RI must reorient skills education

By Hendra Gunawan

BANDUNG (JP): Minister of Education and Culture Juwono Sudarsono stated some time ago that eight basic skills need to be enhanced at all levels of the education system. The eight skills are reading, writing, listening, speaking, computing, observing, imagining and comprehending (Kompas, Aug. 24, 1998).

There is no doubt that these skills are necessary for everyone, regardless of their profession, to survive in this modern era. But whether or not they are sufficient for one to thrive among global competition is a different matter.

To get an idea of what sort of skills one needs just to get a job nowadays read the job vacancy advertisements in newspapers and magazines. Some of the eight skills above are often mentioned, but there are also other talents that are usually required by employers, such as interpersonal skills, teamwork and leadership, to name but a few.

Indeed, the demands are getting more and more complex as time goes on. In Workplace Basics: The Skills Want, Carnavale et al (1988) list seven groups of skills that one needs to acquire in order to develop one's career, especially in an industrialized country like the United States.

The first group is "foundation", that is knowing how to learn. As we all know, knowledge has been expanding exponentially. Hundreds of scientific articles are published every day. The acquisition of knowledge should therefore be a lifelong experience and one must know how to learn in order to develop one's career successfully.

The second group is called "competency", and includes reading, writing and arithmetic, often referred to a "the three R's". These three basic skills are nurtured from primary education and sometimes even earlier. In the old days, it was possible to get a reasonable job by relying on these three skills alone. But now, as demands get more complex, these skills are very unlikely to prove a solid foundation upon which to build a career.

"Communication skills" including listening and speaking, belong to the third group. These skills are more demanding than reading and writing because they involve the exchange of ideas, feelings and concepts with others.

The fourth group is called "adaptability". Problem-solving skills and creative thinking belong to this group. Adaptability is needed, especially in this era where things change rapidly. Without adaptability, extinction of the human species would be a distinct possibility.

The fifth group is called "personal management" and includes self esteem, goal setting and motivation, personal and career development, and the sixth category is "group effectiveness", which includes interpersonal skills, negotiation and teamwork. These skills are closely related to emotional intelligence, which, as Daniel Goleman put it, makes us more human.

The last group is categorized as "influence" and includes organizational effectiveness and leadership -- the ability to persuade other people to work toward a common goal.

The question now is how to nurture all these skills at schools? Frankly, it is not an easy task. Facts show that even high-school graduates still have problems with basic skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic, let alone other more complex skills such as communicating and adaptability.

Given these facts, universities should be the place for students to develop and enhance all of the above skills. Teachers at universities should no longer lecture and attempt to transfer knowledge to students in the old traditional way.

To nurture the above skills, activities such as group problem- solving, brainstorming, project design and writing exercises should be conducted more frequently in addition to formal lecturing. In examinations and homework assignments, traditional formula substitution problems should be replaced by open-ended questions and problem formulation exercises.

Teachers should change their teaching methods, but at the same time students will also need to change their learning habits. Meanwhile, the content of curricula should be reduced and we should keep in mind that students can actually learn more from less material.

Facing the twenty-first century, where global competition will be much fiercer than ever before, we must reorient the mission and vision of our education, from primary up to higher, and conduct a thorough review of our education system. A number of important issues must be considered, including greater autonomy for schools to design their own curricula and hire and fire their own teachers. Unless, of course, we feel that we are already on the right track. But are we really?

The writer is a lecturer in the Department of Mathematics, Bandung Institute of Technology.

Window: Facts show that even high-school graduates still have problems with basic skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic, let alone other skills such as communication skills and adaptability.