Teacher shares joy with three generations

Teacher shares joy with three generations

By Ati Nurbaiti

JAKARTA (JP): One morning at a kindergarten, children stepped gleefully across a long wooden block. Teachers then raised the block a few inches higher on its supporting benches and the little ones spotted a happy challenge -- all except one.

"The little girl was barely in the middle of the block when she turned pale," narrated Ibu Kasur, a life-long educator of under five-year-olds.

"Her baby-sitter started pinching and scolding her, pointing to all the other kids who had conquered the block. I rushed to stop the woman."

The child's body was cold and Kasur, whose four kindergartens have an enrollment of 600 children, sensed trouble. After school she was busy summoning and coaxing busy, unbelieving parents, consulting the school's psychologists and maintaining the child's self-confidence.

The case is the same with stammering children, hyper-active kids, slow learners and those displaying uncommon talents.

"Parents will say the troubled child is perfectly alright at home with the baby-sitter or maid," says Kasur.

"And I say to them, 'surely you believe me as well as your baby-sitter. Please come and have a look for yourself.'"

Sensing special differences among children and alerting parents, besides creating the most happy learning surroundings a child could hope for, is part of Kasur's kindergarten education.

Together with her late husband Suryono, or Pak Kasur (a misnomer for `Kak Sur,' or Big Brother Sur as earlier children called him), Kasur has been a best friend to three generations of Indonesian youngsters. Pak Kasur died on June 26, 1992, at 79.

While adults in their 50s remember the team as their Scout masters, eventually Pak and Ibu Kasur focused on three to five- year-olds. This started when elementary students came with their small siblings to Pak Kasur's home on Jl. H. Agus Salim (now Jl. Sabang) in Central Jakarta.

Their home, near rice fields and vegetable plots, was on the grounds of the Film Censor Board where Pak Kasur worked. In 1957 they moved to nearby Jl. Cikini V/2, when the site was to being developed into the Sarinah Department Store.

Growth

Thirty-seven years later the nursery school continues, along with three other branches set up under the Yayasan Setia Balita foundation, in the midst of a tremendous growth in pre-school education.

"I'm so happy that housing complexes now all have kindergartens, it's very important," said Kasur. Along with flourishing nursery schools, playgroups have also mushroomed and special schools for 18-month-olds are also found in the city.

Computer and foreign language skills are now part of play school packages, based on scientific information on the extraordinary range of skills that toddlers can absorb. Indonesian parents are following in the steps of Japanese moms who have caught onto the message that "kindergarten is too late".

Elementary schools now require entrants to already be able to read, write and even transcribe script ('tulis sambung'). This puts more pressure on kindergarten teachers.

This, says Kasur, is inevitable.

"Toys now have letters and numbers on them, including the new video games," she says. "It would be torture to leave your child out."

But guided by Pak Kasur's principles, Ibu Kasur easily adopts and selects new needs.

By attaching a character to every letter, like the bald head and fat tummy of a B, and encouraging children to identify sounds of vowels with specific facial gestures, pupils playfully grasp their first command of letters and syllables.

Everything comes with a melody. Singing, Pak Kasur preached, is the backbone of a kindergarten curricula -- aided now with karaoke technology.

"We use anything available to help us," says Kasur.

What about computer skills, English and teaching babies?

"I don't understand all that yet," said Ibu Kasur, who has learned everything she does from hands on experience. "We take children who can already talk."

In accordance with government requirements, her teaching recruits, must at least be graduates of senior high teaching schools.

"Maybe those classes (for babies to three-year-olds) are really needed for children with very busy parents...I'm interested to know what they teach." And if elementary schools take up computer skills and English, Kasur says she will consider teaching them to her toddlers.

Right now, she concentrates on supervising the kindergartens in Pasar Minggu, South Jakarta, Kemang Pratama in Bekasi, and in Cipinang Indah, East Jakarta -- besides the pioneer site in Cikini.

She has had requests to open many more, at least on a franchise basis. Other well-known kindergartens have branches all over the city and even in other cities. Foreign investors have also joined the market, working with locals. But Kasur gently dismisses such possibilities.

"Pak Kasur was very strict; if a school bears our name we must be sure it follows our model of teaching. We must be able to attend at least every meaningful event, like graduation and report presentation days. And I don't have the strength to visit many sites."

She adds, "I don't think my name is big enough to be able to merely hang it up somewhere as a guarantee." Quite an understatement from a pioneer and recipient of several domestic and foreign awards.

Four schools, then, is enough. This way all her students and their parents share her radiated enthusiasm and joy.

No wonder she looks at least ten years younger than her 69 years. And nothing like a grandmother of ten boys and girls, the youngest only two months old.

Continuity

"We still make our own learning tools which people say are primitive," says Kasur. Pak Kasur designed, cut, sawed and painted necessary tools besides purchasing a few. Plastic never featured much in their schools -- "we thought it would be hard to discard plastic."

But more important is Kasur's trained sensitivity in bringing up children, now shared with the dozens of teachers she calls "my main assets."

Busy parents hoping for teachers to take care of all basics including religion to fend off growing pains, may think twice when they hear Kasur's priorities.

"We leave religion at home...We mainly instill a sense of competition and sportiveness among children." Knowing one's rights and respecting the rights of others is another mission.

"Children will immediately shout when one of their friends sits on the seat with the blue fish when he said he chose the yellow one," said Kasur.

Numerous games and warm compliments boost healthy competition, and Kasur warns against harsh punishments for the young.

"The child must not be humiliated," she said. "Telling children they won't get their singing turn is punishment enough, they don't have to be threatened with standing against the wall."

And be flexible, she adds. When an exasperated teacher in Irian Jaya told Kasur she couldn't work without colored paper, Kasur told her to use the abundant leaves.

"After all, we mean to train the youngster's dexterity, don't we?"