Implementing Indonesia's English teaching system

Implementing Indonesia's English teaching system

By Iwan Jazadi

ADELAIDE (JP): There are at least two messages so far
concerning the educational visions of the new Minister of
National Education Yahya Muhaimin. First, he sees the need to
upgrade the quality of Indonesian education so that it can match
American standards, in terms of students' creativity development
and reading-writing habits.

Second, he does not have any intention to establish a new
curriculum policy because what is important to him is how to
create an environment where students can study and develop
themselves optimally. Therefore, his agenda regarding the
curriculum is to reemphasize primary and secondary education
curriculum concepts that have not been given proper attention by
the previous governments.

This writer identified key problems of Indonesia's English
teaching system at the classroom-curriculum and macro-societal
levels in earlier articles.

In line with the new minister's agenda, from the perspective
of the high school English curriculum, the following discusses
and recommends some conceptual considerations about how a
learner-centered communicative approach could be successfully
implemented.

The premise of the considerations is the need to ensure that
the roles of the central government curriculum guidelines,
syllabuses, textbooks and the national assessment system are
appropriately understood. Such an assurance implies that
education stakeholders -- such as curriculum writers, textbook
writers, inspectors, teachers and students -- should possess a
true understanding of the principles and technicalities
underlying the so-called "communicative approach" and "learner-
centered approach" in the Indonesian English teaching system.

Schools and teachers, as executives of the national curriculum
policy, should be entitled to a great deal of autonomy for
interpreting and developing the policy in classrooms.

The 1994 national curriculum for the high school English
subject clearly stipulates the principles of the learner-centered
communicative approach: students are prime subjects in teaching
and learning activities. All kinds of curriculum decisions,
including the preparation and selection of learning materials and
learning activities, student needs, interests, value systems and
futures must be considered. Meanwhile, teachers play a
facilitative role during the teaching and learning processes.

The Ministry of Education has been on the right track with the
conceptualization of the principles of the learner-centered
communicative approach. The ministry's mission now is to make
sure that related education stakeholders fully understand and
implement such principles. The ministry's key officers must
realize that their main tasks are limited to the provision of
general principles or guidelines; their role in education quality
control should not go beyond this scope.

Curriculum technicalities such as the material to be taught,
how the material is selected and prepared, and the methodologies
to be used should ideally be under the authority of schools and
teachers.

If schools and teachers are not yet capable of this
responsibility, it should at least be delegated to the provincial
offices of education departments, not returned to the central
government. This is because first, given the country's diversity,
the central government will never be able to provide details to
enable a fair reflection of learner-centered principles.

Second, in provincial capitals, at least nowadays there is one
public education faculty where new teachers for the province are
prepared.

Also, there are many high school teachers whose rich
experience and expertise has rarely been utilized. They are the
people who understand better the details at the grassroots level,
and at the same time understand the message of the central
government.

In line with the implementation of the regional autonomy act
and the planned education budget increase, the above alternatives
are realistic to explore. Would the government then have to
disregard and or eliminate the entire teaching program and
textbooks of the 1994 national curriculum to make way for local
developments?

Not necessarily. What needs to be done is to change education
stakeholders' conceptual attitudes. The conceptual status of
teaching programs listed in the second section of the 1994
curriculum documents and textbooks has to be shifted from
"compulsory" to one of "suggested" or "sample" materials. This
means that teachers may use materials only if they are relevant
to their students, and they can seek their own material.

Last, with regard to the final examinations or EBTANAS, it
should be noted that the 1989 education act states that "The
government can evaluate the learning progress of any strata of
education at a national level". The word "can" indicates that
national evaluation is not necessarily as important as is
generally believed. The government can establish such a measure
only if they have the ability to do so.

The Ministry of Education should therefore ensure that EBTANAS
is not given too much emphasis -- at least due to the poor
quality of the present national testing. How can multiple choice
questions adequately measure students' English reading, writing,
listening and speaking skills?

The government should make clear that such testing should not
place a constraint on daily teaching and learning activities.

If evaluation or assessment is important to indicate how
students progress, this would be the agenda of the school, and
particularly the teachers and students who are responsible for
establishing any means of assessment that does not violate the
principles of their learner-centered communicative approach.

Put in practice, the above principles would enable English
language teaching to flourish, following its success in its
original context of English as a Second Language in English
speaking countries.

The writer is an English lecturer in Indonesia currently
undertaking a PhD at the University of South Australia.