Nation needs talented teachers

By Iwan Pranoto

BANDUNG (JP): How bad is our school system?

It is very bad.

Our elementary schools are very far from satisfying. It concentrates too much on forcing students to learn by rote. It does not encourage students to learn actively and to think critically. So, if we believe that a school should be an intellectual environment that teaches students universal values, our elementary schools have failed.

Our elementary students now merely consist of submissive listeners. They listen to instructions, memorize the instructions and then do as they are instructed. This alienates them from the primary function of education, namely to think actively and critically.

If you visit an elementary school, you can observe that many military traditions have infiltrated the school's culture. It is a very sad situation. The teachers even command our children when to start and stop praying. Moreover, the weekly flag ceremony is really a military ceremony. When our students read the state ideology of Pancasila during a ceremony, they read it as if they were soldiers receiving commands from their commandant.

Even most of our kindergartens cannot provide, as they should, a fertile climate for children to play and learn. The kindergartens are so busy teaching formal subjects like reading and math, that they cannot teach the children how to write the alphabet. Moreover, one can easily find some kindergartens in Jakarta and other cities in Java where they teach English as a second language to three and four-year-old children. It may sound unbelievable, but it happens. In addition, some teachers even assign regular homework to these same young children.

In these types of kindergartens, our children will not have time to play. They cannot learn things suitable to them, like learning to communicate with their friends. This situation causes them to be distanced from the normal activities of young children. They do not have the opportunity to be four years old, let alone to learn universal values.

Worse still, because there is so much subject material, the students cannot learn the material effectively and thoroughly. They usually take the surface approach to learning. This forces the students to memorize information needed for assessments, rather than accomplishing real learning. This also causes students to fail to integrate diverse elements. In the end, this means that their basic knowledge and ability to learn are insufficient.

This insufficiency will continue to cause problems throughout the students' educations. When the students are in high school, the insufficiency of their learning abilities prevents them from becoming actively involved in the learning process. This situation is likely to contribute to the misperception that learning is the same as memorization.

University lecturers see this insufficiency carried all the way to the university level. For this, and other reasons, our universities are inefficient.

We can see that, in general, our elementary schools and high schools have fundamental problems. These problems cause the failure of our schools to provide a quality education for our students. In particular, students cannot improve their learning abilities, and they are alienated to the basic traditions of active and critical thinking. This situation makes them unable to learn universal norms, making them misfits in society. It is a very unfortunate situation.

Now, how can we solve these problems?

Catholic priest and writer Y.B. Mangunwijaya suggests that we start from the lowest level. He means that we must concentrate on those children now studying in elementary school. His reasoning is that we must begin with the students who have not yet been contaminated.

His argument sounds reasonable, but I think it is not enough. We can solve these problems more strategically by also improving the quality of the schoolteachers.

We have learned that the problems stated above are mostly due to the low quality of our teachers. According to Abdul Hasim, in 1995/1996 there were 2.17 million schoolteachers, but only 27 percent of them were qualified. In general, the quality of the teachers is low because they do not have the ability, talent or motivation to teach.

Also, because some teachers have not been enlightened about the teaching profession, they merely follow the curriculum as is. They apply the curriculum as if it were a "cookbook". Because of their lack of teaching ability, they are unable to design lesson plans actualizing the curriculum in creative ways. In fact, the lesson plans, in my opinion, are more important than the curriculum itself.

Also, the inadequate number of teachers available aggravates the problem. This inadequacy increases the schoolteachers' work load. The student to teacher ratio must be lowered to alleviate this problem. For example, in many elementary schools the ratio is around one teacher to 60 students. Ideally, the ratio should be closer to 30 students for every teacher. Moreover, our schoolteachers usually have to moonlight to supplement their incredibly low salaries, thus increasing their already too large work load.

This means that we have to increase the number of schoolteachers, but this is not an easy task. In theory, a society believes that service to others determines the rank and prestige of an occupation. However, we have never actually placed teaching anywhere near the top of the occupational pyramid.

Teaching is not an attractive occupation in this society. If we compare teaching to other occupations which require college preparation, we see that the salary is very low.

The perception of teaching is so bad that many people in Indonesia make jokes about the profession. One joke goes that one day a mother found that her daughter did not study hard enough for a school test. After advising her daughter to study harder, she scared her by saying, "If you do not study hard, you will be married to a teacher".

Thus, if we want to fix the problems of our educational system, we have to improve the quality and the quantity of our schoolteachers. We must achieve a state in the future where each classroom has at least one talented, competent and dedicated teacher.

One way to achieve this is by involving universities in nurturing talented schoolteachers. By improving the quality of our schoolteachers, we directly improve the learning process of our students. In addition, we can open up the opportunity for university graduates to become schoolteachers. This will also help to alleviate the terrible unemployment problem facing Indonesia. In 1997 alone, about 200,000 new university graduates could not find jobs.

Of course, everyone has a role to play in improving the quality of our classrooms. The government and society must become actively involved to achieve this improvement.

The government's first task is to improve the economic lot of schoolteachers. The government has to create an assignment system and a salary scheme for schoolteachers independent of the general civil servant system. If we believe that education is at the top of our priority list, this independent system is necessary.

Secondly, the government, together with educators, must make more efforts to attract talented young people to the teaching profession.

Thirdly, the Directorate General of Basic Education and the Directorate General of Higher Education need to discuss ways to improve the process of teacher preparation. They must reinvent the teacher's educational and training systems, so that the teachers can provide a quality learning process for their students. Specifically, the schoolteachers have to master the basic sciences (mathematics, chemistry and physics) and understand the basic theories of learning.

Lastly, the Directorate General of Basic Education must promote a system of hiring and firing for schoolteachers. On one hand, the system has to enable every talented graduate to be easily hired as a schoolteacher. If this is possible, the system will provide rewards for talented teachers. On the other hand, the system must be allowed to fire every schoolteacher who does not measure up. By doing so, the competition in the profession will be healthy, and this climate will improve the quality of education.

At the same time, members of society have to start repositioning the social status of schoolteachers. Teaching, in particular teaching elementary school, should be near the top of the occupational pyramid. This is not an easy task, but we have to go in that direction.

The writer is a math teacher living in Bandung.

Window: In theory, a society believes that service to others determines the rank and prestige of an occupation. However, we have never actually placed teaching anywhere near the top of the occupational pyramid.