Effective education calls for critical, intellectual teachers

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): Joko Kusmanto's article in the Jan. 9 edition of The Jakarta Post stirred ambivalent feelings in me. On the one hand, I completely agree with his vision that our teachers should become "critical and transformative -- or transforming -- intellectuals".

On the other, I have grave doubts such a vision can materialize in our present society.

Granted, we had teachers in the past who were real intellectuals by any standard. There was the late Ki Mohammad Said of the Taman Siswa educational system, for instance, who was consistently critical of social conditions around him.

And he was not afraid to act or behave in a way that he considered right or appropriate, even though it bucked popular beliefs and expectations.

One day in 1966, after he was made education minister by then caretaker president Soeharto, he courageously came out of his office to face students shouting anti-Sukarno slogans.

He shouted back "Yes! I am a Sukarnoist! Just what do you want?"

As I remember, he went against the tide of opposition against the country's first president because he was tired of all the empty political slogans of the time (he was education minister for only three months).

He wanted students to be more critical, using reason rather than their emotions in facing the tumult.

Many times during his lifetime he acted in ways which made the establishment uncomfortable.

Another great teacher-intellectual was the late Ir. Djuanda, who was, if I am not mistaken, prime minister of this republic during the last eight years of his life. He was an engineer by training, a graduate of the prestigious Technische Hooge School in Bandung, today's Bandung Institute of Technology.

He could have enjoyed a comfortable life using his engineering expertise to work with the colonial government.

Instead, he preferred to teach, and toward the end of the Dutch colonial era he became the director of a private teachers' training school, the Hollands Inlandse Kweekschool Muhammadiyah in Jakarta.

According to one of his former students, someone whom I later looked upon as a critical and transforming educator himself, the late Ir. Djuanda was not only an excellent teacher of mathematics, but a transforming political force as well within the school.

He groomed students to become teachers highly critical sense toward existing social and political conditions in the country. It made some of his students overtly nationalistic at a time when it was politically dangerous, but Ir. Djuanda was always ready to protect them against the suspicions and probing of the colonial police.

Through this kind of pedagogy, he prepared many young Indonesians who, in their own way, contributed to the preparation of their homeland to become an independent nation.

There were many other teachers like these two in the past. And it is a matter of historical record that our educational system, once quite respectable, was the result of hard and persevering labor by Indonesian teachers who can be rightly called "transforming critical intellectuals".

The skeleton of our present educational system was the product of highly imaginative endeavors performed during difficult times of the Japanese occupation and the period of physical revolution.

In light of these historical precedents, why then am I skeptical of Joko's vision for our teachers in the future?

Because times have changed, and conditions within our society have also altered. The very social and political conditions of the past that made it possible for Ki Mohammad Said and Ir. Djuanda to become great transforming teachers-cum-intellectuals were void during the Soeharto regime, and are still missing in our present society.

During the last three decades, any teacher with the potential to become a transforming intellectual like Ki Mohammad Said or Ir. Djuanda would, within the existing political climate, be thwarted in his or her attempts to advance.

What is an intellectual?

According to James MacGregor Burns (1963), an intellectual is a person whose basic inclination is to examine, ponder, wonder, theorize, criticize and imagine.

An intellectual is also a person who is "concerned critically with values, purposes, ends that transcend immediate practical needs".

By this definition, an intellectual is someone who deals with both analytical and normative ideas. He or she is thus both a theorist and a moralist, a person who unites data and values with disciplined imagination.

And what is the essence of being critical? According to James Alcock (1996), it is the willingness to be open-minded, the willingness to submit observations and conclusions made by a single individual for independent verification and validation by others. Being critical thus implies willingness to put collective validation above individual validation.

Being critical and open-minded will, according to Paul Kurtz (1996), enable us to distinguish between speculative conjecture from objective, reliable and confirmatory evidence.

An open-minded and critical person is willing to have his or her ideas subjected to critical examination, and is receptive to new ideas. But such a person will not gullibly accept anything and everything without a responsible filtering process.

And what is the essence of being transformative or transforming for a teacher?

Borrowing from the analysis of James MacGregor Burns, we can say that for a teacher to be transforming entails being ready to identify the potential motives of the students, being ready to help them satisfy their higher needs and willing to engage them as full people of equal merit.

This kind of relationship requires mutual trust, and through this kind of relationship transforming teachers guide their students in the process of acquiring their better selves.

We see from these explanations why it is almost impossible for our teachers in our present conditions to become "transforming critical intellectuals". Our teachers are never in a position to question the validity of opinions held by those above them. They are always required to accept without reservation the opinions and ideas formulated by their "superiors".

They have never been allowed to be critical.

Does it mean Joko's vision is a utopia? No!

It means that we have to work hard to make it possible for his vision to become reality. From the perspective of building democracy in our country, the presence of teachers as transforming critical intellectuals is a must.

Democratic society presupposes "thoughtful, educated citizens who can deliberate reflectively and think critically". Without such citizenry, it is not unthinkable that we will revert to our previous stage of a totalitarian society inching perilously toward a totalitarian state.

The writer is an observer of social and cultural affairs.