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.