After sharing and posting My son’s project into his page in this blog, I feel that the following is a reflection of one situation that I have encountered in recently.
Matthew’s school is one of the example of schools that will adopt “Kurikulum 2013”. They decided not to start this year, but they will, soon. No choices? I don’t know. For me, no matter what the curriculum is, the most important thing is the actual process happening in classes. How to a student get interested in a lesson and try to dig deeper the knowledge as he wants, is the real job of teachers.
It is a complicated situation in Indonesia regarding the removal of ICT lesson in SMP based on “kurikulum 2013”. I wonder how the authorities in Department of Education (either the central or district) see this situation. Have they defined a strict boundary to what was written explicitly in the curriculum document itself? Or did they give some freedom to interpret the meaning of it? No ICT means no ICT? If it is literally like that, for me, we are just following what Forrest Gump said that “stupid is as stupid does”
On the other side, schools and teachers, do they get trapped inside the curriculum? Or they purposely trap themselves into the curriculum? 🙂 .
When the schools and teachers know exactly the importance of having ICT lesson especially in this era of technology, they get stuck with the law. Instead of combining ICT into all subjects by assigning some time slot for the ICT teachers to support other subjects, they worry too much of the administration that have to be reported to the government.
The report for the government indeed can be a snare by itself. Each teacher is required to teach 24 period per week by law. But, if they teach ICT, they can not be acknowledged as an ICT teacher (because there is no ICT subject anymore as per Kurikulum 2013) and their teaching periods will not be acknowledged.
When the number of periods do not comply with the law, or when they teach other subject but irrelevant to their formal educational background, their name also can’t be registered in DAPODIK (Ministry of Education’s Teachers Registry) . No record in DAPODIK means no money for the “professional teacher allowance” for those who had already certified by government through Department of Education . When school and teacher try to “just” fit the number of periods into 24 periods, sometimes “Dinas” found it as lie, then they can also cancel the data for the teacher allowance.
Until now, I’m not so sure what will be the next step from our government regarding the situation. Once, they said that the idea of “kurikulum 2013” with no ICT for SMP is to give opportunity to have collaborative learning. All subjects must be supported by ICT. That means, subject teachers (including students) must also be supported by IT trainer, IT staff, people who are IT literate. When those kind of people (better known as Computer Teacher) do not feel satisfied by the law (read: do not receive the promised tidy sum of ‘professional allowance’), no wonder there are many petition letters shared and signed by teachers (or people) who against the law.
Confused? Or is it clear why Indonesia rank is so low in PISA?
It is a vicious circle, waiting for someone to cut it, rethink and decide on what’s right.
