Schools for thought not just obedience

Schools for thought not just obedience

Simon Marcus Gower, Executive Principal, High/Scope Indonesia,
Jakarta

"I can't believe it! Studying here is so enjoyable and I'm
getting the best grades of my life." These are indeed positive
and pleasing words to hear but sadly they are words of comparison
between what a student has recently been experiencing in Malaysia
and what she used to experience as a student in Indonesia. This
student had the opportunity to move with her family to Malaysia
and so continue her high school education there. Despite
uncertainty, nervousness and worries she left Indonesian
schooling and decided to meet head-on the challenges of a
different school system.

There were, understandably, worries and trepidations that the
differences that would be met could prove too demanding but soon
this highly capable student was settling in and succeeding.
Academic success, then, came naturally and easily to this student
but in Indonesia she was seen as a difficult and awkward student.
Why? Because she had, and has, an inquisitive mind but in the
context of an Indonesian school such a mind was construed as
troublesome and even as a troublemaker.

The propensity for Indonesian schools to still excessively
demand conformity and passivity from their students is disturbing
and sad. School here is not sufficiently seen and used as a
window and introduction to the wider world. Instead it is too
oppressively demanding of timid following and shallow, limited
thought. What is this, then, producing for Indonesia's future? It
is all too easy to see this schooling process as creating a
community of non-thinkers; rather like a commune of ants,
students are not seen as having to or expected to think for
themselves. They are instead merely supposed to do what others
prescribe as necessary.

This is a commune ripe with opportunities for abuse and
oppression. Those that are not encouraged or allowed to be
thinkers are those that may easily be used, manipulated, denied
and suppressed. However, this is the way schools have been and
unfortunately do tend to continue to be in Indonesia but there
are signs of light at the end of this dark tunnel. Significantly
these signs of light are coming from the students themselves.

Increasingly it is apparent that students themselves are able
to exercise powers of critical thought. Students are increasingly
able to show that they can analyze and assess what they are
required to do and what is being presented to them. For example
within the school subject of Civics (or PPKN as it is known) high
school students are consistently critical, questioning its
relevance to their needs and the necessity to study it in the
context of already heavy schedules.

Those heavy schedules too come under the circumspection and
criticism of students. They are increasingly recognizant of the
fact that having to study too many subjects in too little time is
leaving them in an unwelcome and even unpleasant learning
predicament. Again a comparative reflection from a student that
has had the opportunity to study in another country exemplifies
the need for greater introspection and inspection of the aims and
planning of education here.

This Indonesian student got the opportunity to spend time in
the United States of America where his educational experiences
evidently proved beneficial. "We don't study so many subjects in
America and so I have found it easier to concentrate," he
explains with obvious satisfaction. "For example for math I am
near the top of my class but back in Indonesia I used to be close
to the bottom." Evidently for this student one reason for greater
academic success has been less to study. But another critical
factor is also involved.

"I can understand math in the US much more easily, somehow
what the teachers are saying and doing makes more sense to me."
What he means here is not entirely clear but what he seems to be
getting at is that teachers in America are better able to make
the learning relevant to the students and so understandable. The
teachers are able to package the learning in such a way that the
students are able to think about it, relate to it and comprehend
it.

This is a critical factor that often seems to go amiss in
Indonesian schools. Teachers often seem to lack relevance. There
is a tendency to be lost or stuck in an ivory tower of textbooks
and prescribed curricula that stilts development and risks
limiting thought. The ability of teachers to relate the learning
to the real world is a primary catalyst of thought and thinking
skills. But the ability to "think outside of the box" or perhaps
in the context of schools "think outside of the textbook" is
regrettably in a condition of shortfall.

There is a real sense and danger, then, that teachers are
being left behind and in so being they are weighing down the
progress of their students. It is consistently apparent that
students of today are filled with curiosity for the world. Multi-
media brings the world to them on a daily basis and it is opening
up their minds to the world and rightly so. In this environment,
it becomes essential that educators keep up with the pace of
change.

Learning goals and curriculum objectives do not have to be
subordinated to the notion of making school popular but, by
making school and school subjects interesting and stimulating to
the powers of thought that students naturally have, education may
simultaneously engender thinking skills and intellectual/
academic growth.

Schools should be wellsprings of opportunities for students to
grow as thinkers. As thinkers, they will have the potential to
contribute positively to their communities, society and indeed
the nation as a whole. Educators and legislators who are charged
with determining the function and goals for education should
recognize their duty of care to foster the encouragement of
thinking and thoughtfulness. If old-fashioned regimented demands
for conformity and obedience are allowed to remain, then progress
is inevitably going to be difficult and slow.