Log 1
Monday, 28th of November 2016
For this post, I will talk about my school, the system in my school, and it's bountiful assignments. Essentially I will rant about my school. First of all, I live in Indonesia. In my school, we go to school 5 days a week, from Monday to Friday. Lesson starts at 07.15, and we go home at 15.30. We have 2 breaks, break 1 starts at 09.40 and ends at 10.10, while break 2 is 12.25 until 13.15. We have at least 10 lessons here, that is Biology, Physics, English Reading Writing, English Listening Speaking, Indonesian Language, Mandarin, Social Studies, Civics lesson, Math in English, Math in Indonesia, Physical Education, Arts, Computer lesson, Religion, Enrichment, Extra-curricular lesson, "Keterampilan". and Scientific Research. That is a basic outline of my school's scheduling and lessons.
For your information, I am an 8th grader. I would like to rant about the assignments here. In this first semester, we have at least 4 projects. The first project is an integration project for Social Studies, Biology, and Physics. In this project, we are required to make a business plan in groups of 3 or 4. We are to make a company that specializes on making food based on a certain main ingredient, such as bananas. That food product, as usual, should be innovative and creative. The business plan here contains an executive summary of the product, a company summary that includes growth trajectory charts, a summary of the products and services provided, a market analyst structure, marketing strategy, management summary, a financial plan which includes more charts, and last but not least, envinromental issues. That part is for Social Studies. You know that when you cook, there are leftover parts of the ingredients such as peelings or roots. Now we have to find a way to make that manage that waste to create biogas. That is for Biology, and for Physics, we have to experiment that biogas and find out how much energy it contains.
The second project is another integration project for Religion, Indonesian Language, Maths in English, and Computer lesson. This project is also known as Kersos project in my school, Kersos being an abbreviation for Kerja Sosial or Social Work in English. Basically, we are to work in groups of around 6 people, and we need to do social work and help people in orphanages, nursing homes, or other social institutions. This social work must be preceded by a proposal that will be handed to the teachers and the principal to be signed, which means the social work is approved. At the social work itself, we must identify a social problem in the place we do social work at, and also take videos and pictures of the work. In the end, we have to make an expository book individually about the social work and the social problem we identified, with a minimum of 50 pages, which includes the table of contents, dedication page, and others. In the book, we must also write a reflection of our social work in relation with Christian Values ( My school is a Catholic school and so am I). That book will be for Indonesian Language and Religion. For Computer, we have to make a 30 minute documentary video about our social work using the videos and photos taken at the social work. For maths in english, we are supposed to make a poster of a venn diagram about the people at the social work place. In essential, it's about sets, but I still don't understand this part either, as the teacher didn't explain it clearly.
The third project is Scientific Research, also known as Proyek Besar in my school, or Big Project in English. I don't know why we called it "Big Project", as there are bigger projects than this project, such as the 2 projects I have explained above. In this project, we are to work in groups of 3 and identify a social problem or question in daily lives. Then, we have to make a research to try solve or answer those problems and questions using the scientific method. The project is divided into 2 steps, the proposal making and the actual research. The proposal is what we are making at school now for semester 1, and the research will be conducted at the second semester.
The fourth project is for Civics lesson. In this project, we work individually and we have to make a report. The report will be about the implementation of Pancasila in daily lives, the correlation with the school's values, and a reflection. Pancasila is the national ideology of Indonesia. The problem is, the teacher doesn't explain it very clearly, and most of us, including myself, understand nothing about the project until the last minute.
These are all the documented projects in my school. There are still other "minor" assignments also known as AP or Academic Prompt, and AOP or Academic on Process. Homeworks are also prevalent in school life. Now, do you think all of this makes sense? Personally, I don't think so, as all of this assignments are condensed in a very short amount of time and they are very difficult as well. Now, to give you a better understanding of my situation (and pretty much everybody else's). You see, we all go home at 3.30 in the afternoon, like most workers in Indonesia, as workers in Indonesia go home at 4 in the afternoon. This means that by the time we reach home, we are all incredibly exhausted, especially when we carry heavy stuff. But then, we are given tons of homework and assignments, do the teachers expect us to be able to do all of that stuff while in a condition of total exhaustion? This condition, has made most of us go to sleep at more than midnight in some days. This is what I don't like about my school. We go home at afternoon, we are tired, we need rest, but then assignments come in and we are forced to do it. Of course, this also means we have very little time to do assignments at home on school days. What about the weekends? Well, since we have been very stressed about assignments at weekdays, we'd expect some leisure time at the weekends, right? That's very true, but the amount of assignments would make it impossible for us to even relax at weekends, as we have to worry about assignments, projects, or maybe tests.
That is what I have experienced at school, I have been pressed by tons of projects and assignments, and I have no time to even relax. So the first part of my rant, many assignments, little time. Now I will talk about the effects of these assignments on most of the students. In my school, I usually observe situations around me, what is happening, and certain problems. I have come to identify some major problems in my school. First of all, many of the students have a not so good behavior. Some likes to bully, some have dirty minds, and most have a very low faith. Other than that, it seems that most students do assignments just to get the scores, and just to pass the grade. After some thinking, I thought maybe most of these problems are actually caused by the multitude of assignments. Indonesia has a score based education system, where scores are the main things that determines if someone can graduate, pass the grade, or no. Behavior is also a major determinant, but there is a problem. If the condition is right, anyone can have their behaviors change 180 degrees, and anyone that is normally good and cares about others, can become someone that doesn't really cares about others, or become a "the end justifies the means" person or someone that does stuff just to get rewards or avoid punishments. Behavior is determined by the person and the external conditions, environment, social influence, and so on. Which means surely the multitude of assignments would also affect their behaviors.
Since my school is a Catholic school, we still value Religious faith highly, and so do I. Being someone that is very religious and faithful, it would make sense that I am concerned about the faith of others. So here's the situation, in our school, once a week, we would have a morning prayer in the school chapel. The problem is, many students are noisy when they entered the chapel, and this is very disturbing for other people that wants to pray in peace. Look, I don't care if others around me are not religious, or barely cares about religion at all. But I do care if they began to be very disruptive at places of prayer such as the chapel or the church. Many times, the teachers would remind the students and talk about how being noisy is disturbing to others, tell them to build a stronger faith, bla bla bla. But I am sure everyone ignores the teachers' ramblings. You see, I believe this is, yet again, connected to the assignments. Since there are like, a ton of assignments, many students are much more preoccupied with those assignments, and they have no time to pray or exercise their faith. Even if they do pray, it's just a formality, and they have no real relationship with God.
This concludes my rantings, if it sounds nonsensical, and you don't understand, relax, because I find it nonsensical too. Most likely because I am very tired right now, and I can't think properly. Next time, I'll discuss about this even further, and I'll try to make it more sensible and actually understandable. Anyway, thanks for reading, and feel free to criticize, compliment, ask, or just share your thoughts in the comments.
