Leadership needs to be nurtured in education

A. Chaedar Alwasilah, Dean, Faculty of Language and Arts Education Indonesian University of Education (UPI), Bandung, chaedar@bdg.centrin.net.id

Shopping is an everyday business. But when some Indonesian delegates were seen shopping in one of Rome's most expensive arcades while attending a world summit on hunger, this was another affair. The delegates are a well-selected few of the political elite whose day-to-day activities are judged in terms of national leadership.

Prominent scholar Nurcholis Madjid said the sight was evidence enough to infer that Indonesian leaders are lazy, weak, and not serious in running the nation. This country is administered by people who indulge themselves with pleasures they do not deserve yet. President Megawati Soekarnoputri and her predecessor Abdurrahman Wahid are frequent travelers overseas despite objections from the legislators and critics.

Elsewhere, legislators have shown a disappointing lack of discipline through poor attendance records at sittings. This suggests that the legislators lack the qualities required for leadership.

The common belief in the lack of leadership skills of the present leaders can be traced to their schooling between the 1950s up to 1970s.

Redesigning the curriculum has been felt necessary to produce not only intellectuals but also future leaders. Curriculum developers and teachers in particular should see every student as a prospective "founding father."

Leadership consists of exercising power by organizing and influencing people to have shared goals achieved and problems solved. Good leaders compete for the minds and hearts of their followers. They also have a strong sense of vision to inspire their followers to move forward.

There have been misconceptions about leadership. Teachers may identify a leader with their principal -- who often has minimum contact with the students.

This suggests that most teachers do not see themselves as leaders and, therefore, do not have any sense of responsibility of demonstrating and teaching leadership to their students. It is essential that teachers see themselves not as knowledge learning facilitators but also as leadership learning facilitators.

Most people still view leadership in the same way they conceive intelligence as an inherent and unitary capability, thus leading to the erroneous conclusion that leaders are born. This view is much less realistic and productive, downplaying the role that can be played by the school.

Leadership in the classroom is to be defined as a function that helps the group to meet the shared goal. Any person that helps the group to function collectively is a leader of the group.

To acquire leadership students need to be courageous, self- assured, self-disciplined, knowledgeable, performance-oriented, a communicator, a motivator, a problem solver, a team builder and value-oriented.

Collectively these qualities are inherent in all school subjects. However, these qualities have to be deliberately materialized in activities inside and outside school.

Some students will be more skillful than others at clarifying issues, identifying problems, and proposing solutions. Deliberately designed, team work or group collaboration will enhance a sense of leadership.

Functional leadership is not conferred, but is earned by actions that directly moves a group in the direction of the shared goals. The teacher's job is to facilitate situations where this functional leadership emerges and to distribute opportunity so that every student has relatively the same opportunity to develop his or her own potentials of leadership.

In school, functional leadership coexists with the status of leadership. The school system is based on a hierarchical pattern of status and authority. The teacher carries out the principal's directives and the principal obeys the superintendent's. All these people assume leadership positions ex officio, or by virtue of their status.

School teachers should create opportunities wherein students learn and exercise functional leadership in the classroom and beyond. Leadership is not domination, but the art of persuading others to work toward a shared goal, or of influencing the actions of others. Therefore, ability to communicate, to argue, and to convince others is essential for leadership.

The school system should set a good example of leadership in terms of innovation and reform. Teachers are leaders of students, and they should satisfy the qualities of leadership mentioned above.