Quest for education with international standards

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): During a number of seminars on education I attended recently, one question kept cropping up: Can we achieve education with international standards through our present national curricular?

Whether the discussion was about preschool, primary and secondary levels or higher education, this particular question continued to emerge.

At first I had no clear idea of what was meant by "education with international standards". It is only after a number of discussions that I began to understand the meaning of this phrase.

Generally speaking, this expression has been used to refer to school education that is capable of leading our students towards excellence in academic performance. I got the impression that the yardstick used in these discussions was the educational performance of schools in countries like Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan, the U.S., the UK and Western European countries.

Malaysia and the Philippines were only occasionally mentioned, while Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea never came up as points of reference. This shows how little we know about educational developments in these countries.

The general view in these seminars was that our present national curricular constitutes an obstacle rather than an effective means of achieving academic excellence. This feeling was especially strong among seminar participants from higher education.

This is understandable in view of the fact that it is our institutions of higher education that feel the pressure of foreign competition most strongly. They are the ones witnessing the uphill struggle waged by their graduates facing competition from Indonesians who graduate from universities abroad.

What is it that makes schools in industrially developed countries look so attractive academically? I am not sure what those seminar participants meant by "academic excellence" but if we invert the question and ask: "What is it that makes our schools so unattractive academically?", then the picture becomes much clearer.

Usually people point out the failure of most schools to guide our students toward competence in languages (both Indonesian and English), sufficiency in science and computer literacy, mastery of history and social studies, conversance in regional and global current affairs, competence in one of the branches of fine arts (music, literature, painting) and an ability to present themselves in a polite and convincing manner.

To support their arguments they usually point out the poor performances of our high school graduates in these fields. Look at their language, they do not even know the difference between social and formal Indonesian. Don't talk about their competence in English!

It is unbelievable, they cannot even read Reader's Digest. What about their competence in math, physics, and chemistry? And what about their computer literacy? Their knowledge about national and world history? And the list of complaints go on and on.

I think it is an acceptable argument and it would not be too difficult to gather evidence in support of these claims. But is it true that the difference between our education system and others is due only to weaknesses in our curricular? At this point the allegation becomes less tenable and we must look at other factors for the underlying causes of the weakness.

It is indeed true that the national curricular for the various levels of our education are generally "overloaded", giving our students not enough spare time to engage themselves in other exercises of equal or even greater educative significance.

One music teacher complained in one of these seminars that he does not know how to cultivate the musical potentials among his talented students with only one hour a week allotted to music and no time for extracurricular exercises in this field.

Many language teachers maintain that without time for practicing speech and writing essays, no language teacher can guide his or her students toward an acceptable level of language competence.

It should not be forgotten, however, that the excellence of a student's academic performance depends also upon the student's efforts, teacher's competence and the adequacy of academic infrastructure provided by the school.

No matter how well curriculum is designed, if students do not exert themselves to the limits of their ability, if teachers fail to provide adequate learning guidance and support and if schools do not provide teachers and students with the instructional aids needed to carry out an educational program, then it is quite unrealistic to expect academic achievements of a reasonable quality from the students.

How can our students acquire appreciable competence in languages if neither the teacher nor the school shows them what an appropriate language usage looks like or sounds like? How can students accomplish mastery in music if no musical instrument is available at a school and if the teachers themselves cannot play any musical instruments? How can our students be proficient in physics and chemistry if there are no decent labs at schools?

Blaming our curricular alone is not the right way to diagnose the weaknesses of our present educational system. I am afraid that if we solely focus our attention on curricular, and do not give sufficient attention to the other three factors (students, teachers, and academic infrastructure), the time will never come when our schools produce graduates who satisfy our expectations and of whom we can feel proud. I am afraid that after we exhaust ourselves in debates about our curricular and after new curricular has been announced and implemented, we will still encounter disappointing performance among our students.

What then are the essential weaknesses with regard to our students, our teachers, and our schools' academic infrastructure?

I think that the major weakness of our students lies in their poor ethos for learning and in their very limited repertoire of studying techniques.

With regard to our teachers the main source of their weakness is their low salary.

And in relation to the academic infrastructure of our schools, our main weakness is in the limited funds available for purchasing the educational equipment needed and in the lack of freedom on the part of the school to decide for itself what should and will be purchased.

These problems should be addressed simultaneously with the problem of improving the curricular. Attacking the complex problem of enhancing the quality of our educational performance, factor by factor, does not look too promising. In my view this issue of achieving "education with international standards" is not a problem of curriculum, it is a bigger problem. It is a systemic problem within our schools.

The writer is an observer of social and cultural affairs.