Indonesian Value and International Standard of Education

Documented by Marsigit

For Education in Indonesia, we still have to struggling to come to international level of education. International standard is still far way. In the case of value, we are concerned with enculturization, assimilation, and mixing. We should investigate how the local culture and global culture dynamically interact. It is important to understand how we behave on the globalization of sciences. We have two positions: to develop method for transferring the sciences and to pursue the sciences substantially. The more rational option is to develop transferable methods i.e. the global methods of thinking.


To come to international level, we should first consider the development of our teachers. The teachers should have their competencies first and then we need to develop our schooling. Teachers’ competencies should have in balances between the theories and its practices. When there must be a laboratory, it should build the theories. All these competencies colored teachers’ professionalism. Many trainings of teachers have been conducted, however, the results has not satisfied yet.

 To be competence should be professional. There is a little confusion i.e. between the means of profession and the means of dedication. I do not agree with the statement that professional teachers need a good talent. Talent does not mean of training while profession needs training. The teachers need to have competencies on teaching methodology, classroom management, theories of students’ learning, and assessment method. Teaching learning and school context are supporting factors for schooling. Our teachers have to develop assessment method, however, they still have difficulties to implement portfolio.

In the case of teachers’ certification, the portfolio is really not effective yet. It is because teachers’ portfolio is the past archive of teachers’ tracks. While we are still argue whether our teachers in the past have a good achievement in education? So better schooling needs the supports from curriculum, theories, teachers’ competencies, etc. Ki Hajar Dewantara introduced educational system in which the students learn the subject matter naturally. Many aspects of our students’ ability, wellness, and their psychology need to be discussed. In the case of competencies the students need to have a good motivation to do learning activities, need to have appropriately behavior to support their aims, need to have supporting knowledge to develop their skill and experiences. As a teacher we should try to uncover all their aspect of competencies and then facilitate and develop them. We can employ both quantitative and qualitative approach to do them.

In the case of Japan, there was a result of research indicated that inappropriate teaching of mathematics
triggered the crime juvenile. So, if we teach mathematics only stressing of logical thinking the results can be bad. However, in the past and currently situation in Indonesia, not only mathematics teaching but also all subject matters are to have inappropriately methods so that they all trigger juvenile crime. The practice of teaching learning needs to be improved. We need to promote teaching learning in such a way that the students are more actively involved in learning activities e.g. by trial and error method.

How then to change the situation? God promises: if you learn god teaching you will get a hint. It needs for us to have an original thinking and clear perception and not to be contaminated by the rubbish aspect of live. So, my conclusion is that our culture colored the teachers competencies as well as their characters. According to me the teachers cannot give the student punishment. I pray to God for this. We also found that the local culture also influences teachers’ competencies.

 When I was I Junior School first I did not understand geometry, because of the teacher assistance I then to be motivated to learn mathematics. So the only solution is that the teacher should be the facilitator of their students. I stress that the teacher should be the facilitator of their students and not give them the punishment. I confront to any teacher who punish their students. As it was stated by Ki Hadjar Dewantara: “ing ngarso sung tulada, ing madya mangun karsa, tut wuri handayani”. The last phrase means to facilitate the students.

Philosophically, we are still far away from the discussion of education and culture. However, it is clear that our nation philosophy also influences the teacher characters. So what the value need to be developed? We need to have a clear picture about the value, education and culture. Our education system mostly produces knowledge people and not educated people as well as cultured people. So our challenge is how to develop education to promote not only knowledge people but also educated people and cultured people. Of course, it needs a time and there should be a process. Without the process there will not any knowledge. Students’ memorization activities are not much useful.

There is a phenomenon that the leaving students conducted inappropriate behavior to reflect their results of national examination. This is really a psychological problem. However, it indicated that our culture is in danger. There was a perception that culture is always related to older people, while the younger people are confusing to look for their identity. Again, our culture is in danger. And we can promote our culture by looking back our nation tract through history, art-facts, monument, celebration of the hero’s death day, etc.

Nowadays, in where the different between global and local aspects of culture gets smaller, we need to have a concern on our younger generation. Early education concepts really comes from UNESCO. The impact of education can be stronger than our responses. We found that our responses tend the weaker, and the impact tend the stronger. Indonesia as a very large country and heterogen. We need to develop awareness, independent and uniqueness.