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?"