Nation needs talented teachers

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.