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.