Improving teachers skills is imperative for the future

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): Fellow columnist Ignas Kleden recently asked that I write something about the importance of intellectuality for our teachers. He was worried about teachers' lack of general knowledge. Most of them know very little or nothing at all about anything outside of their respective areas of teaching. Worse still, many teachers have serious shortcomings within their area of specialization. This, Ignas said, is a dangerous situation that must be remedied immediately.

I entirely agree with him. Our conversation made me think of an old proverb which says that learning from a teacher who has stopped studying is like drinking from a stagnant pool of water. It is unhealthy. And learning from a teacher who is constantly learning is like drinking from a pool of running water. It is invigorating.

Is a teacher without sufficient general knowledge really harmful?

Seen individually, such a teacher could not be considered harmful. The worst one could do would be to produce students with outdated knowledge and a myopic view about the world around them. Seen in a collective and accumulative way, however, I think a stock of teachers with poor general knowledge would in the long run harm the nation. Especially during this time of knowledge explosion, teachers with static and narrow knowledge are real liabilities. They could unknowingly arrest the development of healthy curiosity among students. They could, without realizing it, become boring by continuously teaching isolated pieces of knowledge in a time where knowledge is becoming increasingly interrelated.

From past experience I have observed that learning from teachers who lack general knowledge is not as exciting or enriching as learning from teachers rich in general knowledge. To use modern jargon, it can be stated that learning from teachers with unidisciplinary vision is not as exciting as learning from teachers with multidisciplinary or transdisciplinary vision.

How can we stimulate our teachers to become academically curious? How can we make them crave more and more knowledge throughout their teaching careers?

There is no simple answer to this question, I am afraid. One important factor is, I think, income. Increasing our teachers' incomes to a level where they can meet the financial demands of daily existence would, I think, make it easier to prod them into learning drive. But I am also sure that increased incomes alone would not automatically make them more academically curious, nor more willing to accumulate and digest information from available resources.

More important than raising their incomes is, in my opinion, improving the system of teachers' education. General knowledge is the result of sustained curiosity. And curiosity is a characteristic which has to be nurtured. No one is born curious, or capable of sustaining his or her curiosity. The present absence of satisfactory general knowledge entails unpleasant consequences, whereas if during prospective teachers' preservice education they were put in an environment where curiosity was encouraged and the actual possession of general knowledge praised, then it would be possible to generate a generation of teachers imbued with curiosity and equipped with the capability of expressing their curiosity into learning activities leading toward relevant general knowledge.

Is it possible to create this kind of institutional climate within our teachers colleges?

I am not sure there is an appropriate answer to this question. There is conflicting evidence. On the one hand there is the general opinion that teachers colleges today attract only those who would be rejected by any other higher education institution. If this is true, then it would be very difficult to implant academic curiosity among prospective teachers. Difficult, but not impossible.

On the other hand, I have met many students from various teachers colleges throughout the country who are very aggressive in their search for new and better knowledge, for the kind of knowledge they feel they cannot get from their professors and lecturers. They are hungry for the type of knowledge which would make them understand the political and social contexts of educational problems within our schools. And they are dissatisfied with the kind of knowledge they receive from their professors. What they want is a comprehensive map of our national problems within the field of education described within the context of the political and social situation of Indonesia. What they have been looking for is general knowledge which would enable them to become intelligent practitioners of the teaching craft.

I think this kind of intellectual yearning constitutes a natural basis for creating a program which would lead students toward vital academic life. Activities leading toward this type of knowledge would broaden their outlook regarding their teaching assignments in the future.

I am convinced it is possible to generate a climate in teachers colleges which would prod some toward a genuine intellectual life centered around their teaching activities. It would not be easy, but once again, it is possible. Even if the majority of people attending teachers college are of the second- rate mind category, this should not deter our teachers colleges to create conditions which would encourage a portion of their students to become teachers with an intellectual touch.

What if we fail to create a climate within schools and society which encourages teachers to develop into intellectually-minded educators? We would face a national catastrophe. We would see the growth of a school system which is so uniform and rigid that any attempt to rise above intellectual mediocrity would be frowned upon and punished. That would be the end of our dream of a modern nation capable of competing with its neighbors, and capable of taking care of itself. A school system without enough teachers with sufficient broad knowledge and intellectuality would be unable to give the young generation the foundation to become what is required in the future: highly retrainable knowledge-workers.

The writer is an observer of social and cultural affairs.