The changing cultural climate in Indonesia at the turn of the century can be demonstrated by the story of a young man, Achmad, who graduated from a Dutch senior high school (HBS) in 1899. He was the first native student to pass the final exams at the highest institution of learning (there was none at university level at the time) in Batavia, the capital of the Netherlands East Indies. Another young man had completed the same type of education in Semarang, Central Java, the year before. They belonged to the first generation of Indonesians schooled in Western ideas and thoughts. Indeed Western types of elementary education and teacher training school existed in other parts of the archipelago, but most of them taught in Malay or in the vernacular. Dutch-language schools at a ‘European’ level were reserved for the white section of the colonial society.