I enjoy cooking. My friends know that. I find that when I am able to transform simple ingredients into delicious and nutritious meals. For me it is amazing how simple ingredients can make something great. The same can be said about education. You do not need all the big, fanciful things to make an education system great. I believe that what you need are the people who know how to combine the small things to make that great transformation.

This idea of combining and transforming small things into something great has a lot of relevance with the concept of the sekolah berstandar internasional (SBI) in Indonesia. I think too often the attampt to raise the standards of Indonesian schools to schools of world standards has focused too much on the hardware rather than the software, or more accurately perhaps, “people ware”. It is this focus on hardware that has resulted in a concern among some Indonesian commentators that the push for SBIs is leading to two-different education systems, one for the haves and the other for the have-nots. I believe this is true only if schools are seen only as being able to become SBIs with the pre-requisite hardware in terms of modern technology and buildings.

However, if the idea of the SBI is not tied to hardware but to good teaching then ANY school in Indonesia can be an SBI, a school of world standards. In my view, a school of world standards is one where quality teaching is done and not one where only quality hardware is present. I have seen in my days as a consultant for the Ministry of Education (MOE) of Singapore pushing the country’s MasterPlan for IT in Education (MPITE) program, teachers teach in mediocre ways in well-equipped and modern schools.

If Indonesians are clear that it is good teaching that makes a world class school, more emphasis should be put on the teachers and the people who assist in the education process. These includes the school administrators (at least at the school level). If teachers can be trained to teach in a way that takes out the tedium of the usual process that has been unjustifiably called “teaching”, and if they can be trained to to a more participatory approach to teaching and learning by all involved in the process, any school can be become great.

Money then does not become the most important pre-requisite for SBI status. Good training for teachers does. This is more accessible then money for many Indonesian schools including the National schools. You do not need hardware to get students interested. You do not need hardware to teach students to think. You do not need hardware to get students to be creative. You do not need hardware to teach students to be tough. You do not need hardware to get them to be imaginative. You do not need hardware to inspire students. You do not need hardware to produce leaders. If Indonesian school set their minds to producing such students, the schools will become SBIs. It is a natural by-product of good teaching. Best of all it can be done with ingredients already found in Indonesian schools, both rich and poor ones. Both private and National schools.

What needs to be done is to train the teachers well. If this is done properly, they will transform the Indonesian schools into institutions that provide world class education. It is just like cooking. The ingredients are the same. It is the cook that counts.

Most young children are naturally curious and highly imaginative… after children have attended school for a while, they become more cautious and less innovative….Unfortunately it is necessary to conclude from the investigations of many scholars that our schools are the major culprits. Teachers, peers, and the educational system as a whole all diminish children’s urge to express their creative possibilities.

~Dacey & Lennon, 1998

It seems from the quote above, schools dull the minds of our children. To be sure, the demand for control is necessary in schools. Teachers cannot teach if the class is out of control. But then again I believe it is a problem only if we define control as conformity and obedience, which unfortunately, is all too often what is demanded in the classrooms.

Today, we prefer to call it “classroom management” or “class management”. It is not impossible to manage a class in a way that allows for students to show independence. I think one underutilized tool is to use reasoning. All too often that conformity and obedience is seen by students as just a disciplinary issue. Making an effort to reason with the students and coming to a common understanding with the students helps students to take responsibility for what happens in the class.

Taking responsibility implies a choice of options.  It involves decision-making practice. When students are given time and opportunities to make good decisions about their environment, there is less of a that feeling of having to always conform and be obedient to a higher authority, no matter how irrational the latter may seem to be. Besides getting them to discuss and come to a mutually agreeable decision, especially in a non-threatening environment, almost surely will bring about better compliance to whatever that has been agreed upon.

Teachers must be willing to engage their students in a dialog. A dialog would involve questions and answers. Such engagement will encourage students to speak and ask questions. It will not stifle their natural curiosity to question, probe, even test boundaries.

Another important reason why schools dull the minds of the young is the manner that teaching and learning is done. We know of studies which show that most of the questions asked in the classroom is asked by the teachers themselves. The teachers also answer most of their questions. This too depends on whether the teachers give students enough time to think about asking questions. The demands of high stakes testing or examinations usually mean that the “coverage” of the syllabus is foremost on the teachers minds.This usually mean traditional teacher talk (and question).

Furthermore, in such systems the only things that are worth teaching are what will be asked in the tests or examinations. How intellectually exciting and stimulating can this be? How do we fire up the neurons in the students brains so that they go whizzing at high speed if all they ever learn is what will appear in the examinations. Nothing explodes in their head. No “Aha! moment” except maybe “so that’s how you answer this question”. Exploration, experimenting, going off track are not encouraged. There is simply no time for all that. No time for meaningful questions. They are not measured anyway as required KPIs of schools. If they are not measured, then they are also deemed unimportant. Therefore, a move away from examinations or test oriented teaching will go a long way towards removing the clouds of dullness from the classrooms. Let curiosity be an important reason for learning again.

Too often when we ask our children or students about school, we ask “How are things?” And almost invariably we get predictable responses like “OK” or “Boring” or even “Lousy“. The response has become so predictable because they know that we are not very serious about asking them what has happened to them in school. Guy Claxton suggests that we ask them:

• What was hard for you today?
• Which learning muscles have you been stretching?
• Did you ask a good question?
• Did you risk tackling something new?
• What did you manage to improve?
• Did you make any interesting mistakes?
• Did you learn anything useful by watching someone else?
• How could you have helped your teacher get that tricky stuff across better?
• How would you have organized the lesson differently?

Source: Guy Claxton’s “What’s the Point of School?”

If you look at these questions, they suggest a “learner reflective mode”. It suggest to them that they should constantly be thinking about how they learn and what they are learning. It is a reflective practice that they can share with their peers, and not only with adults in authority.

If such questioning becomes habitual, it becomes part of the useful and effective repertoire of an independent learner. He learns to assess the manner he learns. His own questioning will power his own learning as opposed to answering questions from adults like parents and teachers, or worse from examination papers!

If you would like to read more about Claxton’s practical advice about how to create enthusiastic learners and more effective teaching, click on the book cover above.