Indonesia vs the Philippines: Educational System of Both Cousins

It was the middle of the night when I knocked on Enthel's room. I gave her the paper that Bu Nurul wrote about the changes regarding to our schedule. It is indicated there that there will no cultural festival as the inbound students from the Philippines haven't arrived yet. I hear they were from Mariano Marcos University, the same university that Choi and the group of females that we met in the Big Mall. I also told her that on Friday we need to attend a class from the university, the final dinner will be held a night before our departure, and about a festival this Saturday (the story about the festival is a little bit funny, I'll tell you about this on my next blog post).

After showing her the paper, I told her that I don't want to go back to the Philippines. She definitely agree that the way of teaching here in Samarinda is so much better than in our country. First, we noticed that the classroom here is truly a learner centered classroom, and how the classes here are the ideal classroom that we studied back when we were in 1st - 2nd year of college.

The curriculum in the Philippines is very different compare to ours when it comes on how we teach our students. In the Philippines, we follow this approach called, "spiral curriculum" where the concepts get repeated every year, but gets complicated/complex a year after. For example, on my first year I studied the law of motion, then when I hit my second year, I should be learning about kinematics. This made the science to be fully content packed, as every quarter, the student needs to study a new discipline in science. This is why a teacher prefers to teach it directly, as it doesn't consume a lot of time (most schools only have 1 hr per session)

On the other hand, the curriculum in Indonesia is project-based. That is why the students are tasked to do a practicum every session, from what me and Enthel have observed during our 2nd week in our respective schools. Teacher don't really need to fully give out the contents to the students as it is them that will search for those answers and the teacher's job is to facilitate and guide them to the correct answers. This is the exact method that I used during my grand demo in SMAN-10.

Another thing that we noticed is the use of laboratory equipment. It is so much easier to borrow one here in Indonesia compare to our country. In fact, the schools here have a lot of laboratory equipment that the teacher can use for their teaching. Enthel told me that a student accidentaly broke a microscope in her assigned school. Of course, she was afraid for the student that they need to pay it fully, but the laboratory technician put the microscope away and fixed it as it is brand new. She later realize that breaking this equipment is a very common occurs when student handle it, because they are just kids after all. They are curious, and will test their curiosity if it will work or not. However, in the Philippines you need to pay a lot when accidentally breaking an equipment which made the teacher and his/her student use it, especially glasswares. In relation, we also observed that the school provides everything to their students: lab gown and kit. It makes sense because the school should provide necessary materials for the student.

It was a long and serious talk comparing our educational system, but I later reflected that maybe I was thinking this in a wrong way. When Enthel and I have having a conversation, I told them that I wanted to bring these way of teaching back home, since it will lessen our workload and stress at the same time (we are required to submit a lot documents every week. It is the reality of a Filipino teacher). However, a good system might become a bad system when implementing back in the Philippines.

A lot of schools and institutions have little to no access to various educational materials and resources. This exact problem is why students have difficulties in giving them a proper education. How will the student develop laboratory skills without a laboratory? Or even 21st century skills without any access to the internet? In addition, when looking at the proposed performance standards in our curriculum, they really choose the bare minimum. They still assign tasks that uses traditional materials, such as posters and slogans, which is contradictory on the skills that the school wanted them to developed.

However, it is still the educational culture and the norm that made it difficult for us to change the way of teaching. When you are a teacher, you are supposed to teach. You should give the content to your students and assess using various ways of assessment in evaluating their progress in learning. This is why teachers who lean in being learner centered get reported as "lazy and incompetent." Hence, I do believe that a change is needed, and that we should look at the root caused of the problem. We shouldn't start looking at it in face value and saying, "This educational system is better than us!", but rather reason out, "How can we improve our system better for the student to achieve their learning competencies and developed necessary skills for their future career?"