Respond on Mr. Chaedar's Article

INDONESIA’s vs. ENGLAND’s PRIMARY SCHOOL

                When the first time I read an article which the title was about “Mengintip SD di Inggris”, I thought it would tell us about the system of teaching-learning process in England’s elementary school. Then I read the first paragraph, it made me surprised because Mr. Chaedar gave an example about the situation of Indonesia’s education especially that happened to his child. Then my thought turned out, I was sure this article would tell us about the differences of system education between England’s elementary school and Indonesia’s elementary school.

                What made me interested was the example in the first paragraph because I experienced it too when I was in the elementary school. Almost everyday, I brought ± 5-8 books. I remembered my mother ever said this “Berat berat teuing bawa buku teh, ntar kecil kecil bongkok siah,” but what could I do? Every books that I brought was important, consisted of exercise book, hand book, note book, and “lks”.

                I thought it was good if we adopted the system of teaching-learning process in England’s elementary school. I was sure that it was fun, the school provided us with the availability of many books in the classroom, many activities that you could do in the school, and the simple curriculum that was not to weigh against the student. The result had proved, this system would make the children enjoyed reading and writing. The children could get many experiences and knowledge from the activity that they did everyday and from the environment around them, because they didn’t rivet on the handbook. The most important results from this system were this system could create an active, energetic, and creative child.

                But, it was difficult. Why? There were some reason. The first one, each teacher should be able to handle one of the abilities or one of the courses that he/she liked the most or he/she was good at. When the fact was the teacher in our country tended to teach everything in every class. For an example, when I was a student in elementary school, one of my teachers could teach mathematics, science, and social study in 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th grade. It was good, but same as what Mr. Chaedar said that each teacher must have one over plus ability in one course. Second, there were just a few teachers in our country that could be active, innovative, communicative, efficient, and fun in their teaching-learning process. Third, it was about the realization of we needn’t had to buy books because every school in every class had supplied it. The fact was our government had the program that we called as “BOS” but it was just enough to cover the school cost, not for the cost of availability of books. And the last, it was the awareness of each student about the importance of that study itself.

                We should try, our country already had the elementary school that we called as SDPN (Sekolah Dasar Percobaan Negeri), why didn’t we try to adopt the system of teaching-learning process in England’s elementary school through those SDPN? If that fell on feet, the system of teaching-learning process in England’s elementary school could be adopted to the other schools. Was it a good chance to make our system of teaching-learning process finer than before? I thought it was the one of many ways to make a good quality of human resources for the future.