Positive educators

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