[In the USA and Canada], students entering university can't read and write properly and are often required to take extra curricular courses during the freshman year of university in order to make up.
...... the system [in the UK] is unsatisfactory. The student may reach twenty years of age and has only been expected to increase his memory. He is not required to think until attempting a Masters. It seems a bit late in the day unless all we are trying to do is provide accountants, engineers, etc., for the commercial system.
That these comments are from an article in the UK Guardian is of little comfort because I do feel bad.
As a parent here in Indonesia, I have to help, and pay for extra help, so my 13 year old son can master test skills, to memorise irrelevant 'facts' decreed by bureaucrats in their offices rather than his teachers at the black or white boards; they are akin to front-line infantry troops who bear the burdens of 'failure' master-minded by armchair generals.
Our Kid's best 'scores' come in unquantifiable 'arts' subjects, Art, Music, and languages (inc. Sundanese) which, apart from English and Indonesian, are not part of the national exams, so he isn't going to become an accountant or engineer.
Most students don't. Or can't.
Many graduates in the UK and here fail to find work in their chosen disciplines, or are 'forced' to work as unpaid interns for 'trial' periods with no hope of permanent employment.
As I and countless others have written, learning how to 'pass' a test is the underlying fault. The tests are made by humans yet are set purely for their ease in marking - by computers. 'Garbage in, garbage out' is an expression not heard much since the early days of personal computing, yet it has never been truer than now.
This trend has its roots in mid-70's at the dawn of the 'free trade-globalisation' era, with the primary aim of turning us all into consumers. Conglomerates are robot tradesmen which aim to sell to ever younger purchasers of their products. (There was a time when comfort was more important than style, so why does Our Kid scorn Adidas trainers in favour of Reebok's?*)
Conformity may have a value in societies governed by rigid, authoritarian regimes, but Indonesia is suffering the growing pains of an emerging democracy with the freedom to express opinions and has no need of mechanised, roboticised, lobotomised 'norms'.
Now that the internet offers boundless information as 'facts', it is little wonder that, much as it may be criticised, plagiarism plagues universities and schools.
Teaching for computerised tests does little to encourage originality of thought or action. Personal experience is a major key to critical reasoning and forming judgements, yet school children are not expected to assume individual responsibility for their actions. They are too busy memorising largely irrelevant information with little context in their daily lives or, indeed, their futures.
Current teachers and bureaucrats were students during Suharto's New Order when dissent was actively discouraged so, although some do, most cannot (yet) be expected to expand and enhance the mandated curriculum, much as they may wish to.
So what is the alternative?
Simply put, it is for society to recognise the freedom to be different, to explore and to be creative. After all, we have different aptitudes drawn from our genetic sources and (hopefully) fostered through our home environments.
In 1983, Dr. Howard Gardner, professor of education at Harvard University, developed the theory of multiple intelligences, a critique of the notion that there exists but a single human intelligence that can be adequately assessed by standard psychometric instruments (i.e. tests).
He originally proposed seven intelligences, later adding 'Naturalist', and more recently a ninth, Existential ('reality smart' - the ability and tendency to pose and ponder questions about life, death, and ultimate realities, generally first manifested among teenagers in their search for identity.)
I've added the possible careers of those folk whose strongest intelligence is as indicated.
- Linguistic (‘word smart’ - writers, public speakers, teachers, and actors):
- Logical-mathematical (‘number/reasoning smart’ - scientists, computer programmers, lawyers or accountants)
- Spatial (‘picture smart’ - builders, graphic artists, architects, cartographers, sculptors)
- Bodily-Kinesthetic (‘body smart’ - athletes, surgeons, dancers, inventors)
- Musical (‘music smart’ - composers, singers, songwriters, music teachers)
- Interpersonal (‘people smart’ - peacemakers, teachers, therapists, salespeople)
- Intrapersonal (‘self smart’ - philosophers, psychiatrists, religious leaders)
- Naturalist (‘nature smart’ - environmentalists, botanists, farmers, biologists)
A major overhaul of school curricula is required, rather than piecemeal tinkering. I can therefore only offer faint praise to SBY's newish Minister of Education, Muhammad Nuh, who has talked of introducing an entrepreneurship-based curriculum for the 2010-2011 academic year.
He said that the substance of the entrepreneurship-based curriculum would be included in the curriculum of each level of education. [It} would not overhaul the previous curriculum but an entrepreneurship substance would be included in it.
Basically the entrepreneurship curriculum was aimed at instilling entrepreneurship characters to students, including flexibility to think, creativities (sic), innovation and sense of willing to know.
“The first thing that has to be formed with students is flexibility in thinking because this will generate their creativities. One will not be creative if he or she is rigid in thinking.”
I'll leave it to you to work out which 'intelligence' is manifested by most bureaucrats.
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*Nike apparel is banned in Jakartass Towers until Nike unequivocally confirms that locally-owned factories manufacturing their products conform to the minimum requirements of Indonesian employment regulations.
