Redefining teacher, parent roles in childhood schooling

Redefining teacher, parent roles in childhood schooling

Sekolah: Mengajar atau Mendidik? (Schools: Instruction or
Education?);
By J. Drost, SJ;
Kanisius in cooperation with Sanata Dharma University,
Yogyakarta, 1998;
258 pp + xiii

JAKARTA (JP): Instruction rather than education is what
parents expect when they enroll their children in school,
according to a new book on the issue.

The author, J. Drost, who has decades of experience in the
field, maintains that a school's role is only to instruct.
Educating is the primary responsibility of parents and society,
he says.

The terms "instruction" and "education" often cause confusion
even though they have clear delimitations. The former emphasizes
the transfer of knowledge, while the latter focuses on
experience, comprehension and internalization of an attitude
pattern and normative values.

And it is instruction that parents ask for in the first place,
Drost writes. A school is a professional institution which helps
parents in a field that they cannot handle.

"No school should say that the quality of the instruction is
low but maintain the character of its education is good. The
formation of a child's character is part of education that should
not be entrusted by parents to schools."

The 54 articles included in the book were selected from
Drost's writings in the media over 26 years -- from 1971 to June
1997.

The anthology is one of two books published to commemorate the
writer's 72nd birthday, the other being a collection of articles
by several educators.

Drost, a Jesuit priest, was the rector of the former Teachers
Training Institute (IKIP), now Sanata Dharma University, in
Yogyakarta from 1968 to 1976. He was a former principal of the
Catholic Kanisius all-boys school in Jakarta.

He says the school's task to instruct cannot be carried out
without the support of the family in attaining the basic
objectives of education, such as a child's independence.

Drost's view is supported by M. Sastrapratedja, the current
rector of Sanata Dharma University. In his introduction to the
book, the rector says education is an effort to help people
develop themselves intellectually, morally and psychologically.

The object of education is to prepare participants to enter
society and its ever-changing culture. This "humanitarian" task
cannot be reduced to the adaptation of schools to practical needs
like meeting demands for employment.

The arguments presented by Drost and Sastrapratedja hark of
the controversial, though well-intended, "link-and-match" concept
of former minister of education and culture Wardiman
Djojonegoro.The concept aims at meeting the demands of
increasingly tight competition.

Education cannot be turned into mass education, Drost insists.
Schools must attend to the development of each individual.

What often happens now, says Drost, is that teachers pay much
more attention to a student's mistakes and weaknesses rather than
his or her potential.

What ruins a child's potential is the tendency of many
teachers or parents putting demands on children beyond their
capacity, he says.

Kindergarten pupils are required to learn arithmetic and
reading but a new regulation against this -- driven by outcries
such as those by Drost -- has caused much confusion.

Teachers have said if kindergarten pupils were not allowed to
learn such skills then pupils would be in trouble when they sat
entry tests for elementary schools. These tests measure their
skills in reading, writing and counting.

Drost also highlights that the subject of music and dance are
compulsory in several schools and a burden to young students. And
many teachers are required to give extra (paid) tuition to
students from their own classrooms.

Drost is one of those hard-core, idealist advocates who seems
oblivious to demands affecting kindergarten graduates to
secondary school students, but, judging from his articles, he
would argue that such developments are an excess of something
that was quite wrong to begin with.

What children need, he reminds us, is some freedom from
teachers and parents, a freedom that takes into account the rules
of the game agreed upon with the involvement of children.

Students will then feel at home in this environment at school
and at home, which Drost points out is a basic requirement for a
child to become independent.

-- A. Ferry T. Indratno

The writer is a graduate of the Department of History at the
Teachers Training Institute (IKIP) in Yogyakarta. He now works at
the Institute of Javanese Studies, Yogyakarta.