Teachers must produce critical students

Teachers must produce critical students

By Joko Kusmanto

BANDUNG (JP): Indonesia is confronted with a lot of problems
pertaining to its school and college practices (SCP). In fact,
Indonesia's future, that is "how it will look in decades to
come", relies much on its present SCPs.

These problems center on both "insiders", in a sense all
elements of schools and colleges as formal institutions in which
the real teaching-learning process takes place, and "outsiders"
such as the social environment, criticism leveled against them,
the political situation and government policies, to mention just
a few aspects.

Above all, SCPs have been easily constructed and directed to
the maintenance of the status quo by the ruling regime. This,
especially, became a common phenomenon during the New Order era.

Teachers are one of the elements who have received both much
criticism and much credit. On the one hand, they are criticized
as incompetent, uncreative and unprofessional. On the other hand,
they are justified in such incompetencies by virtue of the poor
rewards given to them, in this case their inadequate salaries.

The question we have to ask: "Is it guaranteed that pedagogy
in Indonesia is enhanced and goes down the right path as soon as
the salaries of the teachers are increased?"

Surely no one can guarantee this and yet a high salary is much
better and may bring about new hope.

The problem lies much in the teachers' attitudes as educators
and gate keepers of the values of humanity and democracy. That is
all about what teachers have to implant in their minds, apart
from struggling for greater prosperity.

Critical pedagogy brings out the ideas of challenge to any and
all forms of alienation, oppression and subordination -- no
matter from what identity position one is coming (Kampol, 1998).
A possible introduction to critical pedagogy can begin from a
theoretical platform using the concepts of schooling and
education.

This theoretical discussion is trying to allude to the
practical facets in the real world of teaching, thus making the
critical pedagogy more achievable. Hopefully, by understanding
the concepts of schooling and education as a beginning of a
critical pedagogy normative platform, teachers are able to move
on as agents of social and critical change.

Critical pedagogy roots itself in the belief that every
citizen deserves an education as declared in the Constitution of
1945. The concept of education is importantly differentiated from
that of schooling. The basic logic of schooling relies on
preparing students for a market economy.

Purpel in his book The Moral and Spiritual Crisis in Education
(1989) comments that schools have been captured by the concept of
accountability, which has been transformed from a notion that
schools need to be responsive and responsible to community
concerns to one in which numbers are used to demonstrate that
schools have met their minimal requirements -- a reductionism
which has rather given priority to the need to control than to
understanding educational considerations.

The need to control produces control mechanisms and for
schools as well as colleges this has meant a proliferation of
tests -- a kind of quality control mechanism borrowed crudely and
inappropriately from certain industrial settings.

We can control the curriculum, teachers and staff by insisting
on predefined minimal performances on specified tests. In this
case, it means metaphors like efficiency, cost-effectiveness,
quality control and production.

With the above in mind, students are metaphorically
commodities to be traded. They are taught in schools and colleges
as if they were commodities produced in a such a way in factories
as to meet consumer requirements. Their value is measured not in
terms of their humane qualities such as love and caring, rather
more in terms of their salability in the industrial marketplace.
The goal of schooling, therefore, is to make the students able to
achieve high scores only, a reductionist transformation of humane
qualities into numbers.

Education, on the other hand, presupposes intrinsic motivation
-- that students are intrinsically motivated to learn and
teachers intrinsically motivated to teach.

While grades and the like are an important element of school
and college structures, the reason for teaching and learning
should not fueled by numbers -- but by a sheer desire to attain
knowledge for its own sake.

Put differently, education in public schools as well as in the
higher academies involves passion for one's subject matter, the
ability to get students to think critically, being active about
subject content, creating a classroom as an active community
revolving around the learning material, and the strong desire to
teach and to learn.

Thus, education involves the teachers' understanding of the
schooling mechanism that would not allow education to ensue.

Giroux (1988) states that challenging the very presuppositions
of the schooling mechanism, particularly its negatives, means
becoming a transformative intellectual -- and that goes for both
teachers and students.

Creating transformative intellectuals means being critical of
all forms of schooling, and being a transformative intellectual
puts the teacher into a moral bind.

Hence, the teachers should ask themselves: "What kind of
education can I give my students that can create a space for them
so as they can be critical citizens, so I can generate democracy
in my classroom and so I can open up options for them?"

Unlike schooling which operates hand in hand with control
mechanisms under the guise of education, democracy rears its
head.

Here, control mechanisms are challenged, negotiated and
subverted. That does not mean, for instance, that one has to
abandon testing which in schooling structures determines social
class. Testing is a necessary evil in an economically driven
country.

However, one has to realize that public schools have been
historically charged with the responsibility of sustaining and
promoting democratic principles. There have been critical outlets
for these democratic principles in such school curricula as
history classes, citizenship courses and social studies.

But critical pedagogy holds that democratic principles must
become a way of life in all subject areas and all extra-curricula
activities -- be they pedagogically demonstrated in maths,
science and other areas. One does not necessarily have to be a
social science teacher to challenge control mechanisms. This
should include teachers and students in all subject areas, for
instance, in creating limits for behavior control by writing
class rules co-operatively and negotiating forms of testing.

Democratic education also involves fostering learning in a
reciprocal and communicative kind of way. Teacher is not an
omniscient figure in the classroom.

Teachers as educators should open avenues to the negotiation
of differences. They may become authorities over their subject
matter, but not the only authority in the classroom.

In the classroom this necessarily means that critical
pedagogues interested in educating begin to interpret history
from multiple ethical perspectives and situate it contextually
within the life of the students. In Math this may mean equating
economics and social relationship as a form of living rather than
only a rigid formula as the only correct avenue to knowledge.
Math teachers would concretize math problems in the context of
students lives, not getting them to be mere robots of formulae.

In fact, our SCPs are still far from being humane and
democratic, measured both qualitatively and quantitatively
against the above framework. It is not surprising if it is
related to what has happened to our academic environment during
the past 30 years. From the elementary school up to higher
education, we have witnessed how rigidly the government imposed
its regulations. Challenging those regulations would result in
the end of the challenger's existence.

In this reform era, it is hoped that those negative practices
have already become part of our past. Here the teachers' role is
significant in promoting humanity and democracy among themselves,
students and school staff.

This is especially felt urgent in our elementary and high
schools, although there are also still many inhumane and
undemocratic practices in higher education. To be able to effect
change, teachers have to be critical pedagogues -- being
transformative intellectuals.

Why is it the teacher who has to commence those practices? Of
course, it is also hoped that students are able to be the agents
of social change. But, the top-down approach has become so
crystallized that it needs deconstructing. The paradigm that
teachers are the sole authority in the classroom, metaphorically
like the president of the ruling regime during the New Order
government, as well as headmasters, lecturers, rectors, deans and
even the minister of education has to be deconstructed, removed
and replaced with ideas of opening up avenues for differences.
There is no more place for terms using the key word "single" such
as single majority, single interpretation and single truth.

Teachers have to be able to prove to themselves that they can
make it, before they ask students to do it or worse before they
have to do it because they have been pushed by the student
movement.

This new year of 1999 generates many hopes. We are able to
educate our students if we choose when and where it is
appropriate to resist controlling structures in our academic
environment.

Hope lies in asking and answering this question, and then
taking action. To what end do I teach? Critical pedagogues must
realize that teaching is more than simply transmitting the
subject matter, but really about the validity of educating for
citizenship, humanity and democracy.

This 1999 is expected to be the turning point of our
educational environment from which we create critical students.
Clearly, for teachers, there is a lot of work to be done.

Window A: Education, on the other hand, presupposes intrinsic
motivation -- that students are intrinsically motivated to
learn and teachers intrinsically motivated to teach.

Window B: Creating transformative intellectuals means being
critical of all forms of schooling, and being a transformative
intellectual puts the teacher into a moral bind.