New minds for knowledge-based society

New minds for knowledge-based society

By Bambang Hidayat

Following are excerpts from a paper presented at a seminar on
education in Jakarta on March 15, 2001. The seminar was jointly
organized by The Asia Foundation, Basis cultural magazine,
Kanisius publishing company and The Jakarta Post.

JAKARTA (JP): Human society in the 21st century faces the
daunting yet inspiring task of forging a relationship with the
natural world. New concepts emerge about global trends concerning
population, development and environment.

Within these concepts it is implied that meeting current human
needs is paramount, while at the same time preserving the
environment and natural resources needed for later generations
cannot be ignored.

In practice, we encourage integration of academic research
into market demands with a price on the role and credibility of
scientists, academics and administrators. This is important to
build up the integrity of scientists, legislatures and the
leadership of society in making decisions.

Accordingly, education must also respond to the new age.
Clearly, attempts to revise, to reorder, restructure, reshape and
other forms of tinkering with curriculums should adapt to the
sweeping changes now taking place in contemporary society.

The highly complex post-industrial society demands new
knowledge and skill and, as a matter of fact, new human traits
for adapting and for meeting the conditions of urban life. To be
proficient at "doing science" our students in the future must be
able "to think like scientists" and engage in scientific inquiry.

This ability may be acquired by focusing on the development of
intellectual skill labeled as "processes of science". This
includes observation, classifying, knowing space-time
relationships, using numbers, inferring, predicting and
communicating.

These are worthy skills when taught in the context of problem-
solving which is meaningful to students, less so when taught as
independent or isolated skills. Needless to say, proficiency in
the Indonesian language is a must, and we have expounded the
views that a written account is necessarily distinct from oral
language.

Any reform of education in the sciences is meaningless unless
it is in harmony with the character of today's demands and to our
emerging knowledge-intensive society. Of equal concern is of
course the failure of school science curriculums to respond to
changes in the image and ethos of postmodern science. Therefore
reforming a curriculum is not a simple affair but needs visionary
judgment.

We know, for example, that computer courses have sprung up
everywhere. However we should emphasize that computers, are
essentially members of a modern research team.

Computers, we have to realize, are "clever idiots", can
summarize what is known or not known very quickly, or outlining
problems, can prepare models derived from data. They can also
continuously organize additional data from other research teams
which are sometimes scattered throughout the world.

What we should be aware of is that the pooling of minds serves
to broaden the context for generating a flow of ideas and for
extending the significance of any findings.

Examples of natural and social scientists working together are
already found in problems relating to the management of our
natural environment, stabilizing the world's human population
growth, controlling the AIDS pandemic and genetic treatment of
human diseases. Cooperation in this case is a term which will
never become redundant in the future.

Not long ago, we may remember, how many disciplines were
joined together to help mitigate the disastrous effects caused by
El Nino and La Nina. The atmospheric phenomenon was not the
concern of meteorologists only but the business of people from
many walks of life, as its impacts could have affected many
sectors of society.

Therefore the monodisciplinary solution would not be the most
adequate one. Social values and ethical issues are seen as a
relevant dimension to our scientific conducts in the coming
decades. These attributes are observable in the research on
problems related to biotechnology, human behavior and how human
organisms interact within the social environment.

In the fast-growing demands one should not forget the maxim of
becoming experts first, and generalists later, not the other way
round! (We should not be trapped by the Chairman Mao dictum in
the 1970s: red first, expert later). One must be able to show
one's identity or firm track in life before synthesizing
phenomena or problems. This is equally true in the process of
filling a cabinet post.

One purpose of science education in the 21st century remains
to be identified as the development of responsible citizenship
for dealing with problems that embrace dimensions in science and
technology such as those related to the environment. This is in
fact the ethics of the 21st century: health, energy and
agriculture.

Teachers should be concerned and prepared to address with
their students their experiences in a context that extends beyond
the laboratory and the boundaries of conventional disciplines,
but still within the realm of scientific validity. In a geography
lesson, for example, they cannot merely tell the students that
the Ciliwung river runs through Jakarta. Instead they must also
impart their knowledge on the biochemistry, on possible bacterial
content of the Ciliwung and the problems of pollution.

A particular critical dimension is the nation's transition
from an industrial economy to one that is knowledge-intensive.
Those who master the knowledge will ultimately win the race. We
must be ready, preparing new minds for a new age which will
require a new model of science curriculum development, one that
is more holistic in conception. Here science teaching emphasizes
"the optimal utilization of knowledge" and blurs the present
distinction between schooling and the real world, a vision of
science education that presents science and technology as a part
of the lives of our young people.

Thus the essence of educational policy is characterized by a
greater emphasis on introducing the process of scientific
endeavor, rather than memorizing techniques or facts alone, and
also greater participation and involvement of the lay public and
inseminating science as a social institution.

Under these circumstances a major goal of science education
becomes enculturation, in which education in the sciences is
linked to the prevailing scientific-and-technological society.
Students should more and more feel the need for information,
rather then giving them the burden of listening to boring facts.

They should be trained to argue not on the bases of "I am
right", but to accommodate the views of their opponents, be
trained to accept partnership, not on the bases of "like or
dislike", and to see clear goals.

The writer is a former director of the Bosscha Observatory and
chairman of the Astronomy Department at the Bandung Institute of
Technology.