Examining The Examiners

The following is an edited version of a post on Jakartass.

Ignorant and Arrogant Kalla

Once again, the Vice President Yusuf Kalla, that mastermind of educational standards, has been taking potshots at parents and teachers. This time he has been talking about the Ujian Nasional (National Examinations).

These are set and administered by the Ministry of Education's Badan Standar Nasional Pendidikan (Institute/Board for National Education Standards). These are taken in SD (Elementary School, Grade 6, 11+), SMP (Junior High, Grade 9, 14+) and SMA (Senior High, Grade 12). In order to 'graduate' to the next level, which is university in the case of Grade 12 students, they must achieve a minimum average score of 5.25 in as many as six subjects, of which three, Maths, Indonesian and English are compulsory. Given regional ties and geopolitics, I do wonder why Mandarin isn't a higher priority.

Kalla says that the passing grade at 5.25 is still too low. After all, in Singapore it's 7.00 and in Malaysia it's 8.00.

Well, so ......?

As I've already stated, the national exams, being multi-choice, are designed for automatons trained in the art of guessing, although maybe it's not an art but a technology because it's not as if there are moves in education circles towards a population trained to be critical in their thinking.

Society is being trained to be acquiescent so that the likes of Kalla, Bakrie and other family conglomerates seemingly concerned with 'welfare' can enrich themselves at our expense. And we get the blame for the almighty cock-ups they've perpetrated on our behalf.

According to the Post, Kalla also says that teachers should teach the content that will be tested and students should know what is going to be tested. This could be interpreted as a licence to cheat.

However, I'll be fair and merely test one test.

I have a copy of this year's Junior High Ujian Nasional prepared for SMP. It is riddled with errors, too many to count, errors of collocation, syntax, spelling, punctuation, verb tenses and more. I reckon it's a good thing that the pass mark is "too low". And after all that, it merely tests basic reading skills and knowledge of synonyms. There are no writing, listening or oral components, which is probably just as well.

After all, if even the examiners can't pass it ....

Have a look at Question 7, which I've copied verbatim. What do you think is the correct answer?
..................................................
Read the following notice. It's put on the wall.




It means ...
-------A.----the place is special for you as visitors.
-------B.----this is a place for you to wait.
-------C.----you cannot wait anyone here.
-------D.----you should not stay here.
..................................................
Ignoring the fact that 'the' wall is not specified and the word 'for' is omitted from C, it seems obvious that C and D are not the right answers.

You'd probably correctly answer B, however, given that there are too many horrendous errors, that in one reading passage "Komala drowned ... and all of her guards could not save her" and that in another passage we are informed that there will be a wedding on "Friday, the thirthteenth of June", is A actually wrong?

So, Mr. Kalla, don't criticise parents who sue the Ministry of Education for failing their children, and don't criticise those teachers - again - who are really pissed off at being employed by a bunch of bureaucrats who think they have all the answers.

Which they probably do.

For a price.
..................................

Among the responses to the above post was this comment by Dr. Bruce:
The amount of classroom time that is spent on preparing for these things is amazing, but then the US is not exactly a standard to match either as so many schools waste so much time teaching for the test.

It's not just in the US, although it could be argued that it is the transplanted US practices which are partly responsible for the debacles both here and elsewhere, including the UK.

Educational Testing Services (ETS), known here for ToEFL and ToEIC exams, those multiple-choice monstrosities which pay absolutely no heed to cultural differences outside the white middle-classes of middle-America, have a five year contract with the UK's Qualifications and Curriculum Authority.

This has turned into a "fiasco".

Problems first began to emerge in October last year when some senior markers resigned over new approaches to the way the so-called Key Stage tests would be marked.

By early spring this year, teachers were reporting a series of administrative problems, including ETS failing to register their contract details, delays in training and the failure of a vetting system for English markers. To compound problems, completed papers were delayed in being sent to markers.

Incidentally, on this page, you're asked 'Who Is ETS?'

Not the correct 'Who Are ETS?' or 'What Is ETS?'
Answer: Educational Testing Service (ETS) is the largest private educational measurement organisation in the world today.

A Balls Up

That was in the lead up to the Scholarship Aptitude Tests taken by 11+ and 14+ year-olds this year. What has followed as a result is even worse, bearing in mind that entry to the next level of schooling is generally dependent on test results.

Thousands of schoolchildren may have to wait until the autumn for key test results after a company brought in to administer the tests failed to deliver on time.

The schools secretary, Ed Balls, has been forced to delay the publication of test results for 1.2 million pupils and set up an urgent independent inquiry to document the errors which have disrupted the marking of national SATs for 11- and 14-year-olds. Results had been expected at schools by Tuesday (July 1st). Most will now be a week late, but ministers last night admitted some pupils will not get their marks until after the summer holidays (in early September).

Education for Greed, Not Need

I became a teacher because I hated secondary school. I was a bright pupil in my primary school and the only blight I can recall was that Art was limited to one class taught by a Mr. Pasha and I was excluded.

My boys-only grammar school teachers were generally ex-armed forces personnel with that particular approach to discipline, one I hated. I can recall only two teachers who I recall as being 'enlightened'. The history teacher gave us the social context of events; unfortunately this wasn't tested, as key dates in terms of British imperialism were considered more important. The art teacher stretched our cloistered minds and took us took us to cinema clubs to see art films such as Cleo de 5 á 7.

When I graduated from a three year course at a teacher training college, art was my main subject, an interest that has continued, and later my inner-city students won many prizes at national exhibitions. Hopefully I encouraged my students to examine themselves in relation to their community and environment. I encouraged them to realise their innate potential and a self-belief as sensitive human beings giving something to the society they are part of.

Nowadays folk like Kalla would no doubt ask about the value of what I did, where was the profit, to which there is a simple answer.

For society to work, co-operation, rather than competition, is the key, with the main reward being personal satisfaction at a job well done. A level of humility is appropriate, although not obeisance and obsequiousness. It is right to mistrust those who seek to impose their value systems and morality on others, particularly when their own competence can be challenged.

The key is to take responsibility for one's own life - and allow others to do the same. For that, institutions of social control need to be controlled by society rather than those 'market forces' which operate outside society and seek to subvert cultures and communities to their own ends.

These ends too often lead to the end of the identities which bind us together.