David Perkins’ concept of the Smart School if implemented has the potential to make meaningful learning truly happen. I have been advocating in this series of postings that the Smart School concept ought to be explored, especially for countries like Indonesia which has a growing privately-owned educational sector. The national educational authorities, DINAS, have largely left these schools to explore and take their own routes. This means that privately-owned schools have a great opportunity to go into uncharted waters. Even the National Schools and the so-called National Plus schools should strive to move into these uncharted waters.

Perkins’ ideas are actually important beacons for the more adventurous schools to follow. They provide principles upon which schools can use to prepare themselves to enter a brave new world.Like all trips into uncharted waters, a keen awareness of what is happening throughout the journey will help make the journey successful. This awareness is stressed in Perkins’ model of the smart school. Schools must make ready to sail with these beacons as their guiding lights.

Conversely, while uncharted waters may seem dangerous, to remain in home waters is to stick to the old, high stakes examination systems that many of these schools have been adopting. The only difference is that the examinations are now from international examination syndicates. It is just a case of old wine (or should it be rum?) in new bottles as the fundamental approach to teaching is still the traditional teaching to the examinations manner which involves a lot of rote learning and learning of mechanical routines where learning is at best superficial.

Employers all over the world have been complaining that the products of such a system do not meet the requirements of the workplace anymore where the complexity of the work environment demands people who are adapt with complexity. The fact is the whole society needs such people. Students who do deep and insightful thinking must deal with adapt at dealing with complex situations. Standard trivial pursuit questions common in high stakes examinations will not do simply because they do not challenge, excite or cause any real re-wiring of the mind of the students, or even the teachers for that matter.

It is this need to be comfortable and adapt with complexity that the Smart School also tries to address. The school is also built on the principle that students in such schools should embrace complexity. Students ought to be constantly facing complex situations and problems. Students must acquire the skills and persistence to persevere in such situations because after all in the real world, standard answers and solutions don’t work whether at the workplace or the home. Instead of giving up in the face of complexities, students in the smart school will be excited by the challenges presented by the complexities they face. They will acquire skills to deal with complexity.

Teachers too would be challenged to present a meaningful curriculum which they know is realistic and reflects the world in which their students live in.  This alone, I believe, will take so much of the drudgery out of the lives of teachers. The management of such a school will also support these teachers in being more ambitious in setting the educational goals of their charges. The learning becomes real and real learning becomes the culture of the school.

The Smart School becomes wedded to learning. The smart school, according to Perkins, must also be a learning organization where not only the students are actively learning but the management and teachers. Teachers are encouraged in pursuing their intellectual interests. This will mean that school management will be willing to allow teachers to try new ideas in the classrooms. Teachers will also show greater professional collaboration not only within the school but also with other teachers elsewhere. The school management must show that they are serious about making the school a learning organization by instituting structures that allow for collaboration and free flow of information. It demands a greater transparency so that all members of the school is more actively and personally  involved in setting directions for the school and the monitoring of the school’s performance. This becomes essential if the school seeks to be always relevant to the changing demands and goals of the larger community outside the school.

Indeed to produce a new breed of people with an ability to think deeply should become a national concern. For Indonesia, the country’s experiment in democracy requires that it produces people who are deep thinkers and not just examinations smart. Democratic institutions cannot be built upon schools that teach people to be spoon fed. Schools and teachers must realize that if they want everyone else to take them seriously, then they must be seen to be serious about the responsibility that their role calls for. While in the past the “Three Rs” were the goals, education today, which we must not forget is for tomorrow, calls for a different set of goals on top of the traditional ones. Schools cannot be bastions of the past. Schools cannot only undergo cosmetic changes. The changes must be real and fundamental and they must also excite everyone involve in it. The new world beckons the brave.

The third principle upon which Davide Perkins’ Smart School concept is based on is the focus on understanding. In a Smart School, the learning that takes place is a consequence of deep thinking and and the student is able to display deep understanding as opposed to rote learning of information or routines.

This is opposed to what traditionally happens in a  school where often students and teachers are engaged in a trivial pursuit of little bits of information. Often, what happens in a classroom is not far from a TV game show where questions are asked and the right answer is supplied. Very seldom is deep mastery of a subject asked to be displayed. For example, often in schools with high stakes examinations, students may be asked to list Newton’s three laws of motion or even asked to provide the answer to mathematical question based on the three laws. However, as Perkins pointed out, how many students have been posed with a question to describe what would happen if there  are astronauts arranged in a circle facing one another, each armed with snowballs to be thrown at one another? How many students who have learned Newton’s theory of motion in school would be able to explain what happens when the snowball fight begins?

Students who can answer the first two types of questions given above only show that their level of understanding is at best superficial. The first calls for mere rote learning while the second only calls for knowledge of routines to execute a mathematical problem. But the third calls for a deep understanding of Newton’s Laws. It calls for students to deeply reflect on their conceptual understanding of the subject matter. It makes learning challenging. Perhaps, only in such an instance is the student’s mind fully engaged in deep thinking while in the case of the first two, it would be almost “mindless”. There would be little meaning-making required when students know the only kind of assessment that would be of their learning is of the trivial pursuit variety. When assessment in the classroom is of the trivial pursuit variety, teachers cannot expect their students to transfer what they have learned to other spheres of their lives.

This brings us to the fourth principle that Perkins suggest would make for a Smart School, which is the need to teach for mastery and transfer. Underlying this principle is a real belief and commitment that every student can learn anything if they are given reasonable opportunity and motivation to learn. Teachers must work harder and be prepared to give the necessary time to allow this to happen. Teaching that is centered on scaffolding, motivation and building bridges to link students’ knowledge to new contexts is important. This is because it will ensure that students will learn well and use their knowledge more actively.

Schools in Indonesia would do well to take note of these two principles. While traditional assessment that is done at the end of a term has its place, schools in Indonesia who aspire to be truly Sekolah Berstandar Internasional (SBI) must be more conscious of developing the minds of their students as proposed by Perkins. Even the so-called international schools in Indonesia,especially those following too closely the so-called Singapore model, do not have a serious focus on understanding, and the teaching for mastery and transfer. Is it a wonder then that students who graduate from such schools are often described as exam smart and little else by their future employers?

I met an old friend this morning and she was voicing her concerns about her daughter’s education in a Singapore school. She was concerned about the streaming that would affect her daughter. In case you don’t already know, in Singapore students are “streamed” into courses of study at Secondary Three. The courses of study that is offered in the schools in Singapore is very much left to the school principals. My friend’s daughter will be streamed next year and she was concerned that her daughter would not be able to do the subjects of her choice.

My friend’s problem is that her daughter wants to pursue her study of Literature or History. You may ask what is wrong with that but the problem is that these two subjects are going the way of the dodo in Singapore secondary schools. The reason is simple. These two subjects are seen as difficult subjects for students to master by teachers and principals in Singapore. Schools in Singapore here generally feel that students generally don’t do well in the high stakes examinations for these two subjects.

Now the high stakes examination system in Singapore does not only determine the fate of the students but it also determines the fate of the schools (and the principals and the teachers) running them. So if the school offers “difficult” subjects and students don’t do well in them, the school’s academic ranking in Singapore will be adversely affected. School principals in Singapore  are reluctant to offer these subjects to their students because of this. We can imagine some of the possible excuses that would be given (eg. “we are doing it for the students good”, “not enough demand” and perhaps “not enough teachers for the subjects”) but here again we see education being sacrificed for mass consumption and prestige in Singapore.

Soon there will be a strange and unwelcome homogeneity in Singapore schools. Most of the schools in Singapore will only offer the same “exam-easy subjects”. This is one unhealthy by-product of the examination system in Singapore. The Ministry of Education (MOE) in Singapore of course will not officially condone such practices. But it is an unfortunate “reality” here. The MOE will remind us that in the ranking of schools in Singapore, the criteria has been diversified to look at not only the examination results but perhaps what is happening is that the paradigm shift with regards to this has not taken place in the minds of the principals. Or perhaps the weight allocated to academic performance in the school ranking exercise is just not sufficiently shifted away from it.

In the meantime, students like my friends daughter will probably not be allowed to pursue their academic interest in Singapore. Where can they go in a system where most of the schools think in like manner?