The examples teachers set

The examples teachers set

JAKARTA (JP): At the now defunct Ngawi (East Java) High School
of Teacher Training (SPG), where restrictions outnumbered
freedoms, one teacher, Mubini, was the most beloved enforcer of
the regulations.

Unlike other teachers at the school, who enforced the
regulations with such physical punishments as ordering offenders
to run around the principal's office, Mubini punished rule-
breakers with allusions and jokes.

"Hi, you Yanti, you must have been so busy dating that you did
not have time to wash your undershirt," said Mubini, "punishing"
my classmate Haryanti who broke the rule requiring all students,
male and female, to wear an undershirt beneath their uniforms.

"Listen up everyone, Riyadi here needs the help of his mother
to cut his fingernails," Mubini announced one day after noticing
that my fingernails were too long.

That was one of the unwritten regulations established by
Mubini himself for his students.

Of course, other teachers had their own unwritten regulations
on top of the written rules, such as the one requiring all
students to wear black shoes, white socks, gray pants and white
shirts from Monday to Thursday.

Our gym teacher, Naryo, for instance, banned all students from
smoking, even outside of school. Once he spotted one student
contentedly puffing away in a movie theater. The next day, Naryo
interrogated the guilty student in front of the class.

Naryo, Mubini and all of the other teachers at the school
constantly emphasized that as future elementary school teachers,
SPG students had to learn good habits and abandon bad ones, so
that when we became teachers we would set only positive examples
for our students.

Thus the saying "Guru kencing berdiri, murid kencing berlari"
-- which literally means "Teachers pee while standing, students
pee while running" from the belief in rural areas that it was
more polite for men to squat while urinating -- was popular among
the SPG teachers.

Naryo, for example, announced to the class after interrogating
the student he had caught smoking: "If you smoke cigarettes, your
students will smoke cocaine."

That kind of warning may sound strange now, but we took it
seriously.

As future teachers, we could not drink alcohol or frequent
places that could be seen in any negative light, such as cafes,
bars or even movie theaters, where prostitutes sometimes trolled
for customers.

Some of my classmates eventually went on to become elementary
school teachers. And, I would assume, they are good, responsible
teachers, even though they have to do side jobs such as farming
or trading to make ends meet.

One such former classmates, Sumardi, who recently visited me
in the capital, said he did some work as a middleman for people
who sold everything from bicycles to houses.

He also has a fishpond near his house in Sukoharjo district,
Central Java.

The money he makes as a broker and from his fishpond
supplements the meager salary he earns as an elementary school
teacher.

Sumardi assured me, however, that these little extra jobs did
not in the least take away from his work as a teacher. He still
has time to offer his students extra-curricular activities free
of charge.

When I asked him if he still went by the saying "Guru kencing
berdiri, murid kencing berlari," he said it was even more
important now. He asserted that upstanding elementary school
teachers inspired their students and encouraged them to be good
and to succeed.

Most elementary school teachers, I believe, are good and
responsible people. Most of them, I would say, are the products
of those rigid educations at SPGs across the country, before they
were abolished in the early 1990s.

True, demonstrations and strikes were never part of the SPG
curriculum. Nevertheless, teachers did stage a massive protest
last year, demanding better pay. And the government met their
demand and gave them a raise.

"It was a significant increase. I think it was the highest pay
increase in my 15-year career as a teacher," Sumardi said.

And now teachers are making headlines again. This time, they
went beyond demonstrating and staged strikes in a number of
areas, pressing local administrations to make good on the back
pay owed them from January.

As one might expect, the sight of teachers walking out of the
classroom resulted in vigorous debate. The national education
minister weighed in with his opinion that teachers should not
strike, but instead should engage in talks to reach a settlement.

But Sumardi thought the strike was understandable because
local administrations continuously failed to recognize teachers
as the assets they are, and as a result continued to neglect
them.

It is hard to rebut his argument because, after all, if you
devote your life to helping students take their first and most
important steps on the path of life, you must have a leg to stand
on yourself.

-- Riyadi Suparno