Teachers need more preparation for new curriculum

Debbie A. Lubis, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Education experts have urged the government to improve teachers' skills before implementing the new, competence-based curriculum as it requires a democratic, open-to-discussion and adventurous learning atmosphere in school.

The government is planning to adopt the competence-based curriculum in 2004, replacing the previous 1994 curriculum which is considered too authoritarian and centralized.

The new curriculum is designed to offer more power to schools, especially to teachers, to design their own lesson plans so that they accord with the competencies needed by students in each subject based upon local conditions.

Arief Rachman, an education expert, said on Wednesday that teachers in the country were still affected by financial and personal problems, preventing them from teaching in a pleasant and comprehensible fashion.

"They need intensive training not only in skills but in attitudes, such as creativity, encouraging initiative, and creating democracy in the classroom, because it's just like a book that becomes "good" when the writer conveys his message clearly in a pleasant way," he told The Jakarta Post.

Arief, who is also the headmaster of Lab School, Jakarta, said that the teacher should guide students in learning about democracy by letting them decide the chapters to be studied and allowing them to share the results of their group discussions with their peers.

He predicted, however, that only ten percent of teachers in the country understood the new curriculum.

Sharing his view, Mohammad Surya, chairman of the Association of Indonesian Teachers (PGRI), suggested that the government improve teachers' proficiency through experience-based training that gave teachers more opportunities to work with and improve the curriculum, using their own skills, knowledge and experience.

"Most of the training is concept-based. If the government does not hold any discussions with teachers, I'm pessimistic about the new curriculum being successfully implemented," he told the Post.

Surya said that teachers in coastal areas did not need to teach students about how to cultivate certain agricultural plants but they had to teach their students about fishing through the relevant subjects in school.

Meanwhile Siskandar, chairman of the Curriculum Center at the Ministry of National Education, said he met some teachers on Wednesday from schools where mini-curriculum pilot projects were being carried out .

"Some of the teachers have faced technical problems with the new curriculum so we promised to give them more technical assistance through in-service training and providing indicators for learning achievement," he told the Post.

Mathematics teachers in elementary schools could measure students' competence by asking them to calculate the school yard's width, Siskandar said.

The pilot mini-curriculum projects have been underway for the last six months in 15 elementary and 15 junior high schools in Jakarta, Tangerang in Banten, Bandung in West Java, Yogyakarta, and Sidoarjo in East Java.

Siskandar said that the project would be expanded to senior high schools starting next month.