Condemn the exam, not the cheating Setiono Sugiharto  ;   An associate professor at the Atma Jaya Catholic University, Jakarta

JAKARTA POST,  31 Mei 2014

                                                

                                                                                         

                                                      

The increasing number of students caught cheating in this year’s national examinations may not be surprising. But, when the cheating is committed collaboratively and openly between students and their teachers, and students and their peers, it may sound unthinkable. However, even more mind-boggling are the class proctors who seemed to have adopted a cavalier attitude when students share and discuss the exam’s answers. In our political discourse, we are familiar with the infamous buzzword, korupsi berjamaah (collaborative corruption), while a neologism, nyontek berjamaah (collaborative cheating), adds to our terminology. Such is the portrait of our annual educational ritual. However, it is important to highlight that the cause for concern is not the “deceptive” act of cheating per se, but rather the system created by the Education and Culture Ministry. The ministry’s insistence on preserving the national exams every year, despite public condemnation, poses more physical and mental burdens on school teachers and students. What is more, this insistence contributes to the unhealthy hierarchy that divides an unequal social stratum between schools — which supposedly have the authority to pass or fail their students — and the education ministry — which functions only as a body to monitor and assess the quality of a school, not the students’ learning. The ministry’s direct intervention through the examination policy it imposes is considered too much by schools, because the policy undermines schoolteachers’ authority as an agent of change capable of conducting more valid and reliable examinations. Further, the social and pedagogical implication the policy brings about seems not to be a somber concern within the ministry. Despite repeated fraud, which always mars the implementation of the national exams, the ministry seems unwilling to learn from the past and seek the real roots of the seemingly “fraudulent” act of cheating. It instead turns a deaf ear to the constructive feedback aired by educational practitioners and pundits. Ultimately, it is the test takers and schoolteachers who take the blame, should anything happen to impede the implementation of the exam. Mass cheating, which is perhaps one of the much-voiced social implications of the national examination policy, has grabbed media attention of late. It has, unfortunately, been grossly exaggerated by the media, as if it were a dishonest and disgraceful educational practice that should be sanctioned. It is also an overstatement to liken students’ cheating with corrupt practices frequently involving government officials, as the context, purpose and situations are totally different. Cheating, in the context of the national examinations, is a trivial and insignificant issue that should not be subjected to such media hype. Many more important issues, such as the mental suffering endured by teachers and students as well as the lost opportunity for students to demonstrate their real competence, are left unnoticed. They need to be exposed, in the hope that they can raise the government’s awareness of the importance of assessing students’ capabilities. If we contextualize cheating (in the national exams) from a sociological perspective, we will realize that it is a surreptitious form of opposition against an educational policy that both students and teachers find unfair and oppressive. It is the pressurized ambience of the examination schedule that encourages students (facilitated by their teachers) to conduct such a form of dissembling. Clearly, schools have a vested interest in facilitating their students to cheat and provide them with the exam answers. The higher the number of students passing the exams, the better the schools’ image will be. After all, what the recent mass cheating suggests is that the seemingly conformist attitude toward the government’s policy, displayed by the schools as educational institutions, mask students and teachers’ latent opposition. With almost no bargaining power to oppose the nerve-racking examination policy, schools will continue to acquiesce to the policy and are highly unlikely to be able to exercise their autonomy as independent intellectual institutions that have the right to assess their students’ learning. In the end, as the national examinations offer students and teachers more pressure and pain than pleasures, mass cheating will presumably recur in the future — possibly to an even greater degree. Simply threatening schools with admonishments, warnings and sanctions is unlikely to deter them from facilitating their students to cheat. ●