Jakartass Home thoughts from abroad. Alien thoughts from home.

State schools are cheaper than private ones so they are in demand from the less well off and this is the period when parents enrol their children: SD at age 6, SMP at age 12 and SMA at age 14. Given that there’s a chronological sequence, and that there are bunches of bureaucrats in town halls and at central H.Q., the Department of Education, it should be a relatively straightforward process.

But this is Indonesia where no-one-says “no” and career public officials are expected to obey those in more senior positions without question, and where the buck stops with one’s predecessor.

Until 2006, around the time that folk started tweeting, school enrollments were done on a face-to-face basis. That year, the Jakarta Education Agency (JEA) out-sourced the enrollments system to state-owned telecommunications operator PT Telkom which seemed to manage quite well. Last year, City Hall took back the management and, perhaps rather smugly, managed to get things done on time.

Cut to this year, and oh dear ……

Having already completed the SD and SMP enrollments, and allocated Rp.1.1 billion (US$127,000) for the SMA applications, JEA sat back and watched as their seven servers crashed.

They have handed back the management of the system to PT Telkom who have provided around 30 servers, a mere 23 more than JEA.

Parents are now resubmitting applications and the senior high school year is starting a week later.

Elsewhere, in Serang, Banten – about one hour from Jakarta, 165,000 primary school (SD) children ‘graduated’ this year and parents have submitted their SMP applications. There are, however, only 73,000 places.

Go figure.

Obviously the bureaucrats in Serang can’t as they’ve had six years to prepare.

Four students have been expelled from a senior high school in Riau, South Sumatra, for 'defaming' their teacher on Facebook. The comments were reportedly of a personal nature and offensive to women.

The school's deputy principal, Yose Rizal, said the students' failure to complete and submit homework assignments to the teacher contributed to the decision to dismiss them. Yose said he hoped the decision would send a strong message to other students that such behavior was not acceptable.

That says a lot about what is wrong with the Indonesia's schooling system, especially as the subject that the teacher was supposedly charged with teaching is 'Life Skills'.

Come to think of it, that is what all teachers (and parents) are responsible for inculcating. As a teacher and parent I do know that adults make 'mistakes', but then there is little guidance for us either.

Competition is praised above co-operation so that societal prerogatives are determined by online social networks rather than leadership for the common good.

Public transport is privately owned, as is the water supply, and garbage isn't properly managed so residents, of all classes, dispose of it willy-nilly.

The current national census cannot be completed as scheduled because rich folks in their enclaves deny access to officials because they have something, their ill-gotten wealth, to hide.

And kids get blamed for not following the rules!

The results of the remedial tests following the senior high school ujian monyet have been announced. Teachers in Yogya are angry because of the "premature announcement", but they are missing the point.

Out of 150,410 students who had to sit the repeat national exams, how come only 11,814 'failed'? How is it possible to master the 'facts' tested in such a short while since the original exams were sat in March? Are these remedial tests easier? If so, why weren't the set of March exams?

One contributing factor is that the educators and bureaucrats responsible for the whole debacle are lacking in any semblance of awareness of how teenagers think. I'm not suggesting that they should be neuro-scientists, but applying the academic skill of research – a skill which their positions of power indicate they should have – would give them a modicum of insight into how teenagers think.

For a start, Dr. Paul Kelley, headteacher of a high school in northern England and author of Making Minds: What's Wrong With Education?, says that creating long-term memories is at the core of education.

In 2005, a key discovery was published in Scientific American explaining how long-term memories are formed in the brain. Douglas Fields, of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and his team in the US not only revealed exactly how long-term memories are formed but also, more significantly for teachers, how they can be created. The biological basis of a memory is a pathway of cells linked within the brain. His team looked at how these pathways were formed and how each cell was "switched on" and became linked to other cells.

So Dr. Kelly and his teaching staff established 'spaced learning' which works no matter what subject you are teaching. In spaced learning, you have 10-minute breaks between three intensive sessions of 15-20 minutes teaching. In each of the sessions, you repeat material but present it differently, deepening and extending it.

In the breaks students might juggle, play basketball or model animals out of Play-Doh. These distracter activities leave the cells to carry out chemical processes.

Or access their Facebook accounts?

An English expression has it that 'procrastination is the thief of time', but I prefer to think of an Indonesian cup of coffee in which the grounds take time to settle at the bottom of the cup. That is an apt description of the process of leaning; one must allow time for the absorption of new information, and breaks are certainly one key to successful learning.
 

A different approach to the 'chalk and talk' methodology is also required. Rather than 'preaching' or lecturing ('hectoring' may be a better word) with theoretical 'knowledge' to be copied from the classroom white/blackboard, teachers need to offer students more opportunities for experiment and for inductive learning.

Allowing socialised discussions between students in the lessons would be a good start!

Further reinforcement for Dr. Kelley's pedagogical approach is offered by more recent research.

According to Dr. Iroise Dumontheil of University College London's Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, one of the authors of the research to be published today in the Journal of Neuroscience, "It's not the fault of teenagers that they can't concentrate and are easily distracted. It's to do with the structure of their brains. Adolescents simply don't have the same mental capacities as an adult because teenagers are still children."

I think that's similar to my problem too; although I think like an adult, I remain a kid at heart.
 

561 junior high schools out of 43,666 had zero ‘passes’ in the recent ujian monyet. Some 10% of c.3.6 million students ‘failed’. If they got less than 40% in English, Indonesian, science or mathematics they will have to sit so-called remedial tests between May 17 and 20 in order to ‘graduate’ to senior high school. The most difficult exam proved to be English.

Earlier results showed that 167 senior high schools had zero ‘passes’ in the ujian monyet. The most difficult exam proved to be Indonesian. At least one ‘failed’ student, in Jambi, is reported to have committed suicide having ‘failed’ maths..

Why have a pass or fail system anyway? Why not give certificates saying what so-and-so attained in the different subjects, including the arts which sadly are not covered in these nonsensical, error-strewn, multi-choice annual waste of paper.

I’m dreading next year when Our Kid enters the conveyor belt of robotic teaching in order to sit the robotic exam.

Especially if you're spending the money of Indonesia's rakyat (citizenry) on full colour quarter page ads in the Jakarta Post.

Wikipedia has this to say about Bank Rakyat Indonesia (tr. People's Bank of Indonesia). It is one of the larger banks in Indonesia. It specialises in small scale and microfinance style borrowing from and lending to its approximately 30 million retail clients through its over 4,000 branches, units and rural service posts. It also has a comparatively small, but growing, corporate business.

It is currently 70% government owned operating company (Persero) and has been government owned for the entire period since the war of independence (1945 to 1949) to November 2003, when 30% of its shares were sold through an IPO.

And this is what BRI has to say to its "small scale and microfinance style" clientele.

Fly Anywhere with your Reserved Private Aircraft

Proudly present a new and exclusive reservation service to
fly with private aircraft to any destination you would like to go.

Enjoy convenience at it's truly means as our special customer

Term & Condition apply

BRI Prioritas
Untuk Pribadi Terpilih (tr.For 'Choice' People)

I'm going to ignore the appalling English and not going to wonder about the singular term and condition. However, it is worth noting that of late society seems unable to focus on what really matters.

For example, note the use of the word bule in this headline: Selundupkan Biji Ganja Bule Jerman Dibekuk (White German Marijuana Smuggler Arrested)

As a regular reader (Hi Del) commented, "What if the guy was black? How would they get round that? Interesting that you're a "bule" first and a "orang" second."

This surface attention is widespread.

A number of schools have taken to labelling themselves as "International", which is strange as they are extremely unlikely to have expatriate students or even come close to what they advertise.

A number of complaints in the media, such as those I highlighted here seem to have forced the government to take action. As per usual, they're missing the point and leaving many educators confused.

A 2009 education ministerial, which will come into force on March 30, 2010, stipulates that the curricula applied at international schools must cover the teaching of religion, civics and the Indonesian language. The teaching of these three subjects must be conducted in Indonesian.

There are a number of International Schools in Indonesia which were established during the Suharto era to provide schooling for the children of peripatetic expatriate workers, generally 'consultants' and managerial staff working for multi-national companies, such as oil companies. Parallel schools in other countries offered a continuity of education for these children.

Leading up to, and especially following the Asian Economic Meltdown of the late 90s (and known as krismon here) jobs were expected to be 'Indonesianised' through a "transfer of technology". Naturally, the school rolls tumbled. Because they were expected to be financially self-sufficient, many schools began to accept the children of better off Indonesians who would otherwise be sending their children to study in Singapore.

Mistakes were certainly made. After all, the Jakarta International School (JIS) should not have accepted the young son of Theo Toemion, the then chairman of Indonesia's Investment Coordinating Board, who assaulted the 14 year old referee of his 7 year old son's basketball match and executives from U.S. companies including ExxonMobil, Nike, Unocal and ConocoPhillips.

Theo was subsequently jailed for massive corruption. Presumably some of his ill-gotten gains found their way into the coffers of JIS.

And such is the amount of such spare cash floating around that a number of private schools, including Penabur, which charge high fees for teaching to the test, decided to cream off some of it by opening so-called 'international classes' in their regular schools.

A few white faces, never mind the qualifications – even naval chefs will do – and a few foreign course books, mainly from Singapore, and they had ready made glossy advertising.

But it's all gone wrong. There are few schools which offer – and I'm quoting from a recent job ad – active, student-centered learning and facilitate active exploration,discovery and interaction with people and materials. That this ad was placed by a school which is apparently Leading the Human Development Paradigm does not necessarily mean anything other than that they hiding behind buzzwords with little sense of what they mean. After all, they have a very high staff turnover.

Every time there is a new Minister of Education we hear tell of a new curriculum. New partnerships are formed with companies which rebuild a few rural schools in the name of corporate social responsibility, and other minor tinkerings take place, yet aesthetics have yet to take over from bean counting.

A recent editorial in the Jakarta Post closed with these remarks.

It is the task of all elements in this country to improve the quality of our education, which ranks low even among Asian countries. Therefore, we appreciate the number of corporations that run schools, including those with international standards.

However, it is also unwise for the government to push certain schools, including state ones, to open the international standards of services in the absence of proper educational infrastructure and teaching staff who meet the requirements set for such schools. Besides, we need all categories of schools to serve society’s various demands.

I only half agree with these fine sentiments because they don't go far enough. It is my contention that if Indonesia, by which I mean all sectors of society concerned with schools and the nature of education, and not merely with upgrading the nation's schooling to an 'international' level, should establish an independent commission. This would have the remit to establish curricula for schools which take into account the multi-cultural distinctiveness of the country, the disparity between the regions in terms of economic resources, and the multiple-intelligences of students.

The commission should also oversee the establishment of a "proper educational infrastructure" including an overhaul of teacher training so that all teachers (including expatriates) are suitably qualified and are given regular professional back up and subject updates.

The Department of Education, whilst continuing to administrate, would also need 'supervision' to ensure that funds are not 'mislaid' and that targets are met. Above all, procedures and priorities should not be subject to whim of political (or business) appointees who invariably have short-term goals.

This will all inevitably take longer than a government's term of office, but a dynamic country needs people with vision.

It's a myopic malaise which has resulted in the current concern over the educational standards which ill-serve the rakyat.

They also don't need crap ads offering a private plane ride.

This week, six million grade 12 senior high school students have been undergoing the unnecessary yet ritual torture of 'graduation' tests.

Our Kid is at home today, as are most grades 7 and 8 junior high school students. He'll be at home all next week as well because grade 9s have to go through the same robotic hell, using a 2B pencil to fill in little circles which are scanned by computer.

Unnecessary? Of course they are because the only teaching of 'relevance' these students receive in the preceding months is geared to answering the test questions, many of which are, as I've often noted, badly formulated with possible multiple correct answers or none at all.

The following headlines gleaned from the Jakarta Post tell the tale.

Tuesday 23 March
- Despite 'leaks', first day of national exams goes smoothly.
- Leaks, problems mar national final exam

Wednesday 24 March
- National exams still problematic*

Thursday 25 March
- Schools urged to have post-exam cooldown period
(for students suffering stress.)

Friday 26 March
- Students from across the country to take UGM tests.
Yogya's University of Gadjah Mada will hold entrance exams on Sunday, thus demonstrating that the national exams are of no value in determining who goes on to further education.

*The same problems crop up every year. These include misdirected packages of exam papers, sets of answers being sold, answers being sent by text message, teachers changing students' answer sheets, and students unable to take test due to sickness or pregnancy  and uncertain whether they can take them at a later date. .

Fellow blogger, Harry Nizam, has suggested that my posts are rarely positive but, hey, here's a positive suggestion for the cooling down period.

Let them play games and Countdown, a popular TV game show which tests vocabulary and maths, can be easily adapted for classroom use.

This is a screengrab from Tuesday's show.

The primary focus of Jakartass has always been on Indonesia, a country I now call home. I may occasionally wax nostalgic or even lyrical about my past life elsewhere, the experiences, events and interests which offer a mirror to who I am now.

I remain both curious and concerned which is why I offer these reflections (mirror – reflections … geddit?).

Living here means that I have little right to criticise conditions elsewhere, although parallels offer a balance to these observations.

This preamble is intended to hopefully limit comments in the form of diatribes about the political (and religious) causes of educational standards elsewhere.

I am raising the issue of the ujian monyet again because I am very concerned about the competence of the bureaucrats in charge of Indonesia’s schools, a system to which I subscribe as a paying parent – Our Kid attends a private school which is ecumenical, not beholden to Islam, Christianity or any other creed. However, it is beholden to the national curriculum and its graduating students have to sit the national exams.

Last time, I highlighted the English practice test set for Jakarta’s grade 9′s and sat on January 27th. They sat another practice test last Tuesday, 23rd February. Thankfully, it had far fewer than the 63 mistakes that the previous one had. This one still had typos and grammatical errors in the reading passages and vocabulary questions – which are the sole English langauge skills tested. There are a couple of ambiguous questions, but what leads me to question the competence of the powers-that-be in City Hall is the following question from a passage about a health supplement.

Q.44. “Moreover, such combination can alleviate colic of …”
——-–What does the underlined word mean?
———a. reduce
———b. increase
———c. recover
———d. suffer

The correct answer is, of course, a.

The official marking key, which all schools should use, states c !

Go figure.

Which nicely leads into a cockup in the practice Geometry test also sat this week.

Bear in mind that in Maths tests students are only allowed to use a 2B pencil. Although scrap paper is supplied for making notes and to do calculations, the use of electronic calculators and protractors is strictly forbidden.

Q.32 Look at this parallelogram

—–Besar angle adalah
—–(Calculate the angle larger than C)

—–a. 42°———————-c. 62°

—–b. 47°———————-d. 65°

I’m numerically challenged, but even I recognise that without a protractor this task is impossible.

When I wrote about Multiple Intelligences (since highlighted in a Jakarta Post article about its relevance to business practices), I somewhat cynically suggested that it would not be too difficult to select which one is foremost among bureaucrats.

Now I’m not sure that they have any intelligence.

It’s not just here in Indonesia that the ujian monyet exists.

[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)

We each have all intelligences but no two individuals have them in the same exact configuration – similar to our fingerprints. Hence the need for schools, charged with fostering future generations of useful citizens, to accommodate differences and to enable each student to discover and to reach for his or her potential.

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.
…………………………………..
*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.