Educators must recognize their social and psychological

Educators must recognize their social and psychological
responsibilities

Simon Marcus Gower
Principal
Harapan Bangsa High School
Tangerang, Banten

The following is the complaint of one teacher with over ten
years of experience teaching in Jakarta high school.

"I'm a teacher. I teach the material in the book, that's all I
can do really. I don't have time to do anything more. I know
this is not good for my students, but what can I do? At the end
of the school day, I go home and then go to my other job. The
pay isn't enough as a teacher."

These are the rather sad and even prophetic words. Viewed over
the long-term, what is being prophesied is nothing short of a
failure of education and a failure for the students. It is clear
that many schools, teachers and students still exist with the
overbearing pressures to meet curriculum targets and cram in as
much content as possible.

In these conditions, almost inevitably, teachers will "teach
the material in the book" and fail to consider the students and
their human needs.

The 'human needs' of school students can be great too. They
are, after all, in the very vulnerable and sensitive formative
years of their lives. Each day they will be experiencing new
thoughts, ideas and feelings. Inevitably the students' emotional
state will be an influencing factor in their school life but too
often the emotional and mental welfare of students in Indonesia
is not sufficiently thought of and cared for.

Learning and education has developed to appreciate, and try to
understand as much as possible, alternative forms of
intelligence. Now it is quite common and entirely reasonable for
educators to talk of multiple-intelligence and consider the
emotional intelligence of students but as yet these concepts
still seem quite obscure to Indonesian teachers and education
planners.

In essence within Indonesian schools today, teachers and
students are still caught up in a whirlwind of knowledge and
information that has to be presented and mostly memorized,
whilst true understanding and learning seems to be only on the
periphery of what is happening in schools. Students are
overwhelmed by both too many subjects to study, and too much to
be studied within each of those subjects.

In this context the maxim, and guiding philosophy, of 'less is
more' seems to apply and if only it were applied school students
could both enjoy their school lives more and ultimately achieve
far more successful and long lasting learning. It seems, however,
that schools exist within the notion of pushing more and more
upon the students that leaves the students dumbfounded and even
affected detrimentally psychologically.

The kinds of mental pressures that are exerted on students to
perform and attain high scores can, in fact, leave mental scares.
Take the example of one second year high school student, she had
been achieving some very good scores for her school work but
halfway through the academic year she was struggling to keep up
with the breadth and depth of subjects that she needed to study
to attain the grades she wanted and needed. Finally this pressure
took its toll and her scores dropped.

So great was the mental burden that had been placed on her to
perform that this drop in her scores lead to nothing short of a
mental breakdown. She wept openly in front of her friends and
teachers and long sessions of counseling were required to get her
to feel a little better about herself and be able to return to
her classes.

The burden of expectancy plus the burden of an over congested
school timetable had conspired to render her a nervous wreck. The
tears flowed and her whole body shook with the nerve shattering
experience that she had had.

This 'nerve shattering experience' is one that will probably
live on in her memory for quite some time but it is also
indicative of a major problem for Indonesian educators. Too great
a concentration on the presentation and acquisition of knowledge
leaves the great responsibilities that educators have for the
development of psychologically balanced and socially aware
students and young adults on the sideline.

But the reality is that schools and teachers have to have some
skills in educational psychology and they must be able to help
develop their students socially. When a child first enters a
school it is, in essence, that child's first encounter with
society. It is a first opportunity to see where they fit into a
wider community.

It is a first opportunity to make more friends and it is a
first place at which to learn of social responsibility. But these
opportunities for human interaction are often neglected and not
fully capitalized on by educators to provide positive learning
experiences that will help the child grow as a student and
develop psychologically and intellectually.

Educators are entrusted with an enormous responsibility to
look out for and offer guardianship for the social growth and
psychological well-being of school students. Having been
entrusted with this responsibility it is incumbent on educators
to enhance students' social and psychological experiences.

This s not to suggest that they must manipulate their students
or engage in mind games, but it does mean that they have to fully
exercise care and guardianship to ensure that students are not
detrimentally affected or afflicted by what they encounter in
schools. Ultimately a school is a social entity; it is a
community into which people must try to fit and actively
participate and hopefully succeed.

At present in Indonesia, however, the social context of
schools and schooling is not sufficiently recognized. The
pressure of too much to learn in too many subjects carries with
it the potential stigma of failure that can harm psychological
welfare and undermine intellectual development.

Psychologists recognize that true peace of mind most often
emanates from human connection and interaction. Educators should
be wise enough to similarly recognize that true peace of mind
creates a conducive condition for learning to take place. So by
nurturing social interaction in schools, teachers can help foster
a social and mental state that will intrinsically help their
students to learn.

Indonesian teachers would surely benefit from giving greater
thought to their social and psychological responsibilities and
that benefit may be passed on to their students in the form of a
better school life.