Amidst heavy criticism, Indonesia’s Education and Culture Minister Mohammad Nuh is ready to implement a new curriculum in July, despite the fact that less than ten percent of schools are ready to implement it.
In an effort to improve the nation’s education quality, the new curriculum integrates science and civic education with religious and moral education while decreasing exposure to social science and English. Nuh claims that “students haven’t been taught enough to think creatively. Education should be both accurate and offer the the best lesson, and this can be achieved by teaching them to be creative.”
Nuh, among others, believes that morals and other subjects can be simultaneously taught by integrating underemphasized subjects into religious curricula. For example, one civics lesson teaches 10th grade students that discipline can be learned from the behavior of an electron which always moves within its orbit. In another lesson, linear equations suggest that students should learn to live in a heterogeneous society.
Educators and other activists were able to persuade government officials to cut the initial budget by two-thirds, a total of Rp 829 billion ($85 million.) The cut provides for the new curriculum to begin in 6,325 schools and 55,762 teachers to be trained in a five day period in early July 2013. The original budget would have financed 102,435 schools to receive the new curriculum. However, opponents of the new plan point out that there needs to be further evaluation, training, and proper funding for the implementation of the curriculum which has been untested. Critics point to a lack of input from Indonesian teachers regarding the proposed curriculum.
Undoubtedly, there will be great interest in the outcome of this experiment. In the meantime, much debate will continue regarding the wisdom of the implementation of the new curriculum set to begin soon in Indonesian schools.
Creative Commons Love: sektordua and CIFOR on Flickr.com
Written by Melody Chiang