Indonesian teachers lose steam on professionalism

Indonesian teachers lose steam on professionalism

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): "Ma'am, why didn't you check my homework?" asked
a school boy. The math teacher curtly replied, "What for? I know
your mom did it."

The boy used to be top of his class, excelling in math and
science and would have been simply too proud to have somebody
else do his homework for him. The teacher's response thus had a
devastating impact on his pride and his grades have been sliding
downward ever since. This boy is my daughter's classmate.

Some teachers at our schools today are killing the children's
natural drive to learn. As a father of a fifth-grader, I have
often been shocked by their behavior which does irreversible
damage to her enthusiasm towards school.

Take her Indonesian language teacher, for example. She once
told her class to learn a lengthy poem by heart to recite it
before the class. Our daughter spent the whole night rehearsing
with us, and we stayed up late with her, giving her our criticism
and encouragement only to be told the next day that the teacher
did not mention the recital at all.

Many teachers give their students tough assignments but often
do not follow up on them. Once in a while, however, they surprise
their students by asking for the assignment, and those who happen
to have skipped it get punished harshly. Is there any more
effective way to destroy the students' positive image of school?

What my daughter and her classmate went through is not
uncommon in our schools nowadays. These are daily horror stories,
particularly in the big cities.

To make matters worse, most wealthy parents opt for the
shortcut: Just give the teachers what they want so that they will
give their children special attention -- and special treatment.
Such generosity then makes teachers as inconsistent with grades
as they are with assignments. As a result, our children begin to
be subjected to unfair treatment in elementary school. Parents
who cannot afford to compete with the wealthy have to keep their
mouth shut for fear that their children will later suffer their
teachers' retaliation.

Is it really hard to be a true teacher, a teacher that makes a
difference in the life of their students? I don't think so. We do
not need to be experts, but as parents we know some basic things
that we want our children's teachers to do:

Communicate

Teaching is basically letting the students know what they
don't know yet. In a word -- communicating. Communicating is by
no means an easy task, but it is not a difficult one, either. It
is a skill that can be developed if teachers are willing to
explore new ways and techniques as they go along. Unfortunately,
nowadays we rarely meet teachers who really try to communicate
with their students. Most seem to think that their job is limited
to dictating notes, giving assignments, collecting money for
photocopying, handing out test papers, and giving grades.

We often hear students complain about teachers who speak so
softly in the classroom that even the pupils sitting in the front
rows can hardly hear what they say. Are these teachers really
communicating? With more than forty students packed into the
classroom, it should be obvious that teachers must always speak
in a loud voice. Alas, our teachers have to preserve their voices
and energy because they have a series of private lessons to give
in the afternoon. It is thus understandable that they prefer to
remain seated at their desk, relax and speak as if to themselves
while the students struggle to remain awake.

Real communication requires feedback. Tests are actually the
best means for getting this feedback since they indicate two
things: First, they tell the teachers how well individual
students have understood the material. Second, they also show how
effective they themselves have been. When the majority fails,
instead of shrugging it off by saying "How come this year's
students are so dumb?", the teachers should realize that they
have failed in communicating properly.

A true teacher communicates. Not only does their job comprise
mostly of communicating knowledge and helping the students master
it, they should also exude enthusiasm. How can they do this if
the students cannot even hear what they say?

Exercise judgment

Our school curricula are sad jokes and the textbooks are
tragi-comedies. To add to the suffering of our students, so many
of our teachers are preoccupied with their private lessons and
part-time jobs after class that they have no time or energy left
to sit down and think through their course materials for the next
day. The result? They just follow the curricula and textbooks
blindly and faithfully.

What we need is teachers who devote enough time choosing only
the important and the relevant out of the deplorable curricula
and textbooks. My daughter once told us that her teacher
discussed in the class all the steps in using an elevator. He
told them, among other things, what the "Close" button was for.
Now, even though the curriculum may have contained this
discussion topic, could he not have used his common sense and
skipped it?

It has often been said that the latest revision of our
curricula leaves a lot up to the teachers, allowing them to use
their own creativity. The same teacher who spent the entire class
session on how to use the elevator also gave her class a bizarre
assignment one day: Everybody had to write down the steps in
using a handphone. While this handphone assignment could be
viewed as the product of his creativity, it was not the product
of sound judgment. Apart from that, it was crassly insensitive to
students from poorer families, who may not even have a regular
telephone in their homes.

Teachers could use their judgment. They are in a position to
distinguish what is appropriate, what is not, what is useful and
what is clearly rubbish. They could choose to teach only the
former and skip the latter.

Respect the students

My daughter once did very well in her math exercises at
school. She answered every answer correctly. Yet her teacher
crossed out her work in thick red ink because she had left her
textbook at home. Obviously, when the students make mistakes,
they should be punished and the punishment is often
disproportionate to the mistakes. On the other hand, when the
teachers do not come to school without any clear excuse or even
any news, it is considered their prerogative. When they fail to
hand back graded test papers that the students need to prepare
for the next exams, they do not feel guilty.

This teacher-can't-be-wrong attitude is typical in our school
system. It shows how little respect our teachers have for their
students. My hunch is that the increasingly violent students
brawls that we have been witnessing in Jakarta in the past few
years are just their reaction to the constant disrespect they
have to endure at their school.

Grading assignments and handing them back in time to the
students is one way the teachers can show respect for them.
Giving them objective grades is another. Appreciating their
efforts is another form of respect that is painfully missing in
our schools today.

Respect is a two-way street. When teachers fail to respect the
students, how can our youngsters have a positive image of their
school?

Know what it means to be a teacher

A teacher has never been a profession for those who seek
riches. No one has ever become just by teaching. Sometimes there
is not even any appreciation from those whom they have taught,
either, as a close friend of mine would readily testify. He was
on various thesis committees for many years, and once told me
that he had long stopped being surprised how many of his students
no longer remember him only a few months after they had come to
him for consultation.

At a conversation I had with the guidance and counseling lady
from a popular private school in West Jakarta recently, I learned
that most of the students who had to repeat class at that school
mostly belonged to middle- and low-income groups. What does this
tell us? Does it mean that the well-to-do pupils get better
attention from their parents at home? Does it mean that affluent
parents generally spend more time helping their children with
their studies compared to middle- and low-income parents?

The answer was clear when the lady confided to me how she was
shocked to see teachers at her school busily exchange information
on the names of students whose parents were rich and generous at
the beginning of every new school year.

Certainly it would be totally groundless to accuse every
teacher of being responsible for the frightening decline in the
quality of our education. We still have a handful of teachers who
have high moral values and professional ethics. We do have true
teachers who are the source of inspiration to our children. They
are, unfortunately, as rare as fresh water in eastern Lombok.

What we wish the large majority of our teachers would realize
is that being severely underpaid yet overworked is inherent to
the teaching profession. On the other hand, deliberately making
the life of their students so hard that parents have no choice
but to succumb to their wishes and desires would constitute a
betrayal to that profession.

Training will not change the quality of our education at the
moment. What our teachers need nowadays is the sense of
professional ethics. Only when equipped with high moral values
can our teachers make a difference -- to our children and our
nation.

Window: What we need is teachers who devote enough time choosing
only the important and the relevant out of the deplorable
curricula and textbooks.