The new curriculum: Hopes and challenges

Muhammad Zuhdi, Faculty of Education, Syarif Hidayatullah Islamic State University, Jakarta

The Ministry of National Education will use the 2002 School Curriculum soon. This will replace the previous 1994 curriculum. What differentiates the new one is that it has been developed under the spirit of reform and decentralization, while previous ones were developed under an authoritarian and centralized system.

Therefore, unlike the others, the new curriculum is not designed to propose all of the materials that should be taught; rather to set standards of competence that students should acquire at certain levels of education. Hence, the new curriculum has been designed to be competence-based.

The idea of a competence-based curriculum, according to Burns and Klingstedt (1972), is that students as learners are expected to attain 100 percent of specific competence at certain levels that have been determined in advance. Although the length of time that each student needs and the way each learns may differ from the others, the ultimate results nevertheless will be equal.

The competence-based curriculum allows more leeway within which schools and teachers can work. Schools and teachers, therefore, have a greater role and responsibility in designing the applied curriculum to ensure that students can achieve the expected competence.

Hence, the average achievement of students is also expected to greatly increase. Another advantage of the new curriculum is that it gives teachers more opportunity to work with and improve the curriculum, using their own skills, knowledge and experience. This, furthermore, will encourage each school to improve its teachers' proficiency through in-service training or otherwise, because teachers' skill is the quality schools will be relying on more than anything else.

Are teachers ready? Depending too much on teachers will not necessarily solve problems. It is unlikely that all of the teachers will be able to teach as required, as there are many constraints that our teachers face. I believe only a small number of teachers will be able to adjust to the new curriculum, while others will find it difficult, for a number of reasons.

First, the new curriculum requires teachers to pay much more attention to each individual student, particularly those with below-average achievement. This will require more time, something that is very difficult for most teachers to deal with.

Second, it also requires teachers to be able to design their own teaching materials and strategies, as the new curriculum, unlike the previous one, does not suggest anything specific, except the expected level of competence.

This requires teachers to have an ability to develop classroom curricula as well as more time for selecting materials, activities and teaching methods. Textbooks will certainly help, although there are two potential problems here regarding publishers.

First, they will produce "ready-to-use books" for teachers. This may reduce the distinction of this curriculum from previous ones, as teachers start to rely more on textbooks than curriculum documents. Second, publishers will do everything possible to sell their books. Many decisions by teachers and school principals to buy certain books have involved financial "compensation" from publishers in return for using certain books at their school.

The new curriculum has, so far, only focused on the competencies and skills that students should achieve -- the more easily measured intellectual abilities and skills -- and less on attitude and morality.

Therefore, the Ministry of National Education and local education authorities should do their best to prove that the new curriculum is truly designed to improve the quality of our education, and is not merely a consequence of the change in government. Such efforts should not simply end at the policy- making level but also ensure that the new curriculum is applied as expected.