Our Choice? Or Theirs?

Multiple Choice. That is the method of testing that the Indonesian educational system has upheld since God knows when. For humans, multiple choices are an unavoidable and integral part of our daily lives, from the cradle to the grave. Every decision that we make has to take into account hundreds, perhaps even thousands of other possibilities that could have been had we chosen differently. So, you’d probably think that drilling our kids to face this kind of future dilemma by teaching them from an early age how to pick out the best choice out of several would be an appropriate way to test their academic aptitude, right? Wrong.

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 12^th 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. :')