“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts; nothing else will ever be of any service to them.”

Mr. Gradgrind

From Charles Dickens’ Hard Times

Does this sound familiar to you? Many schools all over the world have as their educational philosophy something similar to that of Mr Gradgrind’s. The sad thing is that when Dickens wrote that it was for an age long gone, namely, the Industrial Revolution.

Yet such a view about what schooling should be all about is still very much prevalent, even in a country like Singapore, which is often lauded for its “good” education system. The emphasis is on stuffing the brain. Just fill the brain with facts. The teachers’ job is to fill the brains with facts, or more accurately, as David Perkins has pointed out, with “factlets” or disparate bits of information with little relevance except for the great Trivial Pursuit game that most high stakes examinations are.

Never mind if the facts make little sense to the students. What is important is that they pass their examinations which for many is just a ticket to a place in a university or a job. For many, they will never see the relevance of the thousands of bits of information that they have learned in school. Makes one wonder if all that learning has been a monumental waste of time and money?

I have written a few posts about the directions that Indonesia’s schools should take. Sekolah berstandar internasional (SBI) seems to be the education-related idea most talked about Indonesia. This SBI idea itself is a move in the right direction, provided that everyone concerned is clear about what it should be. It is not just about getting the school certified as an international examination center. It is not just about having science or computer laboratories. It is, as I have indicated in an earlier post, not about all that glitters. It is at the end of the day the quality of the learning and teaching.

In some other posts, I have also suggested using David Perkins’ Smart School model with its emphasis on deep learning and thinking as model for the creation of an SBI. It is not to create a school where the focus is on the creation of examinations-smart students like we tend to see in countries like Singapore. It is about producing students with an attitude and the skills to fit the future that these students will live in.

For Indonesia, it becomes even more important that schools aspiring to be world-class educational institutions should emphasize on the importance of thinking among its student population. The learning of thinking skills ought to be emphasized. This is because Indonesia today is a young democracy. In democratic states, it is a requirement for the democracy to succeed that its people be able to make informed and intelligent choices. They must also be people who are actively participative in the democratic process, able to look beyond themselves. An authoritarian educational system like the traditional systems we see in schools in even countries with supposedly good education system like Singapore, will never be able to produce citizens for a democracy. The over-emphasis on competition in schools only breeds undemocratic attitudes and values because the emphasis in such competitive environments is the individual’s own success. A system that emphasizes only examinations will not encourage space for thinking either as there is usually little time for anything else except examination preparation which is the raison detre of such schools. Yet the need for a thinking population is vital for a democracy to work.

For the above reasons, Indonesian schools must avoid just blindly aping neighbours’ educational system. The values of their neighbours may differ from that of Indonesia. No doubt some of the values that these neighbouring countries represent is good, like hard work and honesty but do Indonesians really want to copy everything without thinking through the implications for her future.

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.