RI needs math curriculum reform

By Iwan Pranoto

BANDUNG (JP): The concern with which many intellectuals greeted Indonesia's poor showing in the 1999 international mathematics and science study was actually a good sign: it showed that they care about our math and science education.

The US-sponsored study, which was first launched in 1995 and was called the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), was followed by the second in 1999 which was called TIMSS Repeat.

The 1999 study showed that there are only three countries that have improved significantly and only one country that declined compared to the 1995 test results.

Now, if Indonesian academicians are disappointed over the poor showing of their students, it is interesting to note that in fact several American academicians do not feel the TIMSS tests really tell us much about the actual quality of math and science teaching.

W.W. Gibbs, in The False Crisis in Science Education published in Scientific American, dismisses the results. He says: "American teenagers score a bit lower than many peers overseas on a battery of mostly multiple-choice questions emphasizing basic facts and procedures in math and science. So what?"

The above reaction is understandable, because the performances of US students in the two TIMSS tests were only average out of the 42 countries surveyed in 1995 and the 38 countries in 1999. Most American academicians feel that their scores are too low for them.

The TIMSS is not perfect, so one still may say that the results do not really reflect actual performance. However, if we restrict our discussion to our own math and science teaching, then no one will disagree with the TIMSS results.

These results show that the performance of our students is almost at the bottom. Thus, regardless of the TIMSS outcome, the quality of our math teaching in elementary and high schools is indeed poor.

The first problem is in the quality of our math teachers rather than the curriculum. Math teachers here follow the curriculum rigidly; they view it as a list of necessary materials that must be taught in class.

Since it is considered necessary, people think it is the minimum and that additional materials must be added. Therefore, many math teachers and parents alike equate the quality of math teaching with how many other materials are being delivered in the classrooms.

Since most of the teachers were actually educated by a system when modern math was introduced in 1980s, they are familiar with both the old and the new versions of math teaching.

Many of them have therefore not been convinced that modern math is sufficient; they try to squeeze in other materials they stumble upon when studying the new curriculum.

This is one reason why we still observe many elementary schools giving both modern math and Jurassic-era math heavy with routine computation skills and table memorization almost at the same time.

For example, many second grade students have to master addition and multiplication skills without actually calculating with pencil and paper. In our past school system, it was called mencongak. Now, some more recent techniques can even make our kids do it faster than a calculator.

It is saddening to see many parents urge their kids to take courses of this kind under the names arithmetic, abacus, etc.

Thus, when a first or second grade student should actually learn the basic addition or multiplication concepts wholeheartedly and experience them, they have to rush it and memorize the addition and multiplication tables instead.

First, this activity is not a part of doing mathematics. Second, this activity does not give students the opportunity to think. It is so sad that we math teachers cannot provide our students with a sufficient amount of time for them to learn math correctly.

A math teacher practicing this approach will really torture the students. They will be unable to learn math correctly, equating math learning with memorization. Further, this will make math learning an unpleasant experience for them.

Moreover, adding incompatible materials to a curriculum that has already been described as "rich" will be counter-productive.

Another problem with the above approach is that the two kinds of math are totally different by concept. Modern math teaching is a set of efforts to help every student develop the mathematical power.

According to the report "Fostering Algebraic and Geometric Thinking", prepared by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), this power consists of mathematical reasoning, communication, problem solving, and making connections between concepts.

Thus, we math teachers have to create strategies that help our students develop their mathematical power. In particular, fast computation skills, the ability to do routine procedures, and that dictionary-like formula memorization stressed in the old system is not central anymore.

We never say that computation is not important, but in modern mathematics, computation is only a part of the mathematical power. There are more important things than computation skills in mathematics. That old math full of routine procedures is not in the curriculum. So if one school teaches its students the skills, it must be the policy of the school itself.

One may ask why most of our math teachers approach math teaching by adding to the materials with a sort of training on routine procedures and formula memorization. I think it is because our math teachers do not have the necessary qualifications.

Most of our math teachers are unable to skip some materials. Writer Mochtar Buchori wrote recently that our teachers do not know what not to teach. They mostly only ask what to teach.

We need reform of math teaching. Curriculum reform is in fact not that crucial. We must encourage teachers to improve their mastery, which in turn will boost their confidence and enable them to decide which materials are central.

Teachers should learn how to orchestrate discourses in the math classroom, giving students the necessary exercises and developing their mathematical powers. In particular, they will learn to be critical, active, and independent thinkers.

By using the correct approach, our math teaching will become a pleasant experience for our students, and they will appreciate mathematics more.

The writer is a math teacher living in Bandung