Teachers call for a change in curriculum

Schools should return to an earlier style of liberal education with more time for play and less rigid methods of teaching children to read, according to the largest teachers' union.

Citing mounting evidence of a crisis in children's happiness and mental health, the National Union of Teachers will today debate calls to scrap the most restrictive elements of the national curriculum and reverse a government order that literacy be taught through phonics.

"Teachers want a return to a system which is liberal and flexible and not top-down [and] imposed by government. We want a return to a time when there was a potential for magic moments in the classroom," said the general secretary of the NUT.

Which teachers? And where?

The full article is here, and largely refers to the not very popular methodology in English pre-schools of teaching reading through phonics rather than word recognition, but the central message has relevance here in Indonesia.

There is too much rigid testing in schools, generally multi-choice, with too little assessment. This reduces creativity and renders students torpid and unimaginative - robotic if you will. This is the pre-season of national exams which all students in grades 6, 9 and 12 have to pass in order to move on up to the next level. There are sets of exams called 'try outs' which are set by the education departments of local authorities.

I've seen the Grade 9 English paper set by the Jakarta Education board: it's a shame that it wasn't proofread by a qualified language expert (such as myself - but I'm not volunteering) before issuance.

Most graduates from senior high schools (SMA) here want to go on to tertiary education. It is unfortunate that the previous twelve years have been spent filling in dots on computer mark sheets rather than being assessed by those competent to look beyond the boundaries of A,B,C and D.

I say this because the common complaint in universities here is that plagiarism is rife. Students are ill-equipped to experiment and enquire. They remain empty vessels awaiting to be filled with so-called facts. So the mob rules and academic successes are generally in the sciences, which are 'disciplines'.

It is often stated that Indonesia is a country in waiting, one full of potential. But does it have "a potential for magic moments in the classroom."?