We Are Too Busy Digitising Schools, But Forgetting to Digitise Ways of Thinking
In the midst of accelerating global technological transformation, Indonesia’s education is moving ambitiously towards the digital era. Schools are being filled with interactive screens, online learning platforms are expanding, artificial intelligence is being introduced, and the term “educational transformation” is increasingly becoming official policy language. Digitisation is finally positioned as a symbol of modern educational progress.
Behind all this optimism, there is a fundamental question that is rarely discussed seriously. Is Indonesia’s education truly digitising ways of thinking, or merely transferring old patterns to more modern devices?
This question is important because education is essentially not just a matter of technology, but of communication and shaping human thinking. Schools are not only places to transfer information, but also spaces where ideas are built, reasoning is formed, attention is managed, and awareness is developed.
Therefore, the success of digital education cannot be measured merely by the number of electronic devices in classrooms, but must examine the variable of mindset; whether education is capable of forming new mindsets that are more critical, open, and communicative.
This is the most intriguing yet worrying point in Indonesia’s educational problematic. We appear very busy digitising school facilities, but not yet serious enough about building learning communication transformation. Most classrooms are indeed starting to look modern visually, but remain conservative in terms of thinking patterns. Technology changes, but educational interaction patterns remain the same; teachers speak one-way, students listen, then the system measures memorisation ability.
Yet the digital world truly changes the way humans receive knowledge. Today’s young generation lives in a culture of fast, visual, interactive communication that is highly competitive for attention. They grow up amid a constant flow of information moving every second. In such a situation, education can no longer rely solely on old monotonous and administrative communication patterns.
In the digital era, attention becomes the central point of the entire learning process. Information today is too abundant. Therefore, the challenge of education is no longer just providing knowledge, but how to make knowledge able to capture attention, build engagement, and influence students’ ways of thinking.
Ironically, much of our education system still fails to understand this fundamental change. Schools are busy chasing device digitisation, but forget that the greatest revolution of the digital era actually occurs in the way humans communicate. The digital world has given birth to a generation more responsive to narratives, visualisations, interactions, and lively communication approaches. Meanwhile, classrooms often still cling to monotonous delivery patterns with minimal rhetorical power. As a result, schools are slowly losing the battle for students’ attention.
Today, teachers are not only competing with students’ laziness. They are competing with TikTok, YouTube, social media, digital algorithms, even artificial intelligence (AI) that can deliver information more quickly and engagingly. UNESCO in various digital education reports warns that algorithm-based technology and social media have changed attention patterns, learning habits, and the way young generations receive information. In this situation, modern education is truly facing a communication crisis.
Therefore, the digitisation of education should not stop at procuring technology. Education must also begin building relevant rhetorical abilities and learning communication for the digital generation, because no matter how sophisticated educational technology is, it will lose its influence if learning delivery remains poor in interaction and fails to build attention.
This is where rhetorical ability becomes extremely important in future education. Rhetoric is not just skill in speaking, but the ability to bring ideas to life before an audience. In the modern classroom, teachers cannot just master the material. They must be able to build emotional connections, create communication rhythms, manage attention, and present learning as a truly living intellectual experience.
Unfortunately, this aspect is still very rarely a focus in Indonesia’s educational transformation. Teachers are trained to operate applications, but not yet sufficiently prepared to face changes in the psychology of digital generation communication. Yet in this era of information overload, the ability to capture attention is far more determining than just the ability to deliver material.
We need to realise that modern education is fundamentally the art of building intellectual influence. Teachers are no longer the sole source of information, because the internet has taken that role. What is now increasingly important is teachers’ ability to help students understand, interpret, and process information into mature ways of thinking.
That is why digital education is not enough to just produce technologically advanced schools. Education must produce living communication spaces. Students need to be accustomed to dialogue, argumentation, expressing opinions, and building the courage to think, because the digital world does not only need humans who quickly receive information, but also humans who can communicate ideas intelligently.
The momentum of National Education Day should become a space for reflection that the future of Indonesia’s education is not only determined by the speed of technological transformation, but also by the ability of classroom communication transformation. Technology can indeed accelerate learning, but only communication can bring learning to life.
Advanced countries understand that the core of modern education bu