INTRODUCTION Indonesia has been proclaiming the Independence Day for about 64 years. There are six presidents who have ruled the nation. Still we face so many problems in educating our next generation. The Constitution states that the government is responsible to implement education. Yet, the policy toward how to conduct education properly is still questionable. Year-by-year issues in education appear and hold out without any proper solution. Hence, comparing to ASEAN countries, human resources quality in Indonesia is still low. The Education Index based on The HDRO ( Human Development Report Office ) shows that in 2008, Indonesia gets 0,834 which gives the country a rank of 109th out of 179 countries. This position is far below to Singapore which has a rank of 28th (0,843), Brunei Darusalam in 27th ( 0,893), Malaysia in 63th ( 0,848 ), Thailand in 81th (0,843), and Philippines in 102nd. The Education Index is measured by adult literacy and enrollment at the primary, secondary and tertiary level. This report implies that the government hasn’t had unequivocal aim and strong will to develop human resources seriously. Furthermore, the geographical condition and the population amount have been leaving out on a limb to decide an equitable policy.
EDUCATION ISSUES IN INDONESIA
According to Amich A (2003), there are three big education issues facing Indonesia nowadays. They are quality upgrading, access –even distribution, and budget efficiency. The issue of education quality related to :
(i) Teacher and education administrators ( principals, supervisors, superintendent),
(ii) Teaching curriculum,
(iii) Teaching methods,
(iv) Teaching materials,
(v) Teaching media, and
(vi) School management
The six issues involve in teaching-learning quality. The government should concentrate in how the issues can be improved to upgrade education quality. This will produce qualified graduates in high-competence standard so they will be ready to compete in the globalization era.
ONE SIZE FITS ALL
As noted in the Constitution that the government is supposed to secure our basic rights like education and prosperity, it means that procuring proper education is human rights which is guaranteed by the Constitution. Consequently, the government is responsible in giving education service to all people. The government is sovereign in designing every education element such as the rules, the curriculum, the type of school, the budget, even choose the teachers as well as the principal, and the education administrators. Everything must depend on the government policy. The school doesn’t have enough dominance in developing their own characters. This happened because the government uses uniformity in conducting education process. Children are treated to a” one size fits all” system where all children are assumed to have similarity in rights, characters, as well as responsibility. So they are considered to be better in uniformity. This system is used because there is assumption that it is the best way to treat children in equal. As Indonesia is a big country and has big population in a complex situation, it is very efficient to hold “one size fits all” system. It economizes the nation budget since implementing education needs much money. Of course, the uniformity rejects the consideration that people aren’t all the same, even as children. It just ignores about the diversity of every child. It doesn’t need to know the children as unique individuals, that they have their own characteristics. The uniformity here can be seen on :
1. Year round schooling, that a child within 4 – 6 years old should go to kindergarten, within 7 – 12 years old go to primary school. There should be compulsory education program within 7 – 15 years old.
2. Subjects, all children from primary to high school get the same subjects in their level to be learned. They are for examples, civilization, religion, history, math, science, sports, music, etc.
3. Uniform , all students have to wear the same uniform. White-red color is for primary school student, white- blue color is for secondary school student, and white- grey color is to high school student .
4. The same starting time, all students must attend in class at 6.45 a.m. . So it always makes traffic jam everywhere in the morning.etc
SCHOOL CONDITION
Here, the school also beats all of student ability. Since students have adequate UAN (National Final Examination ) scores to enter their chosen school, the school considers that they can treat the students in the same way with the same condition and the same teacher without regarding they as an individual one. Yet, school doesn’t have any rights to choose their teachers, school facilities and teaching devices such as curriculum. Then, what they do is only optimizing what they have got from the government. It is very difficult to be different to other school if everything is determined.
CHILDREN CHARACTERISTICS
Roger Lee (2000:16) states that every child is equal in citizenship, in rights, and in legal standing in the community. At the same time, every child is markedly different from every other child. Biochemist Roger J.William as cited by Richman (2000:113) writes :
On our arrival as newborn babies each of us bring a long a host of highly distinctive inborn characteristics …..[E] ach of us is built in a highly distinctive way in every particular ….The basic answer to the question “Why are you an individual?” is that your body in every detail, including your entire nervous system and your brain (thinking apparatus), is highly distinctive.
From the statement above we can conclude that every child differ from each other in initial characters, intelligence, emotional orientation, physique, stamina, interest, and more. Children also learn in different ways at different rates, not only based upon intelligence or early experience, or even sex but also upon innate difference in style. Some children are visual, others are tactile, auditory, some more logical, others learn more toward intuitive ways of gaining knowledge. Further, they may take different approaches to different task.
TEACHERS ’ CONDITION
Teacher is one of crucial problem in education process. In Indonesia, teacher is dominant factor to determine high – low education quality. The total number of teacher is about 2,5 million. Most are from High School and three-year Diploma program background. They teach in kindergarten, primary, and secondary school. The less part of them is graduated from Under-graduate program who teach Senior high school students. The education background, of course , very influences teaching skill which is measured by mastering the materials and teaching method. Beside, there are still many teachers who teach subject which is not their major. This mismatch is occurred, for example , when Math teacher teaches Science, or Science teacher also teaches Social knowledge. Indeed , we can’t hope more to the mismatch teacher. They usually have lack of the competence to the major. As the result of this, the education quality will decrease ,too.
TEACHER’S COMPETENCE
As it stated above that teacher takes the important role in teaching – learning activity, so it is crucial to have competence teachers. The competence teacher usually has characteristics such as :
1. Having interpersonal skills
2. Loving for learning and a love for kids or students
3. Having strong academic background, preferable with master degree or higher
4. Sense of humor
5. Having experience in teaching, at least two years
6. Having strong oral and written communicative skills
7. High expectation and standard
8. Team orientation to planning and teaching
9. Technology competence and capable of applying technology in classroom instruction
10. Having good teaching methods
The competence teacher will produce qualified graduates. It will benefit to school as well as the society.
In real condition, it is a dream to have such kind of ideal teacher. Most teachers teach because it is their work. They teach to gain salary. The routine work make them like a machine. Then, they begin to lose the sense of teaching. A sense of teaching is a condition where a teacher very enjoy the teaching learning activity in school, a teacher who loves teaching selfless. Later, the classroom which loses enjoyment will be like a dry season. Teacher just gives a little bit explanation and more instructions. The textbook becomes the only one media to get knowledge. Whereas , teaching is not merely a work. It has a big impact to students in future. Ideally, the government has a concern to recruit only qualified or competence teachers in educating the next generation of Indonesia.
STUDENT – PARENTS’S NEED VERSUS SCHOOL GENERAL POLICY
Parents are person who have the most responsibility to their children. No parents have bad hopes to the children. They will do ways and means to make their children better in life. If they can do, parents will make the best effort to educate them. In common case, parents will choose the best school for their children. Children are the highest expectation for all parents to pick up the thread again any inheritance.
Parents are also person who the most know their children character. In line with this, they make effort to develop their children body and mind based on the individual character. Parents need an institution like as a school which can obtain children requirement, a school which treats students by purposely. In other word, how a school can maximize students capability. Moreover, they have spent much money in taxes, school fee, books, facilities fees, additional courses etc.
In the other hand, a school as one of nation institution is the government’s hand- length. It is the massive use of governmental power to support the extreme regimentation of the lives millions of human individuals. School and government policies maintain that all children are created equal compensating for fact, but the system spends millions of our rupiahs compensating for the fact that this is not the case. School initiates to reflect differences in labeling students into “gifted”, “special”, ”learning disabled” and others. Within the average classroom , all children girls and boys, smart and less smart, handicapped and not handicapped are the same. They are taught by one teacher, one lesson plan. Most teachers, although some use a variety of teaching methods, are likely boring in conducting teaching learning activities, because they have to fulfill curriculum standard as a school policy. Commonly, it happens when teachers have to get over with syllabus in a certain time in accordance to students passing the national exam. So, whatever the way of teaching, students must accept the teachers without any complain.
If one sits with a group of parents discussing their children’s schooling, one is likely to hear myriad complaints. The complaints are not the same from the parents around the table. One says her child is having a problem and the school refuses to provide the special services to which he is entitled. The next says his child is gifted and the school has a gifted enrichment program, but his child is still restless. Another says her child is falling behind and the teacher is going too fast, while another says her child is bored. Still others make it known that their children are in the wrong class, that the teacher is too strict, too lenient, too loud, or too quiet. Many complain that their children have too much homework and they do not have time to sit with their children. Even, there are minor complaints, as well – the school is too big or too small, the school has not given the children time off for this holiday or that, vacation is too long or too short. And, of course for some, the curriculum is too biased in favor of one certain morality and religion, ignoring their important religious upbringing.
The children complain also. They complain about too many hours in school. They complain about too much homework. They complain about school rules that become more stringent. Indeed, they complain the myriad tests and tasks that they have to finish. Most complain about the teachers. Finally, they complain about the loss of their freedom.
These complaints are not surprise when we take every child in Indonesia at some age between 6 – 12 and begin a process of trying to educate them all in the same way, on the same schedule, by the same people with the same training! Then still they have to spend six years to finish their intermediate and high school.
TEACHERS VERSUS STUDENTS
In daily activity, a teacher is faced with thirty to forty students of the same age, but different patience levels, different learning aptitudes, different background, and different personal styles. But there is only one classroom and one schedule. A teacher also does very much works concerning to teaching syllabus, teaching media, and correcting the students’ s works. In the class, it is an important duty to discipline the students , make them concentrate to the lesson. Do you think that today’s teachers are being asked to do the impossible work? teach the same curriculum in the same way to huge numbers of students each of whom is different from the others, give myriad tests to prove that learning has occurred while still finishing the year’s lesson plan, and maintain order in classrooms in which discipline has long since become a moot point? No wonder that some teachers became so sick and tired!.
Meanwhile, students hope to much to the teacher. They have a hunch that a teacher is an important key to make them success. So, when they are not success they tend to blame the teacher. There are some cases where students cannot gain learning maximally because of teachers. The most cases are students don’t feel convenient or comfortable to teacher’s behavior in a class. The teacher often judge that students are stupid, behave that a teacher is the cleverest one in class. Other teachers adjust the students without thinking that may be the students have their opinion. Teachers like to give burdened tasks and never give “fair” appreciation or reward to students. In serious condition, teacher tends to be “monotonous”. Monotonous means that teacher has the same performance, the same voice, the same method, the same way of teaching all the time!
As a consequence, students tend to be lazy, bored, and angered. They begin to loss motivation, impeded from using initiative, neglect the work, then playing truant. Commonly, parents and students never complain or protest to school. They are afraid the school or the teacher will give worse scores to the children. Certainly, the problem is not merely about students against teacher. But, a good teacher makes the problem doesn’t happen. A good teacher always anticipate students condition. A good teacher always make students peacefully and enthusiastically. And a good teacher make students better in gaining their success.
THE BRIDGING GAP
In my assumption, to maximize education to children we have to sit in one table. The government, school’s boards as well as school committee discuss together about the best way to educate children in a condition where everybody is satisfied. In this autonomy era, the region stakeholder must be creative in developing education since it’s very crucial thing. In this case, we have to give an opportunity to parents expressing their opinion toward education, especially for their children. In my opinion, we have to give a chance to parents to choose suitable teachers also. I think it is one of parents or children right in education.
One thing that parents should do first is knowing their children learning style. Parents and children can discuss together about the best way to gain education. Then, the parents consult it to the school boards. The school has to fulfill the parents requirement if it is possible. Parents can also ask information about good teacher to the community. The school must be active in giving information to the community concerning to available teachers in the school. It’s very useful if a school conducts Parents’ Day. It is a school event where parents come to school to take a role in school activity, see how teachers handle the class. In advanced country like as United States, parents take important role as well as teachers. They can participate in controlling education for their children. They will make sure that children are handled in a good way. It is needed too when once in awhile teachers invite parents to class or teachers visit to students’ house. Both parents and teachers will be able to interview to each other so they will have better understanding.
Education is not merely thing of no important. It is so significant that parents have to make sure that their children are in the right educators. As educators, on the contrary, have to be responsible in executing trusteeship of education. Those are such kind of noble duty to drum education up to compete in globalization era.
CONCLUSION
A teacher is only one aspect to make students get maximal result in class. There are still many aspects to gain that. Our duty is minimizing any problems and optimizing education outcome. The government must begin to think about how only employ credible and competence teachers. When parents chose teachers for children, there will be teachers who in high-demand, teachers who in average- demand, and teachers in low-demand.
There is no doubt that teachers who get high-demand are teachers who are chosen by parents and children because they can optimize class-situation, can make students comfortable and ,of course, can make students gain the learning successfully. This kind of teachers must be appreciated and awarded by giving them higher salary. Teachers who get high-demand can be a good example to other teachers. They can be a motivator so that other teachers can be inspired to be like them.
The teachers who get average- demand from parents and children will try to improve better. They still think that teacher is their chosen-profession, then they will introspect to any weaknesses. They will discuss to other colleagues about how to be better teacher. The teachers have to be supported as well as possible, giving them any facilities to improve.
The last is teachers who get low-demand. It is sure that there is something wrong with this kind of teachers. Why no parents and children chose them ? It’s better if the teachers introspect to themselves. If they think that to be a teacher is not their pure aim, it’s better if they chose another career. But there is another chance if they still want to be a teacher by improving their competence. They must work hard to give evidence to parents that they have changed to be better. The nice advice for the teachers is never feeling ashamed to discuss with their colleagues or students to improve better.
The last but not the least, being a good teacher is a must. When we have chosen to be a teacher we have to be consequent with our profession. We are responsible to the next generation. We are to be their future!
REFERENCES
Al Humani,Amich.(2007).Tiga Isu Pendidikan.Kliping Koran,pendidikan lingkungan.http://tirtamartya.wordpress.com/2007/06/07.
Machan R, Tibor (ed.). 2000.Education in a free society.California:Hoover Institution Press.
HDI 2008 tables
2008 Statistical Update
PGRI: Banyak Masalah, tapi Pendidikan Belum Jadi Isu Kampanye.13 Juni 2009.http://edukasi.compas.com/read/xml/2009/06/13/13102214
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