Lessons From The Battle

Recently, I have been assigned to train some 30 headmasters at my hometown, Landak regency on how to use the internet. I work as a part-time English teacher at the school. I have been in the school for few months [to be exact four months]. Most of the headmasters are above forty years old and even fifty years old. The headmaster in my school [one of the participants] asked me to become one of the trainers because I can surf the internet only [though I was not trained to be computer trainer, I learnt computer and such stuff when I studied in Jogja]. In my school [to call it ‘my school’ is my bad habit since it is not mine in fact. It is just a place where I teach], there are only two computers teachers for the whole 13 classes [around 300 students or more and we’ve only got 36 computers with around 20 can still be used. Others are broken for some reasons]. Back to the training program, the program is designed to introduce the internet to these 30 remote area headmasters [most of them]. They are expected to be able to use the internet after taking the training.
At first, I thought it would be quite easier to do if our duty [since we are a team] is just to teach them use the internet such as making an email account, use the search engine and create a blog and other stuff. But my prediction was totally wrong, from some of these 30 headmasters, most of them can’t even use the basic computer programs such Microsoft word, Power Point. For short, some of them never even touched the computer before. They could not type on the keyboard properly. As a result of this situation, we have to teach them from the very beginning all over. In the very first meeting, I told the participants that English is the key to computer literate. I myself had never taken a course on how to surf the internet. I can surf the internet because I know English a bit. When I was teaching them to use the computer, one of the headmasters [from a remote area] talked to me about the situation in his school. I asked him about how his school teach computer to his students? Or did his school have a computer subject?
The answer was surprising. He said his school does not have any computers [even one], though it is a state junior high school in a county. I felt a bit curious and kept asking him some other questions to know his school situation. He told me that the school has a subject cal TIK [computer subject] for the students. The assigned teacher is a high school graduate from the city who knows and understands computer coz he got computer lessons in a catholic school in the city. He told me that the teacher used drawings to visualize the computer parts and components when teaching his students. What a pity!!!! at that time I was shocked because of the answer.
The headmaster also said that for the very first year in his duty at that school, he hired ten high school graduates to teach junior high school students at the school since there was no teachers at all[ only he and a teacher]. The story of education continued to broad issues such as curriculum and others. As a very young teacher [I am not even 23 years old yet] I did not know what to say to such a story. The next thing he told me also kept my eyes opens wide. He told me that some of his students at the school when they were tested at the admission test could not even read ABC, or the alphabet. Oh…God. Elementary school graduates cannot read. So the school decided to teach them reading, writing and counting [calistung, in his term]. He teaches them starting the very basic again. After hearing some of his stories on education from the man on the field, I understand better now about our education. And in the deepest of my heart, I thanked God for giving me a chance to go to college. On our final discussion, the head master made a quite interesting remark on commenting the newly issued curriculum KTSP. He said KTSP as the curriculum of “Kate Siape” means “who says” in Malay language and Kurikulum Tidak Siap Pake. What a nice remark!!!!