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.