Meanings of educational professionalism

Meanings of educational professionalism

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): When a young journalist asked my opinion about
the criteria for a "professional minister of education", I could
not immediately reply. I was wavering between giving a simple
answer that could have been misleading, and a good answer
containing thought structures that I felt difficult to convey on
the phone. I decided to give a concise, but accurate answer.

I said the appointment of Cabinet ministers was a political
decision. Therefore, when our political decisionmakers said the
next Cabinet would be a "Cabinet of professionals", we will have
to comprehend this statement in a political sense.

"Professionalism" means different things to different people.
Practitioners of professions set the standards of professionalism
in their field on the basis of a set of academic or occupational
criteria, whereas politicians may choose to understand the term
in quite a different sense. The term "professional education",
for instance, may denote one set of meanings to educators, but to
politicians, the word may have quite a different meaning.

To educators, the concept of "educational professionalism" may
cover a wide variety of educational expertise, ranging from
expertise in diagnosing and remedying learning disabilities to
expertise in analyzing the philosophical foundations of various
educational practices and traditions. But I am quite certain that
these are not the kinds of educational professionalism our
political decisionmakers had in mind. To them "professional
educators" are people who -- and this is just my guess -- can be
entrusted with the job of transforming our educational system
from its present horrid condition to a system capable of
providing the young generation with intellectual astuteness and
ethos that can meet the challenges of life they will encounter in
the future.

What are the essential characteristics of such professional
educators?

It should be evident from my view above that this genre of
educators must have vision about the contour and character of our
schools in the future. Certain politicians may prefer to employ
the word "professional educators" to denote persons whose
expertise consists merely of a command of basic educational
jargons, knowledge of basic educational statistics and ability to
express the view of a group in a lucid political rhetoric. Such
politicians are toying with ideas that can endanger the future of
the country and the nation. Politicians with sincere concern
regarding the future of the nation must refute and reject this
particular view. Failure to stop political maneuvers to impose
this insufficiently reasoned view is a betrayal to the young
generation.

The problem to be solved now is determining the criteria that
should be met to identify the persons who are politically
acceptable for the job of "professional minister of education".

My subjective view as a person who oscillates back and forth
between education and politics is that such a person must first
of all have a clear idea regarding the measures that must be
taken to move our system into a transformation process. Such a
professional must also have a vision concerning the type of
leadership that should be exercised to transform our schools from
being at the bottom end of a central bureaucracy to local social
institutions that represent the aspirations of the local
community with regard to the future of the young generation.

It is necessary at this juncture to analyze one sticky issue
that has plagued our educational system for decades. This is the
issue of developing a curriculum that has a sound philosophical
base, a clear design and a cohesive structure. Any professional
educator worthy of the name will understand that if one wants to
succeed in preparing students for life-long learning and a
productive life in society, it cannot be done through a
curriculum comprising subject matters that are not interconnected
in any coherent way. Good curriculum consists primarily of
subject matters, each of which has an integrative power.

Viewed in a very fundamental way, such a curriculum is an
educational program that prepares the young generation for three
stages of life; the ability to make a living, ability to lead a
meaningful life and the ability to ennoble life. Our life as a
nation at present contains too many vulgar thoughts and inhuman
acts that make many of us feel degraded.

What do our students have to learn to achieve this goal?
Again, fundamentally stated, they need to have sufficient
knowledge about three things; knowledge about their physical
environment, knowledge about their social and cultural
environments and knowledge about themselves. This last item has
been neglected in our schools. We have forgotten that no matter
how smart and how knowledgeable a person may be, if he or she
does not have a proper understanding of his or her own self, he
or she is bound to become a misfit in his or her environment.

Knowledge about physical, social and cultural environments is
a very broad intellectual domain that is continuously expanding.
It is impossible for any educational system to make students
master all the fundamentals within this broad field of knowledge.
Knowledge about oneself is also a never-ending process. We as
human beings are continuously changing, and the understanding of
oneself has to be continuously reexamined and reformulated.

It has been a common understanding among professional
educators that the basic task of schools is to stimulate and
guide students to acquire a learning capability, which in essence
comprises scholastic skills that later in life will function as
intellectual instruments for mastering whatever one needs or
cares to know.

A professional minister of education must know that this kind
of transformation will never materialize if the central
bureaucracy operates alone. Such transformation will take place
only if it involves the entire system, and if each subsystem has
the feeling that it is consulted in formulating the goal of the
transformation process. Within the context of regional autonomy
in the future, this means that the professional minister and his
or her staff must provide a transforming leadership to
educational authorities in the various provinces and districts
throughout the country. Making speeches, issuing decrees and
giving instructions from the center will not suffice.

Do we have educators who are sufficiently enlightened about
the political aspects of the ministerial job?

I am sure we have. If only our political decisionmakers are
willing to look honestly on our educational horizon, I am sure
that a number, though not too many, of personalities will be
identified. At this stage of our development it is up to our
political decisionmakers to know whether it is still possible to
revive, rejuvenate and reinvigorate our educational system.

The writer is a social and educational observer based in
Jakarta.