For Indonesians or
even humans in general, few can argue with the fact that having your choices
laid out for you is the easiest way to start solving any problem. However, it
is when others set and limit these choices for you that unintended side effects
emerge. Many students, me included, have
come to the conclusion that the best way to face these questions is simply to
remember specific facts and answers and guess at anything else that we might
have forgotten to remember. And so, stripped of the need to use little more
than our superb ability of rote memorization –honed through decades of enduring
this learning practice – we Indonesians have slowly lagged behind the train of
global educational progress. We and several other less fortunate developing
nations have failed to instigate the wave of educational reform that has swept
through the schools and educational institutions of more developed countries,
years past; this has left us with what some foreigners have criticized as ‘an
archaic educational system’ – one so focused solely on rote memorization that creative
problem solving and analytical skills have been sorely neglected. Sadly, this
is especially evident in our final national examinations for high school or
UAN, where all of the questions for all 6 subject tests are comprised of
nothing more than multiple choice questions.
Perhaps it is for this reason that although Indonesia has
been frequently praised as being a gold mine for outstanding young
intellectuals, few have been able to make their way into the halls of
prestigious foreign universities on the basis of their UAN scores alone. And
so, it is this realization that has led groups of brave individuals – generally
school teachers and principals by profession, but educational reformists at
heart – to set up what we now know as SBI or Schools operating according to
International Standards. And at the heart of these innovative educational
institutions is the Cambridge International Curriculum.
For many of us facing this radically different foreign
curriculum for the first time, it is an overwhelming experience. At the start
of the school year, we are introduced to textbooks thick enough to be used as
pillows – and they might as well be after a couple of hours of reading through
their contents. To add to the horror, the language in which these books are
written is that of which many of us are still unfamiliar with: the language of
purely formal, college level English. This isn’t the same as the English you
hear in the latest Hollywood movies. Nor is it even close to the English you
use to talk with your teachers at EF. This is a wholly different breed, filled
with alien phrases like homeostasis and critical path analyses.
And yet, the Cambridge curriculum shouldn’t be one that we
greet with enmity or fear, instead we should use it as a stepping stone to help
upgrade our own educational system, because Cambridge not only teaches us to know
what the answer to a question is, but
why and how it could be better. Being 12th year students of
Humanities, my friends and I have faced our fair share of mind-boggling,
multiple page essays that have often pushed us to the brink of mental and
physical exhaustion. However, it is through these essays that we have learnt
the core of what Cambridge aims to teach and that is – as a certain teacher of
mine always enjoys saying – to ‘go beyond’, to give more than what is asked
because in this case your thoughts and opinions are just as relevant as any
expected ’textbook’ answer. And it is in this aspect that I feel we as
Indonesian students still lack the courage and understanding to do so – at
least, for now that is.
Fished out this little snippet from one of my old castaway folders. It suddenly brought back a whole load of memories, and not just those of high school, but of middle school too. I hope you're having a great time out there Ms. Julia, God knows all of the little shakespeares you left in this world miss you beyond comprehension. :')
