Schools Deemed Too Busy Teaching, Forgetting to Understand Humanity
Amid the euphoria of digital transformation, artificial intelligence, and technological acceleration, a fundamental question arises from Indonesia’s educational space: Are schools today truly helping humans to think and understand themselves?
This question emerged during the Ngkaji Pendidikan forum titled ‘Membaca? See the Unseen’, attended by around 500 teachers and education activists from various regions including South Kalimantan, Bontang, Central Java, East Java, West Java, Banten, DI Yogyakarta, and Bali.
The forum, organised by Gerakan Sekolah Menyenangkan (GSM) at the Balai Besar Pengembangan Penjaminan Mutu Pendidikan Vokasi Seni dan Budaya Yogyakarta on 9 May 2026, featured GSM founder and lecturer in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at Universitas Gadjah Mada, Muhammad Nur Rizal.
The forum was not filled with discussions on curriculum, school administration, or technical teaching strategies. Instead, it addressed something more fundamental: humans, awareness, and the ability to see things that have long been invisible in the classroom.
In his presentation, Rizal voiced a concern quietly felt by many teachers: ‘Schools Multiply, but Thinking Ability Does Not Grow.’
Indonesia has experienced massive educational expansion. According to BPS data, the number of schools rose from 100,000 (1970) to 200,000 (2000) and 300,000 (2020). The number of universities grew from around 10–20 higher education institutions in the 1950s to 1,171 (1993) and over 4,000 campuses (2022). The number of students also increased from 200,000 (1975) to a rapid rise to 9.9 million (2025). Meanwhile, the number of bachelor’s graduates has surged dramatically, from just 30–50,000 in the 1980s to around 1.3 million (2025).
However, amid this explosion in quantity, the quality of thinking has not grown proportionally. Data from PISA 2022, published by the OECD in 2023, shows Indonesia’s scores still lagging by about 100–120 points from the OECD average in reading, mathematics, and science. The majority of Indonesian students have also not achieved minimum competency in these three areas.
Meanwhile, OECD PIAAC data (2014–2015) indicates that the literacy abilities of the majority of bachelor’s graduates in Jakarta are still equivalent to those of junior high school graduates in Japan or Scandinavian countries. This finding shows that the length of time someone attends school does not automatically correlate with the quality of their thinking.
Rizal also highlighted the fragility of students’ mental structures as a result of a learning environment that does not train thinking resilience. OECD reports show that Indonesian students experience higher levels of bullying than many other countries (41% in Indonesia versus 23% OECD average), while having a much lower growth mindset (29% in Indonesia vs 63% OECD).
This phenomenon is what Rizal described as: ‘Schooling Without Learning’ (schools operate, but true learning does not occur).
To explain the issue, Rizal did not start from conventional education theory. Instead, he invited participants to understand the concept of entropy in the second law of thermodynamics: that everything left alone will move towards disorder.
According to Rizal, education can experience something similar. When the learning process runs automatically without reflection and awareness, schools gradually turn into systems busy producing compliance, but failing to build aware humans. Humans are trained merely to become ‘repeating machines’.
He then linked it to Daniel Kahneman’s theory of two thinking systems: System 1, which is fast, automatic, impulsive, and runs like autopilot; and System 2, which is slow, reflective, and conscious.
According to Rizal, today’s education too often trains the first system: memorisation, repetition, single answers, and compliance without reflection. As a result, humans become accustomed to quick responses but not to understanding their own minds.
‘Yet, the future of education should be about training awareness,’ this was one of the main messages Rizal conveyed in the forum.
As a response to this condition, Rizal introduced the concept of ‘Saklar Kognitif’ (Cognitive Switch), which is the human ability to observe one’s own thoughts or metacognition.
The concept was explained through three stages: 1) Interrupt (stopping automatic responses), 2) Observe (observing one’s own thinking process), and 3) Reconstruct (updating ways of thinking and acting consciously).
In the forum, this concept was not positioned merely as a learning method, but as the foundation of human awareness. For many participants, the forum felt very personal.
‘Ngkaji Pendidikan is a compass for education for us Indonesian teachers,’ said Rivai, a young teacher from Yogyakarta.
Meanwhile, Jarudin, a teacher from Brebes, admitted that only one word kept lingering in his mind after the event: ‘Is it worthy?’
For him, that question became a space for pause to evaluate himself as a teacher: is the teaching method worthy, is the response given to students worthy, and is the school running without truly understanding the humans within it worthy?
Aji, a professional who also attended the forum, described Ngkaji Pendidikan as a rare and unique space that is hard to find today. According to him, this forum is not just a place for material transfer, but also for transferring energy, meaning, and new hope for anyone present.
He assessed that Ngkaji Pendidikan is able to build constructive imagination, so participants not only understand educational issues intellectually, but also find the deepest meaning through their respective inner experiences.
Perhaps that’s why many teachers left the forum with an indescribable feeling. They did not just bring theory, but also a kind of new courage to pause for a moment and look back at themselves.
At the end of the fo