20 Feb
Ujian Monyet
Apasi, apasi?
Student scratches head, grunts – A-B-C -or-D?
Ah, ini!
Yes, it’s coming round to that time of year when students in grades 6, 9, and 12 impersonate monkeys as they grapple with the ujian nasional (national exams). As Our Kid nears the end of grade 8, we pay a home tutor to come twice a week to help him with his Maths and Physics. He also attends ‘remedial’ classes in those subjects at his school. That he shines in the Arts subjects as well as English and computer studies, is of little importance, but he will need to be on track next year if he is to ‘graduate’ to senior high school.
I was going to post yet another rant – see here, here, here and here – but Mateus Yumarnamto has written a very concise critique.
The Ministry of Education insists that a national examination is still needed for Indonesian education to maintain quality and to set up the national standard for junior and senior high schools.
This statement followed a Supreme Court ruling last September which instructed the government to improve the nation’s education system and school facilities, as well as conducting an evaluation before holding the national exam.
The emphasis on standardised national exams, which take no account of regional or cultural differences, let alone the allocation of resources, and ‘passed’ after a programme of rote learning, suggests that Indonesia is involved in the business of schooling, rather than education.
Schooling is the process of inculcation, incessant repetition, a process which produces performing seals in circuses and the troupes of performers with a monkey known here as topeng monyet.
Education however, with its root from the Latin word educare, to bring out, is the process of training and developing the mind, knowledge, skills, character etc., generally in a holistic manner.
I cannot comment on the compulsory Maths, Indonesian and Science national exams. However, I can – and must – report that the practice English exam set by the Jakarta City Hall and sat by the city’s grade 9 students on 27th January – a matter of 50 reading comprehension and vocabulary questions, contained no less than 60 errors.
Two questions have no right answer and another has two. These ranged through grammar, particularly tense errors, no capitalisation of names (and unnecessary capitalisation), punctuation, spelling and collocation.
Collocation is having the right word for the context. Arranging to go to the cinema is about arranging a date rather than an appointment.
What really bugs me, however, is this closing paragraph from a passage about tropical rainforests which, it is printed, are also often called the “Earth’s lungs” however there is no scientific basis for such a claim as tropical rainforests are known to be essentially oxygen neutral with little or no net oxygen production.
Ignoring the two punctuation errors, does this passage make any sense? Does anything give us “net oxygen production”? Is the writer inferring that that it’s ok to cut the forests down?
What the eff,eh?
Before the government sets about improving schools and raising teacher standards, it needs to take a long hard look at the qualifications of those it entrusts with the education of future generations.
But it’s not just here in Indonesia.
In the UK, “teachers are learning techniques of teaching to the tests ……… I’m not sure the trend is best serving the needs of children.”
And, “Its a bleak, procedural process that satisfies only the plethora of politicians and bureaucrats who have a vested interest in seeing performance indicators fulfilled. It’s Alice in Wonderland stuff.
We need inquiry, thought and the development of critical faculty in those who are in receipt of education. We need education which is engaging, thought provoking and, at the very least, grabs attention. We need subject knowledge less than we need the ability to understand and analyse. But these are complex matters that risk challenging the glorious upward trajectory of the ‘performance indicator’ culture. How did we get ourselves here?”
That last question deserves a considered answer which I’ll get to it in time.
Meanwhile, cockups occur among ‘experts’ the world over. Take the case of the ‘expert in prosthetics’ in the UK who gave an elderly patient two left feet by fitting the wrong artificial limb …….
What really bugs me, however, is this closing paragraph from a passage about tropical rainforests which, it is printed, are also often called the “Earth’s lungs” however there is no scientific basis for such a claim as tropical rainforests are known to be essentially oxygen neutral with little or no net oxygen production.
Ignoring the two punctuation errors, does this passage make any sense? Does anything give us “net oxygen production”? Is the writer inferring that that it’s ok to cut the forests down?
I don’t know bout O neutral – you can ask Greenstump – he's off railing again.
Interesting though, Our lungs do take in oxygen and give out CO2….. I guess there is some poetic licence with that old expression?
Interesting point also:
Should an English test be politically neutral? Is there such a thing anyway?
The process of photosynthesis is taught in elementary schools.
Rainforests serve as a major sink of
CO2
Commonsense, rather than scientific data, tells me that we've all been deprived of a lot of oxygen.
Ok, but I think using the phrase "lungs of the earth", though well established in use, is misleading. Lungs only exist in the animal kingdom and they use Oxygen.
As for the stump's pic, that's an early plantation – Im sure you have seen a mature plantation in north sumatra – they are very densely packed.
The argument against palm plantations surely is one about monoculures, and the clearing that goes on to support them nowadays; not about how much carbon dioxide they take in and oxygen they pump out per acre?
I dont think anyone has any where near the same disdain for idyllic coconut plantations -they need to be investigated dont you think?
Any errors in the basic examination questions are of course inexcusable and I agree that there probably is too much teaching to the exams going on but nonetheless it would be perfectly reasonable for Indonesia to avoid aping the mistakes of "progressive" education theorists in the West, most notably in Britain.
Your righteous indignation towards so-called "rote learning" is understandable but is somewhat reminiscent of those "Brave New World" educationalists that demanded no less than the total destruction of the British education system in the 1950's based on the same criticism of "rote learning". Airily dismissing the fact that this much abused system turned out one of the best educated societies on planet Earth and which for example meant a fourteen year old boy with a standard education could be expected to navigate a ship at sea or quote Homer in the original Greek, the progressives systematically trashed the entire system and replaced it with the more touchy feely, student centred education of today whereby students can happily pass through their entire school career without ever actually having learned to read or write or count past ten.
One can hardly blame the Indonesians, whose competitors are the rote-learning Chinese, Koreans, Japanese and Indians, for wishing to avoid that particular piece of British 'enlightenment'.
The UK's current "touchy-feely" education system is all about regular computerised testing, Miko.
And therein lies its major problems.
The UK's education system has been so debased that no reasonable standard of marking could possibly justify it so instead the Labour government did what all desperate progressives do when their beloved systems start collapsing under the weight of their own inadequacies; they institute "targets". Just like in the Ukraine in the 1930's so we have the same result; desperate state officials, be they head teachers or collective farm managers, start massaging the figures and manipulating the results in order to convince their political bosses that the appalling famine is in fact a record harvest.
Such problems never occurred back in the dark old days before the introduction of "progressive" education in the 1950's and 60's. Back then if you failed you failed but those who came out of school, for all their much maligned 'rigid' systems of children in uniform, sitting at desks in rows before a strict, usually male, teacher (and we'll pass briskly over the decline in standards in teaching since it ceased to be a majority male profession) were at least able to read and write and do long division, how's the progressive education system working out for Britain today?
Like I say, I will fully encourage Indonesia to go down the route of the child centred, "all must have prizes", no fail educational policy when China and India do so.
I won't be holding my breath however.
What does "apasi" mean? There is a person that always says that word when asked a question that seemingly irritates her. For example: "May I have a sheet of paper?" Her reply: "Apasi! Ugh." (she is very selfish). She is Indonesian, I say this because I'm guessing she isn't speaking in English when she says this word.
Thank you for your help.
"What is..?"
The English abbreviated translation is 'WTF'.