Perhaps the most challenging issue that we face right now as a nation is when the elite are delusional. Their bet to improve the Indonesian education system ends in disaster. Many students from Indonesian national schools could not read and Indonesia dropped in the PISA ranking. Whilst the former education minister, Nadiem Makarim’s purpose is well-intentioned, it reigns a chaos in the education system.
In Indonesia currently many high school students could not read because of the new curriculum called “Kurikulum Merdeka (KM)” (roughly translated independent curriculum) that replicates the International Baccalaureate’s (IB) curriculum. For those who do not know, the IB Diploma program is a curriculum that is built for international schools and well-facilitated schools, not for cash-strapped schools that exist in many parts of Indonesia. IB schools and Indonesian national schools are not comparable in terms of facilities, teachers’ quality, and student’s preconditions.
IB schools that cater for elites are more resourceful because they are paid-well by the tuition that is astronomically expensive. They can have a lot of facilities to support students to have motivation to learn. Based on inquisitive learning, IB curriculum pushes students to learn on their own while teachers act as assistants. It is nonetheless an excellent curriculum, it leads students to find their own opportunity and talent.
However, when this curriculum is placed in a place that does not have as much resources as IB schools, then what happens is the situation in Indonesia. Already at disadvantage prior to the enactment of kurikulum Merdeka, Indonesian national schools struggle to implement the bare requirement to make KM successful. It is known that many Indonesian national schools do not have facilities to successfully implement KM such as school laboratorium, resourceful library, sport facilities, and access to computers for students to thrive.
The condition of teachers is also quite disturbing. Many teachers did not have a motivation and quality to teach as they are low-paid and need to deal with school’s administrations that distract them from the real job, teaching. Relying on low-paid contact teachers, many Indonesian national schools have not fulfilled teacher’s prosperity before they came to the class. How come you would expect them to teach the best that they could when their livelihood has not met? In addition, many teachers sparsely qualify for teaching. Once teaching in Indonesia is a fulfilling and respected job, nowadays it turns out to be the last option job that many take to have food on the table.
Yet this fact on the ground did not bother the decision-makers who were educated in international schools. They insist on a ‘revolutionary curriculum’ to make Indonesian education better, forget to realize that their dream did not hold the water. The elite delusion, as I called it, is rampant and it is very dangerous for the nation and the health of Indonesian society. They want the outcome of a developed country, but forget that our current resource did not match the requirement for it to happen. For those who still remember China’s Great Leap Forward, it is horrifying to push society to have exorbitant outcomes whilst not having the means to realize it.
The elite delusion happens as they live in the bubble, not having to experience the ordinariness of many Indonesians. Many of the elites grow up in an enclosed society that is far from the reality below them. They never taste the national curriculum, they live in highly privileged spaces, they do not experience poverty and excess product of Indonesian decision making. Living in a society where the elite is detached from ordinary life, separate from the majority of people, we could not expect them to know the best.
This problem is not exclusively in Indonesia and its education sector, but the United States has also experienced it with the win of Donald Trump. The loss of Democrats is because they do not touch the reality on the ground. The elite establishment has lost touch with reality that they create a system where they will not experience it, but only formulate it. They themselves avoid using the system because they know that it is not in their best self-interest, but force the majority of people to be under the system. At its best, it is an elite hypocrisy. But the problem is that they do not consciously know it, because they are delusional.
Perhaps rather than choosing elites that are educated outside of their own national system, the Indonesian government needs to choose highly qualified teachers who run the Indonesian education system. Who would be the best to know the system beside the one who is under the system. As education is the foundation of a nation’s development, the neglecture of the education system and relegated it to the elite because they are highly educated from privileged universities abroad will not solve the problem. They are perhaps the most educated, but not the wisest.
