“For any subject taught in primary school, we might ask [is it] worth an adult’s ‘knowing, and whether having known it as a child makes the person a better adult.”

from The Process of Education by Jerome Bruner (1960)

Our school or education system is often inundated with all kinds of agendas. What needs to be taught in schools becomes a mess of often conflicting goals. There is an even more urgent need today for schools to be clear about what ought to be taught.

What would be the result if we were to seriously pursue what Jerome Bruner had proposed above to what is being taught in schools today? Would we still have the gargantuan-sized curriculum that we force students to go through each year? Would we still be teaching for discrete facts? More important perhaps, would we still be assessing for discrete facts?

If we want to respond positively to Jerome Bruner, schools would have to undergo a revolutionary change. Teachers would be teaching for enduring understanding rather than just teaching discrete facts. Teaching for enduring understanding means that the focus would be, to quote Wiggins and McTighe, “focus on larger concepts, principles, or processes”. The focus will be on big ideas rather than disparate bits of facts.

Big ideas that can will be useful to the students in their later years of life. Big ideas which would have real meaning for the students rather than just bits of information useful only for end-of-year school examinations. Big ideas that that students can use to apply in differing contexts within or even beyond their subjects.

We will do well to avoid the following 19th century, Industrial Revolution Age view of what education should be:

“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

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?

Indonesia today is experiencing a rapid growth in the number of international schools and what is termed, the National Plus schools. The rapid increase in the numbers of these schools in Indonesia reflects the desire of many Indonesian parents to give the best possible education to their children. These schools usually have their students sitting for high stakes international examinations like the IGCSE or the local UASBN. Recently, more schools are following the much touted Singapore model. This is done usually through an almost simplistic wholesale transfer of the typical Singapore school system to the Indonesian schools.

In addition to these, there has also been an increased clamor for schools to acquire Sekolah Berstandar Internasional (SBI) status. These are essentially schools populated by Indonesian teachers and possessing an Indonesian curriculum but with standards that match that of what is thought to be the standards of international schools in terms of facilities and the manner of the teaching and learning that takes place. But even then, there is no real agreement as to what constitutes an SBI.

Despite the seeming confusion, this period actually offers Indonesia a golden opportunity to explore alternative school models. One such model is the model of a Smart School as propounded by David Perkins of Harvard University. In Perkins’ model, thinking and understanding takes center stage in the learning processes in the school. This would produce students who are responsible and also thinking people who can contribute to a diverse world.

The Smart School (click on picture on left) as envisage by Perkins would have a clear idea of what knowledge or skill is worth learning and this would be based on the idea that education is about the teaching for understanding. It would be a shift from the largely rote-learning approach of most schools today which is the result of a teaching approach that is aimed at the examinations.  A student that is the product of this Smart School would be intellectually empowered because he would have been immersed in a thinking culture in his time in the school. He would be able to think critically, flexibly and deeply after they have left school. This means that his learning will not be surface learning that only allows him to be exam smart. The product of the Smart School would be able to display generative knowledge which means that they are able to retain knowledge for the long-term and not just for the examinations; they have an understanding of knowledge; and that they would be able to use the knowledge that they have beyond the classrooms.

In a Smart School, therefore, students would not be engaged in what Perkins calls meaningless trivial pursuit of information where learning is just the amassing of huge chunks of facts and routines, and the teacher is concerned with the teaching of quantity rather than depth. In his Trivial Pursuit Theory, Perkins also argues that the information would be truncated, disjointed and meaningless.

If we look at the goals set by Perkins for his Smart School, they are goals which I am confident anyone would agree with. If we just look at the rising voices of unhappiness with the current school systems in Singapore and also Indonesia, one of the loudest complaints is the over-emphasis on remembering and regurgitating huge chunks of facts and routines. Parents know that a lot of what is forced on the memory of their children will have little relevance later. Much of what is learned is seldom applied in the lives of their children later.

Parents (and employers too) should seek a serious change in the way schools go about their business of teaching. They should also realize that the number one reason why schools today on the whole still emphasize the meaningless memorizing of facts and routines is due to the high stakes examination system that has been adopted by schools. If there is this realization, parents should think carefully about seeking schools whose main goal is to prepare their students for such examinations because when this is the goal usually deep understanding is sacrificed. The end result in such school systems is that there is usually only a pretense at education. Worse, these schools give the ignorant a false sense of security that real teaching and learning is taking place. The good news is that this does not have to happen.