When he founded Taman Siswa on the 3rd of July, 1922, Ki Hadjar Dewantara originally only wanted to trigger the awareness of the people that this country has dignity and hope to become free people. The result is that the awareness as a country with dignity and the hope to be free emerged.

By TONNY D W1DIASTONO

Ki Hadjar was convinced that awareness building through educational institutions is a fruitful endeavor.

This effort is also what Paulo Frerre, a multi-cultural educator, is striving for, through his essay Education as Freedom Practice in 1984. Although this has been pioneered by Ki Hadjar Dewantoro 86 years ago and re-echoed by Freire for more than 25 years ago, the effort of awareness and freedom through education is drifting further away from being a reality.

Various problems that surround our educational world are not freeing the students at the moment but are currently chaining and imprisoning them. As long as education, which must be understood in its widest terms, is only considered as a formal process of knowledge transfer, then the awareness building process will constantly be hindered.

The issue of teacher certification, the plan to inverse the ratio of vocational and SMA education, and e-books that are supposedly accessible through the internet are just few examples of various problems that our education is still facing. Not to mention the tuition fee that is ever increasing and almost inaccessible by the poor. At higher level, a number of public universities transverse to state-owned companies. This alteration causes educational institutions, which should produce educated people, feel chained down with efforts of money-seeking and at the same time distancing themselves from the community that they are supposed to serve. Thus, the dream to achieve education that is cheap and qualified must be buried for the moment.

Not just this. What is more depressing is the method of teaching by supplying numerous information that makes students not more than a large bag which must be filled in fully, with no regard to the importance of the content. Using Freire’s term, this is “the saving education concept”. The students are never invited to think critically, not encouraged to solve problems, and not trained to have confidence to express their opinions.

Community’s Expectation

Although not working or functioning the way it is supposed to be yet, the community still has high hopes on educational institutions. Many parents have the opinion that children must go to school to change their fate to be better than their parent’s. Education is believed to be the institution to change fate.

Therefore, it is not a wonder if many parents work to put their children in school at the highest level as possible. They compromise everything as long as their children can go to school. Many farmers in villages have to work hard to be able to do this. Many times, a long time ago, farmers must pawn their only rice fields so that the children can go to school. In the area of Bantul (DIY) a farmer had to bring his cow or bull to school. While sitting in class, the cows graze around and take a break from their duties ploughing the field.  

In cities, pawning is a life saver. For a while, pawn-houses transform to a “school” for house certificates, jewelries, motorcycles, cars, or anything owned by the family in order to send their children to school. Education is actually considered a safe place to improve a person’s condition and prepare for the future. However, is it true that education is giving what the community wants?

We are all aware that hope is just hope. In reality, education is not yet able to fulfill the community’s demands, even for the most basic need which is security. We often hear that children experience violence at school. The National Commission for Children Protection records in 2007 child abuse cases rose to 300 percent compared to the previous year, from 4,398,625 cases to 13,447,921 cases in 2008. (Schools Are Not Safe Havens For Children” Kompas, 7/23/2008).

Considering this fact, it is the more difficult to claim that education has accomplished its task as an awareness-building institution as well as a preparation for the future.

Education and massification

Paulo Freire stated that economic development is essential to support democracy. The development itself must be autonomous and national. Educators are expected to participate and take part in producing a critical education system. From this critical education a critical behavior is expected to emerge. From this people who are able to develop their abilities to face different challenges of the decade. 

Because of this, the situation forces education to be capable of producing people who are ready to discuss environmental problems and also pitching in to solve those problems.

Education is also expected to remind people about the threats of the millennium as well as giving the strength to face them. Thus, education is not an institution that makes our intelligence give up and abide other people’s order. If this is conducted properly, this means the education has accomplished the humanization process. Nonetheless, has education made us a free man?