of the surveys showed that the majority of parent and student respondents stated that their children needed English in order to get good jobs in the futur