Penurunan Kualitas Pendidikan Indonesia

Kualitas pendidikan di Indonesia saat ini sangat memprihatinkan. Ini dibuktikan bahwa indeks pengembangan manusia Indonesia makin menurun. Kualitas pendidikan di Indonesia berada pada urutan ke-12 dari 12 negara di Asia. Indonesia memiliki daya saing yang rendah Dan masih menurut survai dari lembaga yang sama Indonesia hanya berpredikat sebagai follower bukan sebagai pemimpin teknologi dari 53 negara di dunia.

Yang kita rasakan sekarang adalah adanya ketertinggalan didalam mutu pendidikan. Baik pendidikan formal maupun informal. Pendidikan memang telah menjadi penopang dalam meningkatkan sumber daya manusia Indonesia untuk pembangunan bangsa. Oleh karena itu, kita seharusnya dapat meningkatkan sumber daya manusia Indonesia yang tidak kalah bersaing dengan sumber daya manusia di negara-negara lain. Setelah kita amati, nampak jelas bahwa masalah yang serius dalam peningkatan mutu pendidikan di Indonesia adalah rendahnya mutu pendidikan di berbagai jenjang pendidikan, baik pendidikan formal maupun informal. Dan hal itulah yang menyebabkan rendahnya mutu pendidikan yang menghambat penyediaan sumber daya menusia yang mempunyai keahlian dan keterampilan untuk memenuhi pembangunan bangsa di berbagai bidang.

Faktor yang menyebabkan rendahnya mutu pendidikan di Indonesia adalah :

·         Tidak adanya tujuan pendidikan yang jelas sebelum kegiatan pembelajaran dilaksanakan. Hal ini menyebabkan peserta didik dan pendidik tidak tahu “goal” apa yang akan dihasilkan sehingga tidak mempunyai gambaran yang jelas dalam proses pendidikan.

·         Mahalnya biaya pendidikan di Indonesia. Di sekolah dasar negeri, memang benar jika sudah diberlakukan pembebasan biaya pengajaran, nemun peserta didik tidak hanya itu saja, kebutuhan lainnya adalah buku teks pengajaran, alat tulis, seragam dan lain sebagainya yang ketika kami survey, hal itu diwajibkan oleh pendidik yang berssngkutan.

·         Kurangnya mutu pengajar jugalah yang menyebabkan peserta didik kurang mencapai hasil yang diharapkan.

·         Sistem pendidikan yang sering berubah-ubah sehingga membingungkan pendidik dan peserta didik.

·         Rendahnya kualitas sarana fisik.

“Pendidikan ini menjadi tanggung jawab pemerintah sepenuhnya,” kata Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono usai rapat kabinet terbatas di Gedung Depdiknas, Jl Jenderal Sudirman, Jakarta, Senin (12/3/2007).

Beberapa hal yang dapat dilakukan untuk mengatasi rendahnya mutu pendidikan di Indonesia adalah :

·         Dari Sisi Pemerintah

Pemerintah harus konsisten dengan satu sistem pendidikan agar pendidikan di Indonesia tidak “membingungkan” seperti sekarang ini. Karena sistem pendidikan merupakan acuan bagi pendidik untuk mengajari peserta didik. Selain itu, pemerintah harus meningkatkan mutu pendidikan dengan meningkatkan kualifikasi guru dan dosen. Kualitas profesional guru merupakan faktor yang paling kuat terhadap prestasi belajar siswa sebagai indikator hasil pendidikan. Oleh karena itu, mengingat begitu pentingnya faktor guru, maka upaya peningkatan profesionalisme guru dalam rangka peningkatan kualitas pendidikan di Indonesia tidak bisa ditawar-tawar, termasuk upaya peningkatan profesionalisme guru di sekolah dasar.  Yang tidak kalah penting untuk saat ini adalah pemerintah harus membangun infrastruktur seperti menambah jumlah komputer dan perpustakaan di sekolah-sekolah, memperbaiki sarana dan prasarana sekolah-sekolah di Indonesia agar tercipta kualitas pembelajaran yang baik. Langkah terakhir, pemerintah bisa melakukan pembiayaan bagi masyarakat miskin untuk bisa menikmati fasilitas penddikan. Karena kesulitan ekonomi membuat masyarakat miskin banyak yang putus sekolah dan memilih untuk bekerja.

·         Dari Sisi Pendidik / Pengajar

Pendidik harus mempunyai tujuan yang jelas sebelum kegiatan pembelajaran dilaksanakan. Sebab jika tidak ada persiapan pembelajaran sebelumnya, hal ini menyebabkan peserta didik dan pendidik tidak tahu “goal” apa yang akan dihasilkan sehingga tidak mempunyai gambaran yang jelas dalam proses pendidikan. Jelas hal ini merupakan masalah terpenting jika kita menginginkan efektifitas pengajaran. Bagaimana mungkin tujuan akan tercapai jika kita tidak tahu apa tujuan kita. Selain itu, pendidik harus mengajar sesuai kompetensinya. Misalnya pendidik A mempunyai dasar pendidikan di bidang bahasa, dia harus mengajar di bidang bahasa, tidak boleh mengajarkan keterampilan, yang sebenarnya bukan kompetensinya. Pendidik juga harus meningkatkan kreatifitas siswa dalam belajar. Tidak member banyak penekanan pada aspek hafalan dan pemikiran reproduktif serta mencari satu jawaban yang benar terhadap soal-soal yang diberikan pada anak didik. Proses pemikiran kreatif harus dilatihkan sejak dini. Apa yang dapat dilakukan oleh pendidik adalah mengembangkan sikap dan kemampuan peserta didik yang dapat membantu untuk menghadapi persoalan-persoalan di masa mendatang dengan inovatif dan kreatif.

·         Dari Sisi Orang Tua

            Orang-tua sebaiknya memberi perhatian kepada anak-anak mereka dan menanamkan kepada mereka nilai dan tujuan pendidikan. Mereka juga berupaya mengetahui perkembangan anak mereka di sekolah. Caranya adalah dengan berkunjung ke sekolah untuk melihat situasi dan lingkungan pendidikan di sekolah. Ini diperlukan untuk mengenal guru di sekolah dan menjalin hubungan yang baik dengan mereka. Berkomunikasil dengan guru untuk perkembangan anak sangatlah penting. Cara lain yang harus dilakukan orang tua adalah menyeduiakan waktu untuk anak. Seorang anak akan senang bercerita ketika pulang sekolah seraya mengeluarkan semua keluhan dan bebannya kepada orang-tua. Dan juga orangtua harus memastikan bahwa anak sudah mengerjakan pekerjaan rumah untuk esok harinya.

The Wedding Story by Julianne Homokay

Topic               : Lie Story

Thesis              : A children’s storyteller shows that  behind the book lies a whole other story

·         Introduction :

They are 3 characters in The Wedding Story drama by Julianne Homokay. It is The Storyteller, Bride and Groom. When the storyteller said Good Night for her children because she just finished reading a story to an audience of children, but the kids ask for another story. The storyteller begins the lovely, heartfale tale of a gorgeous bride and handsome groom. The storyteller told story of the wedding as a beautiful ceremony in Vermont. Here, Storyteller told a lie story because she want give all the best thing for her children.    

·         Content          :

This drama describes about the contradicts story between the Storyteller’s story and the real life of the Bride and Groom. Storyteller want to shows the good side of wedding story. She don’t want if the students will negative thinking about meaning of the wedding. Storyteller want the students just positive thinking because as we know children is impressionable person. We can see in this drama when storyteller said if the Bride and Groom met in the high school, actually they are met in a bar. We can take lesson here because if storyteller told the real story, so that the students will think if we can found someone in a bar. Storyteller is a person that give many fairytale in  front of children. The purpose is to give lesson for the students what the good way can their choose. Unfortunately, the storyteller told the wedding story more bad than before.

            In the other side, the couple of the wedding (Bride and Groom) don’t want a lie in this story  because storyteller made a lie story in front of students. The couple want storyteller told the real story based on fact in their life. If we give a story to children, actually the children will remember it forever. And if we give the lie story for their, the students will believe something that can’t find in the world. We can see this drama when storyteller said there are have a flight from Vermont to Hawai. Actually, there is no flights from Vermont to Hawai because we can fly through Logan or Lax or by Both. The Bride know it because she majored in Geography. So, she interrupts when storyteller said like that.      

·         Conclusion     :

“The Wedding Story” drama describes about the storyteller gave a lie story to her students. Actually if storyteller want to shows the wedding story, she can choose a couple that their wedding story have a good past. Storyteller can invite other couple of the wedding that have the real wedding story based on their experience without a lies story. But, I think if we will tell a story to children, we can choose the story more give many lesson at the end. Such as Cinderella story, We can see what a risk that will get if we be good people or bad people.       

The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
     There was clearly nothing left to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
     While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the look-out for the mendicancy squad.
     In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young."
     The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, the letters of "Dillingham" looked blurred, as though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.
     Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a grey cat walking a grey fence in a grey backyard. To-morrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling - something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honour of being owned by Jim.

< 2 >

     There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 Bat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.
     Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its colour within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.
     Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out of the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.
     So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her, rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.
     On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she cluttered out of the door and down the stairs to the street.
     Where she stopped the sign read: 'Mme Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds.' One Eight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the 'Sofronie.'
     "Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.
     "I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it."
     Down rippled the brown cascade.
     "Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.
     "Give it to me quick" said Della.
     Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.

< 3 >

     She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation - as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value - the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 78 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.
     When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task dear friends - a mammoth task.
     Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
     "If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do - oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents?"
     At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.
     Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit of saying little silent prayers about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please, God, make him think I am still pretty."
     The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two - and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was with out gloves.

< 4 >

     Jim stepped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.
     Della wriggled off the table and went for him.
     "Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold it because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow out again - you won't mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say 'Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice-what a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you."
     "You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet, even after the hardest mental labour.
     "Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I?"
     Jim looked about the room curiously.
     "You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.
     "You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you - sold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with a sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"
     Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year - what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.
     Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.
     "Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first."

< 5 >

     White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.
     For there lay The Combs - the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped for long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise-shell, with jewelled rims - just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.
     But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"
     And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"
     Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to {lash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.
     "Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it."
     Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.
     "Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."
     The magi, as you know, were wise men - wonderfully wise men - who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.