Anxiety, optimism greets new primary curriculum ...

Anxiety, optimism greets new primary curriculum ...

By Ati Nurbaiti and Rita A. Widiadana

This week marks the start of the new school term with the new,
1994 curriculum coming into practice across the country. It is
one of the two recent efforts to improve the national educational
system. The other is the extension of the compulsory learning
program from six to nine years. The Jakarta Post talked with
educators, students and parents about the change in the
elementary level curriculum that will be applied in stages, the
first through fourth levels being the first affected by it.

JAKARTA (JP): Nanny Yoppie has high hopes for the new primary
school curriculum because she is sick of watching her daughter
Joan study.

"I hope children will be more creative, and not only
memorize," she said. Almost daily her third grader blared out
phrases from four subjects: social studies, history, civics and
physics. Starting Monday, Joan, a fourth grader, will experience
the 1994 curriculum which has replaced the one applied since
1984.

Desi, who is also in the fourth grade, says she dislikes
history, presented in a book entitled History of the National
Struggle.

"Once our teacher had us write down a whole chapter about
Pangeran Diponegoro from the book. We protested but our teacher
just said do it."

Another parent, Sutrisna, didn't know about the new curriculum
affecting the first and fourth graders this year and, by 1996,
all elementary students to grade six.

"The important thing is that schools should not keep drawing
all those fees," said Sutrisna, a taxi driver, expressing a
widespread complaint by parents.

Others have also voiced ignorance of the new curriculum.
"Maybe the teacher will tell us on the first day of school, I
wasn't told anything when I picked up last semester's report,"
said another parent, Lilis.

The new curriculum, completed in 1992, tries to respond to
criticism of the education system; that classes are monotonous,
for example, and that students lack basic skills.

For the elementary curriculum, the dreaded history has now
been blended into social studies and civics.

Indonesian language has been allotted two more hours per week,
to give more time to writing skills, better communication and,
hopefully, literary appreciation.

Compared to the rigid guidelines in the 1984 curriculum, the
teachers have been given free reign, meaning that any method goes
with no time targets for particular items in each subject.

Also important is that the aim of the new elementary
curriculum is to ensure that children understand basic subjects,
particularly reading, writing and arithmetic.

According to Zainal Arifin Achmady, Director General of Basic
and Middle Education, the 1990 national census was among the
factors leading to this change.

The census revealed that Indonesian is used as a colloquial
language by only 15 percent of the population. This, he said in
an address to the National Teachers Association Congress earlier
this month, is reflected in children's poor ability to read and
write, while "...homework is mostly maths and natural sciences,
and much less reading or writing."

Optimistic

Some teachers voiced anxiety, but others were quite optimistic
about the change.

"We're very happy, although we're just going to attend our
first training on Monday," said Endang Purwasih last Saturday.

"I've read a little of the guidelines, and I feel it will be
much easier," the grade 1 teacher at the Cibubur state school
said.

She is particularly glad that stress on basic arithmetic
rather than mathematics has come back. A subject of debate
between educators for several years, supporters of mathematics
such as Andi Hakim Nasution, former rector of the Bogor Institute
of Agriculture, said it was needed to instill logic. Meanwhile
parents complained children could not add up while shopping.

"Parents always have difficulty in helping with maths
homework," Endang added.

Angga Dama Nirmala, a former fourth grader, also felt that
maths was difficult, though luckily she is a bright student. Work
in Indonesian lessons, she continued, is mostly filling in blanks
with the answers provided in the text book.

"I hate writing stories," said Angga of the Harsia private
school in West Bekasi. "I like sports and handicraft because we
get to go outside. Sometimes we sketch outside too, when the
teacher tells us to draw houses or trees."

With the new curriculum, children will find learning more fun,
"provided teachers are more active and creative," Endang said.

But precisely because most teachers are the opposite, the new
curriculum has already drawn various criticisms, since it was
announced last February under former Minister of Education and
Culture Fuad Hassan.

Dictated

In response to critics, Harsja Bachtiar, former head of the
Ministry's research and development center and an aide to the
current Minister, Wardiman Djojonegoro, said "we will never begin
if we keep asking whether or not the schools are ready."

The anxious teachers say they are not.

"We have become used to being dictated to (by the former rigid
teaching guidelines)," said a fourth grade teacher in Bekasi,
who attended special courses about the new curriculum at the
Ministry.

"I'm still confused and I have to apply it this week," Mrs.
Suwito said. Teachers, she adds, only teach students the answers
in key books in most subjects.

The new "Teaching Program Guidelines" require teachers to use
more initiative and every source available, including the print
and electronic media.

The guidelines are much shorter than the old ones but, as the
confused teacher said, in no way simpler.

"The shorter a curriculum is, the higher quality of teacher
required," says Tunggul Siagian, the manager of the 21-year old
PSKD Christian school group in Jakarta.

Observers say this means that only children of a few quality
schools will benefit from the need for increased initiative from
teachers.

Suwawan, a teacher in Tangerang, says "we will still look to
the old curriculum guidelines." It was good, he said, because it
provided a solid schedule for when certain materials must be
covered. However, he acknowledged, he had to rush with history in
the previous semester because, "there was so much material for so
little time."

J.J. Hasibuan, a professor at the state-owned IKIP teacher's
college in Malang, Central Java, brought up the "chronic" problem
of scarce teaching sources.

"What about schools in remote areas where teachers rarely see
television and newspapers?" he asked.

"Teachers in these areas simply do not use these media," said
Hasibuan. He chairs a private team which is trying to further
simplify the government's teaching guidelines with dialog-
sounding sentences.

"Which teachers can understand the abstract phrases in the
guidelines?" he said. He pointed to the aim for teaching civics
and Pancasila in the guideline's introduction: "to develop and
conserve the high values and morals rooted in Indonesian
culture."

A better opening, he said, would be, "You might be a teacher
in a remote area in Irian Jaya ...what is being a citizen like to
you?"

A former high ranking official at the Ministry of Education
and Culture pointed out that the team which prepared the new
curriculum worked very hard to blend demands from the public and
government agencies to ensure the younger generation will be of
better stock than their elders.

"There were too many titipan (demands), like tax awareness,
family planning....," from various agencies said a source who
requested anonymity, adding that the demands were unrealistic if
teachers are not well equipped.

Lively

Critics aside, the program comes into effect today and the
teachers will have to somehow manage.

Lacking guidance, initiative and facilities to enable them to
suddenly teach freely, children may be the teachers' greatest
aides.

As Desi cites, "Once we said, `come on teacher, let's go
outside' and we asked her about the plants in the schoolyard and
now we know them by heart."

Learning outside the classroom is rare at her school.

Teacher Suwawan says lively students like Desi, often
considered naughty and too talkative, actually help teachers.
"Most of our students seem shy and because they don't ask us
anything, we don't realize our own need to look for information
outside of school books," he said.