by Pierre Jobel
Education is important, there’s no doubt in that. It’s a
common fact that he younger and less experienced someone is, the easier for
them to learn; that’s why we teach our children important values and lessons,
and ultimately put them to school. According to UNICEF, 91 percent of worldwide
primary-school-age children were enrolled in school in 2012; meaning majority
of the people understood the importance of education. In Indonesia, the number
is higher: 97 percent of 7-12 years old children are schooled. However, it does
not mean our education system is perfect. Even in far more developed countries
like UK and USA, the education system is considered to be broken and
misguiding; and the reasons are only a fraction of Indonesian education
system’s problem. There are various reasons why I think Indonesian education system
needs to be repaired.
The first reason is the quality of the teachers. A lot of Indonesian teachers are not
qualified whether because they haven’t met the qualification or not because teaching
the subjects not appropriate with their degree. A lot of teachers also still teach with high
subjectivity due to cultural influence or plain unprofessionalism; which is
often the case in underdeveloped regions. In this regions, religious views,
ethnicity, and racism also influenced their teachings and how they treat their
students. Please give examples of this.
The next reason is the existence of
the standardized National Exam. In Indonesia, the only way to graduate from
elementary, junior high, or senior high school is to pass standardized National
Exam Previously, protests only came from students, but recently the number of
protesting parents is increasing. They are protesting the system, which judge
the result of years of learning process with a single test on one subject each
that spans two hours with forty numbers of question, with all school across the
nation using the same questions. This policy spawned many cases of mass
cheating and transactions of leaked exam answer, which is a deviant of the
exam’s main purpose.
Last but not least, students are
forced to study subjects they’re not interested in. In elementary school, students
learn mandatory subject like natural science, social science, math, Bahasa, English,
civic, and religion. In junior high school, the subjects are expanded; natural
science is divided into biology, chemistry, and physics and social science is
divided into sociology, economy, geography, and history. I learnt all 12
subjects plus some supplementary subjects from my school in the time of 3
years. And during midterm exam season, two or more subjects is being tested a
day, with three months -sometimes six months- worth of test material; and if
they fail, they may not proceed to the next level and ultimately get dropped
out. It’s too much pressure for junior high-scholar to experience. Although
subject like English and math is important, a lot of these subjects should not
be mandatory at all. I myself have forgot almost completely about subjects like
geography and sociology. I say that if we are not interested in that subject or
the subject will not be used in our everyday life, the subject must not be mandatory.
With
all these reason on mind, I think most of us will agree that Indonesian
education system is broken[TS1] .
The government needs to repair the education system fast, so that no more
generation fall victim into the false education system. Our government should
make other countries where the education system is considered to be the best in
the world like Singapore, South Korea, or Finland as an example. If government
and decision makers refuse to learn from these mistakes, it does not make sense
if they demand our young generations to learn for the brighter future.
[TS1]Indonesian
education system fails
