First of all, we all have commonly understood that the greatest problem of the Indonesian formal education resides with its being controlled or greatly influenced by the government. Thus politics, powers, and business are the influencing factors to where the educational policy and curriculum are going. This tie between the government and the formal education inevitably forms a malicious bond. The government is elected every five year. If the president believes that his cabinet does not work effectively enough, he has the prerogative to change his cabinet in the middle of his presidential term. And so, the Minister of Education too can be replaced even shorter than his/her official term. Now, the public opinion goes: “Ganti Mentri, Ganti Kurikulum” (trans. “When the Minister is changed, the Curriculum is changed too.”) This is malicious because then the Indonesian formal education can never find its stability. Education relies on stability and curriculum requires a stable continuing sequence in order to progress properly. We may change the details, but we ought not to change the framework every so often. The oft changes disrupt the educational process big time. Once a framework is chosen and executed, it must be done until it is completed. Only then we can see the full result and get the proper assessment. Otherwise, we will only reap educational whirlwind. Elements of education will get confused. For example, teachers will completely be thrown out of the kettle if they have to change their teaching pattern every few years. Once the philosophical framework is set out for the national curriculum, it is expected to run until its completion. It still needs to be evaluated every year in order to ensure that it is going toward the stated goal, but this doesn’t mean that the entire framework must then be replaced every time a new minister is appointed.
Therefore, the solution for this problem is as simple as severing the tie.
Political agenda must not be carried into the national education framework.
The national education framework must not be controlled by the government.
The pace is not the same. The government officially changes every five
years. But formal education can’t keep up with the five year change.
Formal education needs much longer time to work properly. Just like we
can’t rush a child into adulthood, we too can’t rush formal education to mature
every five years. In Indonesia
we have proven it for as long as I can remember, the failure of keeping the tie.
National education fails again and again. Every time a new minister of
education is appointed, he/she is busy to change the curriculum to suit his/her
agenda. The first year or two of his/her office time are used up to
uproot the old curriculum and then to sow the new curriculum. The last
three years of his/her office will be spent weathering the storm that is the
result of the curriculum change. Then he retires from his position.
And a new minister is appointed. The new minister will repeat the cycle
of uprooting, sowing, and weathering the storm. And so the Indonesian
formal education will never come out of crisis. Every new government will
introduce a new crisis. The crises are piling up in the department of
education. And the formal education institutions and the elements of
education such as teachers and students suffer terribly. No wonder we
today inherit such a mumble jumble national education framework. This
malicious bond must be stopped. National formal education must be
liberated from the bondage. It must stand independently from the
government political interference. This is the first order of business.
The second order of business is to give the national education its vision and
mission. It is the government’s responsibility to provide the vision and
the mission. It is also the government’s duty to make sure all the
necessary tools are available for the formal education institutions to use to
ensure that the vision and mission be realized. The government must not
busy itself with the details of the educational process. Leave such
details in the hands of the independent formal education institutions, be it
the accreditation agencies, or the schools itself, or the universities, or the
textbook makers, and so on. Even public schools or government funded
formal education institutions must be independent from the five-yearly change
of the government. Keep them from corruption through a sustainable system
that promotes accountability and fair assessment. The government must
delegate. Being able to delegate accordingly is the mark of true
leadership. The government must provide good leadership. It can’t
lead if it continues interfering with the details, in this case – what has been
done for ages – is through the detailed curriculum and the textbooks provision.
Someone once said that the mark of insanity is repeating the same thing over
and over again hoping for a different result. Indonesian education has
been doing the same thing over and over again, and over that course of time we
have been reaping disaster after disaster, why repeat the same thing again?
We are not insane, are we? Leave the educational details to the hands of
the able, and let the government focus on the tasks that they must do.
Casting the vision and the mission of the Indonesian education is the portion
of the Indonesian government. But chasing after the detail of the
curriculum and textbooks is not.
When a leader can’t delegate, he/she is doomed to failure. This happens
everywhere. Steve Jobs could not be the one doing everything Apple did.
He had to have the designer of the products that was not him. He had to
have the coder of the computer programs that was not him. He had to have
a financial director that ran the financial operation of Apple Inc. that was
not him. And so on and so forth. You got the idea. As the
leader of Indonesian formal education, the government must realize its limit.
A severe limitation is at full view, which is the length of official service it
can give. One must be rational and accept this limitation. Not
forcing the irrational into dreaming that within the five year of office one
can do everything perfectly. It doesn’t work! Once you leave
office, and the new minister is appointed, all your work is thrown into the
garbage can. And goes also all the works that haven been invested to make
the change. This pain only adds up. It frustrates people even more.
We all need stability. Education in particular needs stability.
There is discrepancy between the work that the government can do with its
limitation and the demand of the work that must be done in the national formal
education. So the rational solution is to delegate. Delegate the
things that the government can’t do to those that can. Donald Seibert,
who was CEO and chairman of J.C. Penney, once said: “The feeling that you
can do the job better yourself makes delegation difficult. But I’ve been a more
effective leader when others have actually done the work.[1]”
The third order of business is to create a sustainable system for the
Indonesian formal education. The creation of the sustainable system is
best illustrated with the creation of infrastructure of the Indonesian society.
The building of roads, highways, transportation system, water, and so on is key
for the proper running of the society. We can’t just build nice
buildings, nice malls, bringing in good commodities, but yet there is no proper
roads or highways. The nice buildings or malls will soon be forgotten
because nobody could go there with ease. The good commodities will be
spoiled in the storehouse because it can’t be transported and distributed
properly to the cities and villages that need due to the lack of proper roads.
The infrastructure is necessary for the functioning of the society. In
the same way, the infrastructure of the Indonesian formal education must be
prepared for the proper running of the formal education in Indonesia.
And such huge task is the duty of the government which has been endowed with
great power to carry and complete it.
One of the most important tools for ensuring the success of education is
assessment. Assessment is needed to find out where we are at. Not
only where the learners are at, but also where the teachers are at, where the
educational institutions are at, where the educational programs are at, and so
on. Assessment is needed to monitor our progress. Through it we can
see whether we are too slow, or whether we are on track, etc. If to build
the infrastructure of the formal educational system, an assessment agency must
be created independently. No government ties whatsoever may exist.
This is to keep the agency pure from any political agenda or power struggle (or
corruption). Just like when building roads, we need also to ensure that
the road signs are clear. We must not build road signs that are hidden or
unclear that is prone to be exploited by corrupt people. No power abuse
is to be given opportunity to take charge. Now, the assessment agency
that is to be built ought to be built more than one nationally. This is
to tackle monopoly which leads to power abuse again. Therefore it is
imperative to build several assessment agencies or accreditation agencies that
are independent of the government and independent of one another. The
purpose is to have peer accountability among agencies. Each agency will
be audited by the others to ensure the proper work of accreditation is done
well. The government may initiate the building of the agencies, but may
not insert their people in it. Election of the leaders must be done by an
independent board of trustees for each agency. The board of trustees must
come from diverse people representing many different segments of the society
and formal education institutions. Appointment of leaders and then staff
of the agencies must be done fairly based on professionalism.
Each agency is tasked with creating a well-balanced system of assessment for
all formal education institutions. Their philosophy must be set out
clearly and properly. Vision and mission must be written accordingly in
order to achieve the national education goals as stipulated by the government
and to enhance formal education enterprise as necessary. They are in
existence with one of the purposes to help formal education institutions to run
their educational programs properly in order to achieve the national goals.
Another thing to initiate is the creation of teachers colleges across the
nation. Each teachers college must be again independent from the
government. Its program is to be designed independently for the purpose
of fulfilling the national educational vision and mission. More
specifically, the teachers college must aim at graduating highly skilled
teachers that will work professional in educational institutions nationwide.
With this initiative, the government must also work on making sure that the
compensation of teachers be on the right standard. This is key for the
success of the achievement of the national goals.
It has been widely known that teaching profession holds a low salary. The
impact of this ordeal is that people of talents, highly intelligent, very
capable, are not willing to dedicate their life to teaching because of the low
salary, which means their life would be miserable, and that they would be
disrespected because of being poor. So the able people choose different
paths, even though they might just have the passion for teaching. But the
low salary discourages them from joining the noble force. This is a huge
failure strategically. Countries that desire to progress accordingly
cannot abandon formal education. And one important infrastructure to
prepare is to entice the highly intelligent people to want to take the teaching
profession. We can’t allow incapable people to teach. In order to
bring in capable people, we need to give them proper compensation. We
can’t deceive them by saying all the right thing in order to instill guilty
feeling or feeling of indebtedness or dream of a vision that they would not
enjoy in order to get them to dedicate their entire lives in education.
The government must write a policy that will govern the teacher professional
qualifications and their proper compensation (commensurate with skills,
experience, and degrees according to the global best practice). In
average, teachers in the western countries receive about $50,000 USD annually
plus benefits (health insurance, housing allowance, book allowance, etc.).
About more than 15 years ago, the country in Southeast Asia that just came out
of their terrible impact caused by war, Vietnam, decided to put a heavy
emphasis on the national formal education. They allocated a huge chunk of
their national budget to improve their national formal education. Within
that initiative, they increased their teachers’ salary two or three times the then
average. And so many talented people rushed into joining the teaching
workforce. Vietnam has
progressed so rapidly in their formal education sector surpassing Indonesia.
Another important example for Indonesia
to learn from is by looking at Finland.
Finland
is now said to have the best formal education there is in the world.
Their secret is simple. They do not rely heavily on the detailed
curriculum textbooks or national exams (the things the government of Indonesia
has been busy pushing and emphasizing for so many years but have resulted in a
massive education failure every time). Finland invests heavily on the
teachers. Their schools employ the best minds to become teachers.
Their primary and secondary schools are filled with PhDs as the teachers.
No wonder their students enjoy school. They learn so much more from the
primary sources who themselves profess the disciplines. Finland does
not employ textbook operators who only know how to repeat what the teachers’
manual says. One of the greatest strategic failures in the Indonesian
formal education is the employing of textbook operators in schools. No
wonder Indonesian students don’t enjoy school. They also do not get into
the level of understanding that is required for each discipline. All this
keep our national education standard very very low. If you go to a doctor
to consult about your illness, do you want someone analyzing your illness who
is only a textbook operator and not a real doctor? It is your life on the
table, I bet you would not want someone who is only a textbook operator
performs a surgery on you, would you? In the same way, for the formal
education to function well, you need a real teacher. A teacher that is
highly intelligent. A teacher that professes the discipline like his life
depends on it. This is the most important educational infrastructure
investment Indonesian government must heed if Indonesia is to progress
significantly as a nation.
Do not merely praise teachers as the “hero without medal” but despise them by
keeping their salary low. If you continue to do so, you will not have
heroes, but you will have people who are the worst kind of teachers – the
impassionate ones who take the teaching profession only because there is no
other work available for them. Indonesia needs to get the best
“hero without medal.” Teachers do not need a medal. They do not
need the empty praise. They need their family taken care of. They
need enough salary to live well, which is also necessary for their continuous
improvement in their keeping up with the knowledge development. Teachers
need to keep up with technology too. They need to maintain their honor
and dignity as well. Poverty kills people’s soul. It degrades
people’s self-esteem. So it is imperative to keep the teachers well
salaried. With it then the quality of teachers can be demanded
accordingly. Team this up with well-designed teachers colleges, then Indonesia will
have highly qualified teachers to fill the educational institutions.
Next is the bureaucracy. It is nationally known that Indonesian
bureaucracy is crazy. There are too many things unnecessary for
accreditation, for permit, for anything, that hampers development. The
government must realize this and attempt to simplify the bureaucracy in order
to support the enhancement and growth of the formal education in Indonesia.
This does not mean that any educational institution may exist. But what
we need to understand is that we must attend to the important things and not be
bothered with the unnecessary things. Simple bureaucracy will discourage
corruption. Complicated bureaucracy will open too many opportunities for
corruption. The focus here is to simplify what is complicated. Let
me give you a first-hand experience. When our family came back from Canada to Indonesia, we registered our kids
to the local school in our hometown. But then the school said that we
couldn’t enroll the kids in school unless all the paperwork from the government
was in place. Now that’s kind of surprising. Anyway, we went
through the website in order to register our kids to the government in order to
get the “transfer” status for them from Canadian school to the Indonesian
school. We went through all the required things in the website. We
submitted every single document asked. Then we got a message from the
government saying that the “transfer” status has been approved and ready to be
picked up. Now the second surprise. The document could not be
picked up in our hometown, but it had to be picked up in the Nation capital.
This means plane ticket and all. When it was about to be picked up, the
officer said that the document could not be picked up. Why? Because
there is another sequence that needed to be completed, which was the diploma equivalency.
Meaning we had to yet submit another application in order to get our kids’
Canadian school diploma or report cards be considered equivalent to the
Indonesian schooling standard. So much about coming to the Nation capital.
All for nothing. So everything back to square one. Another
application to go. Documents to submit. Then waiting for the
response. After a few weeks the government responded. The diploma
equivalency had been approved. Like it was before, we could not pick the
documents in our hometown. But it had to be picked up in the Nation
capital. Physically the document must be picked up. In this day and
age where mail, email, and fax dominate, we still had to pick up the physical
document in a certain place. This is kind of surprising, isn’t it?
This is what I mean by complicated bureaucracy.
Let me tell you the comparison. We had a chance to enroll our kids in the
US and in Canada.
The two schools in the two countries run similar policies. Their basic
policy is that it is the school’s duty to make sure students are educated
properly regardless of their level. Their teachers have the basic tenet
of accepting students without discrimination. They would help their
students in whatever condition they are in order to keep up with their
respective grade(s). And they are always trusting. They did not
test our kids for placement or anything. They simply asked hat grades
were they. So we told them so and so. They took our word without
the need of proving it. They were so happy to be of service to educate
the next generation. So contrast with the education model in Indonesia,
where candidate students are tested vigorously to determine whether they pass a
certain grade or not, whether they fit a certain grade or not, and so on and so
forth. But not in the US
and Canada.
They took our kids into their arms like they were their own students already.
We just arrived and it was the first time we visited the school. A
teacher brought us for a tour of the school facilities. She also
introduced us with several teachers and staff. We went to the classroom
for the respective grades, then the library (what a feat), then we went to the
computer lab, then to the playground, to the restrooms, to the admin office,
and so on. Amazing hospitality. My children were hooked,
immediately. The oldest, she was in grade 3 at that time, did not wish to
go home. She wished to stay in the school eager to start school
immediately. She forgot about her jetlag and all. She right away felt
at home in the new school. She felt welcomed. So she stayed.
We did not talk about her tuition or anything of that sort. They focused
on catering the new students. It is so different than Indonesia.
In Indonesia,
the first talk was about the tuition. Then the test. Then on how
difficult the school is. How elite it is because of its being difficult
and all. So many hoops to cross for a child to get into a school in Indonesia.
The test is so daunting. My kids cried after being tested in a school in Indonesia.
She felt unwelcomed. She did not feel at home at all. She
immediately wanted to go home. The comparison is between heaven and earth.
In Indonesia
the norm is that formal education is the complete duty of the students and the
parents, and private tutors. Whereas schools and teachers they merely
provide a space and the operator of the textbooks and then the credentials.
This gets me to the next critique.
In the developed countries like the US and Canada, their focus is on educating
the students wholeheartedly so they would become the good citizens they ought
to be, citizens of the country, and the citizens of the world, who would uphold
virtues and not vices. They focus on the highest order of thinking that
promotes creativity and leadership. But here in Indonesia or even Singapore the focus is on producing
more operators that would just follow the manual of the machine. These
graduates would never be leaders. They can’t be creative. They will
forever be followers who can’t think for themselves. They always will
need to be told what to do. In such arrangement their soul is dwarfed
while their want grows. So in their desire for a “better” life they
resort to something they should not tread. They begin abandoning their
virtues one by one because pragmatically their virtues have done them nothing
good. So they soon become blinded, their orientation has gone awry, so
their flirting with vices start producing fruits. Corruption, apathy,
hopelessness, depression, purposeless life, careless lifestyle, drugs, and
everything that serves like the opium of the soul piles up until they live like
a robot, like a zombie, like the walking dead.
What good is it to run schools if the result is the production of the walking
dead. Meaningless life awaits these people. Why persist on this
kind of arrangement? Isn’t it time to change all that. Isn’t it
time to focus on graduating true citizens, of the country and of the world who
hold virtues and not vices? If so, we can’t persist on using the current
formal education model. Something’s got to change.
The infamous national exams must be repelled. It has been done for so
many decades and it did not do any good. It creates stress. It
derails the process of education, It produces chaos. In the mind of
the students. In the heart of the parents. In the operation of the
schools. In the work of the teachers. And in the business of the
government. It is time for the government to let go of such control.
It was done without clear thinking. It was rushed in based on a faulty
idea. To imitate Singapore
is a big mistake. Singaporean model of formal education is changing now.
It is on the track of abandoning the factory model of education. All the
rote memorization and all the working hard kind of discipline is now being
replaced with understanding and with working smart. Why in the world Indonesia
persist in adopting the rote memorization and the working hard path? And
the new model can’t be achieved or supported by national exams.
Especially the kind of national exams being done over and over in Indonesia.
The current curriculum too is very immature. It is unfinished. Even
on paper it is not good. How can it be good in practicality?! The
so called K13 is an incomplete work. Conceptually it consists of good
things, but it is implemented very poorly. The infrastructure is not
ready. We can’t build malls without first readying the roads. No
one would enjoy the benefit of the malls we are building because there are no
roads toward the malls. Such arrangement is foolish. It only spells
disaster. The current president is working so hard to remedy the
structure of society in this country. So President Joko Widodo puts his
focus on the massive creation of the country’s infrastructure. He ordered
the building of roads, highways, good transportation system, and so on.
He is right on the target. Without proper infrastructure Indonesia will
never be a developed country. When I was in China
in 1997, China was busy
making all the highways and roads all across China. When their economy
boomed ten years later, they rode on the wave gloriously because everything was
ready for them. The transportation of goods were so convenient that the
entire world set up their precious companies in China.
Next, find a minister of education that really has a degree, a passion,
training, a keen mind, and the gift in education for goodness sake! Do
not put an engineer in that position. Do not put a businessman in that
position. Do not put a politician in that position. Would you want
a mechanic to perform a surgery on your heart?? Then why are you willing
to have a minister of education who knows nothing about education?? For
so many years Indonesia
has not seen a minister of education who really understands education.
And we marvel at how mess up Indonesian formal education is?
Here I submit my critique of the Indonesian formal education, not only for
Indonesians to see, but for the whole world, with the purpose to ameliorate
this enterprise. Because I care so much about it. A change is
needed. I wish only for something good to happen to it. Our current
arrangement is not gonna cut it. It is not gonna get Indonesia to
the 21st century education. It will only get Indonesia left
behind for good. Even the US
is changing its formal education upon knowing that Finland has done better, much
better than them, in the formal education sector. If Indonesia is to
aim at the world class education, we can’t look back and persist in the old way
of the industrial revolution. This is the 21st century.
Industrial revolution era has passed. More than 300 years ago it started,
it has run its course, it is running out of gas. We can’t stay on the
lower order of thinking anymore. To produce ‘applier” is a thing in the
past. We need to produce “creator” instead. We need to aim at that
higher order of thinking. We need to focus on graduating citizens of the
world who hold virtues so dearly that they hate vices so much. Then and
only then we will have a developed Indonesia.
[1]
Harold Lawrence Myra, ed., Leaders: Learning Leadership from Some of
Christianity’s Best, vol. 12, The Leadership Library (Carol Stream, IL;
Waco, TX: Christianity Today; Word Books, 1987), 153.
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