School is the Prison of Student Thoughts and Acts
By: Mochammad Aprianto
Tags: Thoughts, Prison, Neil Postman, Schools, Education

Photo Source: kompas.com

Before I discuss the further development of education in Indonesia, let me share a quote from Kasino (an Indonesian Comedian), he ever said that “This country is not a lack of smart people, but lack of honest people.” Maybe some of us are guessing the meaning of this comedian, does what he means include criticism of our society? Perhaps. Nowadays, our education is increasingly open to being accessed by various groups, but moral problems still plague society like infectious diseases. That describes our education still cannot be used as a cure for diseases in society such as corruption, nepotism, etc.

I have an idea to relate it with Neil Postman’s book: The End of Education. Neil Postman is a humanist and romantic, especially if we understand his point of view on how to educate the young generation. The students are always limited by theory and classrooms. The community has already identified that educated people are those who are in school. Also, at school sometimes there are problems regarding how to teach students in the classroom, many of the teachers still think that they are the center of knowledge as a one-way street of communication. This paradigm eventually becomes addictive for our students, they can be lazy to think with their ideas. A more fertile apathy is maintained in the school environment and considers that the time when the bells ringing is a valuable time for students to get out of the prison of their thoughts. Not least during the pandemic, where students are required to learn from home (in some regions), the school still acts as a social fact that forces them to swallow raw theories and must be understood independently and accompanied by piling up tasks.

Education in this country is still in crisis, students often feel alienated from the surrounding community. As explained at the end of the first paragraph, the problems of corruption and nepotism have not found a comparable opponent to beat. Education in schools only provides an understanding of the latent risks of corruption but has not yet touched the root of the problem. The common sight in ideal schools so far is that students sit in their chairs neatly and conduct question and answer sessions. This phenomenon, according to Postman, only increases the distance between students and society. So not infrequently, problems such as juvenile delinquency often appear in various mass media. Also, between vandalism and bullying, some impacts arise from the problems of the younger generation in the family circle. One day, I found some old people who were old and still trying to survive on the streets, some of them became beggars and scavengers. When asked about their children, they replied that they were abandoned and neglected just like that, after their children were married. This is closely related to the lack of concern for our young generation to their family and the social environment because they are not given sufficient opportunities to contribute to these problems.

Neil Postman, in his book, tries to design an idea about education through a parable about a chaotic city. In the parable, it is told that the mayor was amazed at the state of the community he led had many problems, such as congestion, pollution, and corruption. People in the city are practically educated, and many of them have bachelor’s degrees. The aide to the mayor proposed the idea of ​​giving assignments and responsibilities to students from various levels of education to be involved in handling city problems. High school students are assigned to assist the police in curbing traffic. From junior high school level, students are involved in cleaning up polluted rivers together with residents, and elementary school children are invited to do community service to tidy up and clean their school by repainting the walls and collecting rubbish around them so they can recycle. These activities are not necessarily carried out every day, but instead, become a routine agenda which is carried out one to two times a week. Sometimes, students also get conventional learning activities that emphasize the aspects of literacy studies.

The matters related to social work, are done based on arousing their empathy for the social environment which sociologist Emile Durkheim called collective consciousness. This collective consciousness will be realized if someone can internalize the values of togetherness and place values that exist in society (public space) into the personality of the young generation. The educational goals referred to by Neil Postman in the book The End of Education, do not differ much from the meaning of socialization in the scientific concept of Sociology.

Finally, in this case, the school should be able to shape students not only as individuals who can speak up and have an opinion for the sake of their achievements, but also able to voice the world.

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