Curriculum needs reviewing

I am interested in what Prof. S. Hamid Hasan says about the Indonesian curriculum (Pikiran Rakyat, Dec. 20, 2000) which produces the current student profile that is rigid and robotic in terms of the national development goal. He states that students today are taught about social tolerance but how they demonstrate a truly tolerant attitude in their daily lives in society is not a prime concern. Similarly, they are aware of poverty but never do they have to learn how to help the poor in their neighborhood.

In other words, students are taught about such intelligent skills as linguistics, mathematics, etc., (Garder's multiple intelligent skills) but they lack one other crucial skill i.e. the kinesthetic skill.

So, students are given cognitive and affective skills but they are deprived of psychomotoric skills. Given the three dimensions of the human brain, they are only trained to develop their reptilian and emotional brains which are somewhat animate and robotic but less humanistic.

In my opinion, true education does not rest on these two parts of the brain or domain alone and must be equally directed at the well-balanced targets of the human capacity to grow in humanistic terms.

Education is the process of making men more human. For this reason, the present curriculum should be reviewed and reevaluated to achieve a well-balanced orientation between transformation, transaction and transmission, the nice portion of which should be maintained, otherwise it may produce an unexpected impact on national education output.

If education is intended to improve human quality, the curriculum must take charge of the shaping of the brain. In this regard, Tony Buzan (1997) has warned us that the brain is like a sleeping giant, and can be stimulated to reach its maximum potential.

ODO FADLOELI

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