Positive educators

Simon Marcus Gower in The Jakarta Post, Jan. 31, Educators need a more positive attitude to be model to students, is most certainly right in his observations and assessments, but I fear this subject may well go far deeper than undisciplined students and demoralized teachers. What is clearly lacking is motivation and job satisfaction in the teaching profession, which has now become a business that is in the main motivated by profit.

There needs to be a serious seminar held that discusses the failures, the reasons behind those failures and a recognition as to what is really required to be taught in schools and why. I personally find it far too difficult to go into the teaching arena, let's say for business studies for example, when you know that the textbooks will probably never apply in real life when the students eventually go out to bat. Teachers tell me this does not matter, as what happens after the students leave the school is not of my concern, as the important thing is "bums on seats" otherwise the school does not survive financially.

What about jobs for the students when they graduate, and how many of them will finish up in a job that challenges their abilities and motivates there progression? Education must work hand in glove with government and business, and that link should already be a part of the student's thinking at least 12 months before he is due to tackle the outside world. If teachers know, and students know, that there are no worthwhile jobs, then what is the point of education?

Does Indonesia need brain surgeons or rocket scientists, or do they just need a subservient race of people that provides cheap labor to the business elite? The situation as regards to unemployment is likely to get worse, as the additional 24 percent of voters (approximately 25 million) that are illegible for the 2004 elections are mostly (if not all) young people -- and that is quite staggering.

There must be a future, otherwise there can be no motivation, and without motivation you finish up with mediocre teachers, disinterested students and a generation of coolies. If the government budget for education is only 4 percent instead of being 20 percent, then the political will to resolve the educational problems does not exist. Investment in people will always be the answer, but try telling that to the current administrations around the country, which should all be looking positively at the future.

DAVID WALLIS
Medan, North Sumatra