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.