When
testing matters more than learning
Yantho Musthofa ;
A
member of the central governing council of the Indonesian Muslim
Intellectuals Association (ICMI) in Jakarta
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JAKARTA
POST, 03 Mei 2014
The
debates on the necessity of nationwide final mandatory exams for both junior
and senior high school students, which mounted again in the wake of alleged
widespread fraud, actually relates to a peripheral issue of education.
These
debates could have been easily settled if national education stakeholders
were willing to return to the essence of education.
The 2003
law on national education states three basic elements of education:
by-purpose and planned efforts; learning conditions and processes; and
students who develop their own potential.
The
first element refers to the need for qualified accountable providers of
education — parents, teachers, schools and authorities.
The
second implies the necessity of best conditions, situations and processes to
enable the third element, students developing their own potential.
The
debates on the quality of the first two elements should never cease as
quality needs constant improvement. They must always develop to enable
students enjoy increasingly better facilities, environments and necessary
support to develop themselves.
Herein
is the cause of the destruction of our education. Over decades, the whole
energy to promote the quality of those first two elements has been focused on
the peripheral, numerical data of achievement.
There is
virtually no happy learning in our schools. Schooling has long been reduced
to merely creating the best test takers in the three-day final mandatory
exams, which have been taken for granted as the only ticket to future
success.
Worse,
the selective-system schooling paradigm screens only the best test achievers
to be able to enroll to the next level of qualified, reputable schools or
universities, which are always in limited number and capacity. The rest, the
large majority of losers, are steered out of the game as the residue of
education, which cannot possibly find another way, because there is just no
other way.
Their
individual specific potential has disappeared along with the
standardized-buzz saw schooling to pursue the uniformed scores. The schools
do not provide them with the learning processes to acquire necessary life
skills. They have been prepared to be only good at working answering the test
questions.
Basically,
the numerical data of school achievement should have been the accountability
instrument for the providers of education. Instead, the instrument has become
the burden to be inflicted on — and an intimidating tool against — the
students since the earliest stage of formal schooling. We have got exactly to
the point where testing matters more than learning.
The
unintended effect is fraud, unfairness, as immoral practices become
inevitable not only for students, considering the mighty power of the crucial
scores for their future, but also for parents, teachers, schools and local
authorities altogether. They all share the interest of determining the
highest performance written in the students’ certificates at all costs.
This
unhealthy model of education has stemmed from the 19th-century industrialist
paradigm of American education, which had adopted the Prussian
authoritarian-military education model. This compulsory schooling, which
became the forerunner of American public schools was a breakthrough in
fulfilling the needs of quickly available, massive and cheap labor for the
industry since Horace Mann ceased standardized testing in 1837.
Of
course, the compulsory schooling was not designed to encourage every student
to become long-life learners, creative thinkers and independent and capable
workers, because the industry needed only human bodies with standardized
skills, uniformity and conformity.
Whoever
becomes the next education minister in the new cabinet should bring back the
basics of learning and learning process to our schools. In doing so, he or
she need not to be a spectacular new curriculum super creator.
Instead, the minister would just need to make sure that every single
Indonesian student is invaluable with his or her inherent potential. Every
single Indonesian child is entitled with the right to be free from any
negative stigma. We should no longer see the majority of losers after high
school ends. For everyone should be a winner. ●
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