Today Indonesian schools have a golden opportunity to undergo a more than cosmetic revamp. The demand for good schools in Indonesia has perhaps never been higher. Furthermore, the demands of the new workplace has also changed and parents and employers want schools to produce people who will display the characteristics of the workforce of the future. In my last posting I have argued that it is important that schools in Indonesia should adopt a model where thinking and deep understanding takes center stage in the school curriculum. I have also suggested that the Smart School model adopted by David Perkins be given a serious look and that Indonesia should not settle for school curricula that is very high stakes examination-oriented.

In that first posting, I have explained a key principle of Perkins’ Smart School concept, which was generative knowledge. A school that places emphasis on generative knowledge would have to look beyond the teaching of meaningless rote learning of facts and routines. It would mean that a serious look be given to what ought to be taught. Here lies the challenge for the teachers. Would the teachers be willing to design their own syllabus as to what is to be taught, how it is to be taught, what is to be assessed and how it is to be assessed? It would require work on curriculum mapping instead of just adopting what an international examinations syndicate gives you. The curriculum would have to be mapped out to ascertain what would be taught. Schools thinking of going in this direction should seriously look at whether their teachers are prepared to put in the time for such work. They also need to see if the teachers need to undergo further training or professional development. It also implies the schools would have to have more intelligent teachers.

Another key principle of the Smart School is learnable intelligence. The Smart School stands on the belief that students can and do learn ways of thinking that can boost their performance. This view stems from the research done by Perkins and his colleagues in Harvard’s Project Zero. This contrasts with the traditional view about intelligence being a fixed quantity. Other studies also have supported this view of intelligence.

However, inteliigence can only be boosted if the teachers in the school adopt a more rigorous teaching approach that requires the integration of the teaching of higher order thinking skills. The teachers would also need to adopt an approach of teaching that calls for the use of careful scaffolding. Scaffolding is important because it guides students to develop their own thinking processes. With the guidance through scaffolding, students will learn to see that they have a more accurate picture of their own abilities and potentials and how they learn.

For most schools in Indonesia (and even in Singapore), this will represent a tectonic shift. Schools chasing high stakes examinations syllabus will have great difficulty meeting this most basic demand of the Smart School. Such schools will always be short of time and racing to complete the syllabus in time for the examinations. Secondly, it would also often mean that teachers in such schools will only teach to the examinations. All else will be unimportant because the only real assessment of learning is only done at such examinations. But schools that move in the direction of the Smart School model, including schools aspiring to be SBIs, will be a school that is truly serious about student learning and very importantly, in such a school, every student will be valued because here, truly, it is believed that every child can learn.

The following is my response to a discussion in Indonesia Matters about education in Indonesia. I just thought I would share it with all of you.

I hope I am not too late in contributing my thoughts to this discussion. Perhaps I let be known my background so hopefully it becomes clearer where I am coming from.

I am a Singaporean and a trained teacher who used to teach in government schools in Singapore for about 18 years and for four of those years as a trainer and consultant in the Ministry of Education HQ itself for the nation-wide Master Plan for IT in Education (MPITE). I have also worked as a consultant in Indonesia very recently. However, having said all these, my thoughts and opinions on some of the issues that has been raised here are mine alone.

The first comment I would like to make is with regards to LKY and controlling the masses. I am no fan of LKY but I think with hindsight sometimes we forget the actual condition when decisions were made years ago. The assumption that LKY wanted a system of education where the goal is, to quote Sylvester,  “to fully control the Singapore people” may be invalid. That statement presumes many things about LKY, among them that he is fully aware of the differing approaches to teaching. Singapore gained its independence in 1965 and I really doubt that many people would know of Gardner’s theories or Sternberg’s or Goleman’s ideas with regards to the other intelligences. In fact, they appear only much much later eg Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences appeared only in 1984 in his book, “Frames of Mind”, that is almost 19 years after SIngapore’s independence. So to assume as implied by Sylvester and others that the SIngapore system was introduced to control minds is, I think, way off. More likely, the powers-that-be then didn’t know any other way. They were the “successful” products of an examination-based system so they probably thought at that time that was the only other way. The logic (illogic?) is perhaps, if it had worked for me, it should for everyone else.

Furthermore, if you look at it from another historical perspective, Suharto came to power after th coup while LKY’s policies have been more or less in place since the PAP came to power in 1959. To assume also that LKY and Suharto (and I am not a fan of Suharto too) became such pals to learn from one another is assuming that relations between the leaders of Singapore and Indonesia became what it was later under Suharto very quickly. This is highly unlikely in the light of the then recent Confrontation between Indonesia and Malaysia (and SIngapore).

So I humbly submit that the education policy in Singapore under LKY then was not due to some conspiracy theory to control the minds of Singaporeans. If control is the result of the system, it is probably more a by-product. Even then I wonder if a system that truly teaches people to be logical and so on will have produced a people that submits to the kind of control as has been suggested. As for Suharto, I think one needs to look only at his military background to give you some clue.

With regards to the “feudalism” that exists among “educators” in Indonesia, I think this is due to more a lack of training of teachers to teach in a different way, and more importantly perhaps, the kind of assessment that the student will face. Unfortunately (fortunately?), Indonesia seems to be heading the way fo high stakes exams like SIngapore and usually when schools in Indonesia say they follow the Singapore system, they usually mean their students will sit for the SIngapore-style exams. This kind of system usually doesn’t encourage the skills that some of you have been suggesting. There is little time as the exam syllabus must be completed no matter what happens. Here again, we wonder who is at fault. Indonesian parents who used to be able to send their kids to Singapore have now resorted to sending them to Singapore-style schools in Indonesia since the last major financial crisis. They drive the demand for such schools. Are they the best people to ask about the kind of education? My answer is a firm “no”. But then again from my experience, education is the only sector where everyone seems to have a say about how it should be done even if they are not in that line. You will never see that happening for medicine and engineering.

So although it is good that parents want better schools for their children, do Indonesian parents really know what is better? If they just want to blindly ape, for example, Singapore, they are doing themselves an injustice. The Singapore system isn’t all bad but it has its weaknesses too and any adoption of that system must fit with what Indonesia wants and the situation in Indonesia.

The next issue I will discuss is with regards to the philosophy of education. To be honest, I think most government’s don’t think about philosophy of education. I think iamisaid who seems knowledgeable about philosophy would know that there are so many differing philosophies of education (in the West alone), not to mention that of the other great civilizations. But I am inclined to think that most countries of the world don’t subscribe to any. Most governments turn to economics as their “philosophy”. The economy defines what kind of schools. Even educators have begun to see it that way. To quote a phrase from an American presidential campaign of yesteryear, “It’s the economy stupid.”

About teachers pay, yes unfortunately it is a reality that you give peanuts you get monkeys. And no offense is meant to any Indonesian teachers out there. All things being equal, it is always better to get the best to do a job, any job. In Singapore they have been getting graduates from the upper 1/3 of the university cohorts to be teachers. In the US, fyi, it is the bottom 1/3 and I suspect that is true of Indonesia too.

Having said this, from my experience I know that not all academic high-flyers make great teachers and I have personally made friends and have great professional respect a pretty good number of teachers in Indonesia. And I have also known many academic high flyers who are mediocre teachers in Singapore. But there is no denying a better pay will help the educational sector of Indonesia.

Someone mentioned above about multilingualism but after my experience in Indonesia I wonder if it is necessary or if it is, should it be for all students (at the risk of sounding elitist here)? Why do I question the need for multilingualism, which usually means the acquisition of a global language like English? I don’t have hard data but just admittedly mere observations. When I look at the book shops in Indonesia, I do not see a dearth of academic or technical literature in the shops in Bahasa Indonesia. This is very unlike Malaysia which had one time a Malay first language policy and they have been unable to do just this and hence are trying a return to giving more importance to English again. So is there a need for multilingualism? If so, should it also be for all Indonesians? Japan doesn’t have a multilingual policy. It doesn’t seem to be facing much problems there. The same could be said of Germany too.

With regards to the corruption and poor management, I cannot but sadly agree. During my time as a consultant for school over there, I steered clear from dealing with the DINAS officers who came to the school that I had helped set up. They would come for visits and expect to be greased. While I condemn this I also can understand this because their pay is not much different from teachers in Indonesia. This affecting the quality of the education system in your country. I can cite some personal examples that I have witnessed but I think you yourself will probably know of even more examples from your own experience.

The issues I have raised here is not to bash Indonesia. I have in fact come to love your country and share in its concerns despite its shortcomings. But as I just hope my contribution here only helps to continue this process of clarifying that is needed for any real and meaningful change to take place. As iamisaid pointed out we could also “do more by reflecting on the positives … think are the necessary steps for Indonesia to upgrade the standard of education so that it is progressive and fulfills the aims in nation building.”

Recently, I went to a local hospital where I heard an officer try to explain or convince the audience that there is no real loss to potential kidney donors if they ever decided to donate one of their kidneys. The officer said that on average, kidney donors live longer than the average person. She went on to explain that this is because the kidney donors are usually people who are already fit because otherwise they would not be considered as donors.

Of course the audience seemed convinced by her arguments and no one seemed to be able to detect the flaw in her argument. To put it simply her comparison was invalid. If the goal of her argument was to convince potential donors that their life will be least affected by the transplant, then she should compare the lifespans of those who actually donated their kidneys against those who are at the same level of fitness as these donors but who do not have their kidneys removed. This would show if there is a shortening of the lifespan of the kidney donors.

What is striking is that most (if not all) in the audience couldn’t spot the error in the comparison made by the officer. As someone who is very interested in the teaching of thinking skills, I am both amused and saddened by this error going undetected. I doubt that the officer concerned did it maliciously. I am in fact quite certain she herself didn’t realize the error in her argument. But this episode does point to the importance of teaching our students to think.

I will not elaborate at length why it is important to teach thinking skills as I have discussed it in some of my other postings about the economic reasons for teaching thinking and I believe the example above is sufficient to illustrate its importance in life in general. However, perhaps we ought to consider seriously about how the teaching of thinking skills is to be done. I will try and illustrate the issues concerned with teaching thinking skills with some examples from my experience in Singapore.

In Singapore, the teaching of thinking skills has been going on for quite awhile. Officially, the powers that be here, recognized the importance of teaching thinking. De Bono‘s CoRT was once a staple in Singapore schools until it went out of fashion. Today one is more likely to see the approach taken by Robert Marzano
and others which is basically to infuse the teaching of thinking skills into the subject content area in the school curriculum. However, even then I will argue the way that is implemented means that Marzano’s framework for teaching thinking skills has been sacrificed at Singapore’s altar of Pragmatism. While the thinking skills advocated by Marzano is used officially, the manner in which it is being used leaves a lot to be desired (see my comments here).

Furthermore, in practice, Marzano’s framework seems to be used only for the teaching of social studies, history and geography (they are separate subjects in Singapore). Little is heard about it being used for the other subjects like Maths, Science, Art and others . Why is this so? This is because only in this three subject areas, there are what is known as the thinking skills type questions in the examination papers. Even in the three subjects, the use of this framework for thinking becomes somewhat of a joke (see same link above for my comments).

If teachers in Singapore are cynical about the teaching of thinking skills, some of the blame perhaps can also be placed on the shoulder of the Curriculum Planning and Development Division (CPDD) of Singapore’s Ministry of Education (MOE). I have attended courses and briefings organized by the CPDD in the past. In their attempt to allay the fears of a tired and overworked teacher audience who is going to be asked to accept another “initiative” to their teaching load, quite often it is heard from CPDD officers that the then “new initiative” pertaining to the teaching of thinking skills is not new (duh!) and something that the teachers have been doing. If you are in that audience, you too would feel then there is no real need to change the way you teach since you have been teaching thinking already!

So what happens here is that although the MOE has officially accepted the idea of teaching thinking through infusion into the subject content areas, in reality, what is practised is very different. Thinking skills still exists in silos in Singapore’s education system.

The other issue that has to be considered with teaching thinking skills is the type of thinking skills that is to be taught. The post, “Coaching Critical Thinking to Think Creatively” by Zaid Alsagoff, illustrates, among others, the dilemma that is faced by educators pertaining to the teaching of thinking skills. What teaching skills should be taught? Should we teach critical thinking or creative thinking or problem-solving (though they all may not necessarily be separate entities)? I think we are in this state of flux with regards to the teaching of thinking because we are not clear what end-product (kind of students and adults) we want. The economic needs seem to define the kind of “education” that ought to be given but are we clear how to get to the end product.

Personally, I see two approaches. At the tertiary level perhaps, the approach has been more focused on the kinds of workers we want in the future workplace. This leads to thinking courses being focused on perhaps problem-solving and creative thinking or the more specific stuff like SWOT etc. At the school level, educators tend to focus more on the more “generic” thinking skills as suggested by the Marzano model. I think there is a place for all these different approaches but in my view, they should be integrated or infused into the core curriculum and not taught separately.

The different subjects anyway will lend themselves quite differently to the different kinds of thinking skills. They should reflect the kind of thinking that is done by professionals in the subject areas, which means if they are taught thinking in history, they must be taught how a historian thinks. The thinking skills demanded by a scientist is quite different. Having said that, there are also thinking skills that overlap in the different disciplines. For example, the inquiry approach is common to both the historian and the scientist.

There are also the “thinking skills” that more reflect perhaps cognitive habits that must be inculcated in everyone. For example, the “Habits of Mind” as proposed by Costa and Kallick comes to mind. In short there is a whole range of thinking skills to be taught.

In my mind, the teaching of thinking skills should, therefore, not be done in a one-size-fits-all manner. To do so would be wrong even if it is in the name of teaching thinking skills. To use an analogy, very often at the tertiary level, the IT Department would conduct almost the same ICT course across the disciplines found in a tertiary institute. So a student studying accountancy would be given the same course as an engineering student (see this example). This is done usually out of administrative convenience or intellectual laziness, or perhaps also more likely, because the various departments do not know what ICT skills are really essential for their very different student requirements.

So the teacher of science should know what thinking skills lends itself best for the teaching of science. The teacher of History should know what thinking skills goes well with his discipline and so on for the other subject areas. This requires the teachers of the various disciplines to be clear themselves about what they think a product of their department ought to be able to do with his head.

Lastly perhaps,  the teaching of thinking skills should be explicit in the sense that students ought to know what thinking skills is being used or taught. Thinking skills should be taught explicitly because stduents must be made aware of the thinking that goes on in their heads. They have to be more conscious. Teachers too will be made more conscious that they ARE teaching thinking and that it is not done by some hidden osmosis-like and accidental processes. The teaching of thinking should also be done explicitly while the “content” is being taught instead of just dishing out “facts” from the textbooks. Teachers who are not familiar with the the infusion of thinking skills in their subject content areas should therefore seriously undergo professional training in this area.