The Universal Unchosen Experience of Schooling

[Music]

hello

good afternoon wherever you are in your

comfortable spot of choice

whether you’re in pajama or whether

you’re in proper clothes

whether you’ve showered or not we shall

not judge my name is amanda with bermono

and i am still in school

i started my life in school as a

kindergarten i was three years old like

most of we all when we started

and then we moved up the lender right

like from primary school middle school

and high school

and then come college when i chose to

major in education

little did i know that i would not

actually graduate

why because i keep coming back to school

to this day

as part of my career i have been working

in education since i graduated

and right now i’m working with teachers

specifically in their capacity

development for

over five years now see being an

education major you carry that with you

right to dinner parties to family

gatherings

they would ask what did you study in

school or

what is your job what do you do on the

day time

you carry that with you and when they

know that you’re in education

they start just drawing all these

comments and i realize

everyone has very strong opinions about

schools

their opinions would firstly revolve

around curriculums

it’s not practical enough the things

that i learned in school it is not

benefiting me as an adult

they should teach abc they should teach

this this this

it’s not practical i didn’t learn

anything school should teach about this

about that

right they are very fiery and

opinionated about it

and the second thing that they usually

say is about the teachers

as an indonesian teachers what do you

think about our teachers comparing them

to singapore teachers

to american teachers to other countries

teachers

how are they our teachers are not strong

enough right

they are not good enough right so people

would always have all these comments

see i may be biased but the more i work

with teachers the more i see that

teaching is not a job where you just put

your skills

you put your hearts and when you have

invested your time for

five years ten years there you become

very good and skillful in it

you might not have the skills you might

not have the capacity development that

the system should give you but at the

very least

teachers have their heart at the right

place but coming back there

people are always very opinionated about

what schooling should look like

as if me right then right there could

actually do something to change the

curriculum

to change how schooling should look like

and then as a decent adult you sit and

you reflect right

why is that so why are people so

opinionated about that

see when you’re lucky and i assume most

of us are who are sitting behind this

screen

watching tedx itb you have spent

more than a decade of your life sitting

in school

you know what schools look like you know

that a classroom would consist of a

white board of a chalkboard

and then off the seating arrangement

that looks exactly like that

you know that one adult called teachers

come into the classroom

what would he or she do where he or she

would navigate themselves

in the learning in the teaching time you

know what is happening through the day

you know what happens at 7am when the

bell rings you know what it means

you know when recess comes you are

allowed to go out

from the classroom to actually do

something and being human

with that experience you pick what is

wrong you pick what is not right

right oh i went to a school that’s too

homogenous but then your classmate will

say oh i went to a school that is too

open-minded

or you went to a very strict school and

then you say oh my school is very

disciplined

and then your classmate would say oh my

school is very open-minded

about the rules see everyone has a has

an opinion

of how it can be better why

because it’s a universal experience it’s

so universal

that everybody can relate to and they

feel strongly for

the more i talk to people the more i see

that

aside from being universal the schooling

experience is also unchosen

we don’t choose our first experience of

schooling see who here

picked their primary school please raise

your hand because as a five-year-old as

a six-year-old

you didn’t understand what good

education means

i want to go to this school because the

building is better i want to go to that

school because

the teachers seem nicer no most likely

our parents our grandparents our

caretakers they are the ones who make

this impressive first

decision and conversation with parents

through

my time in schools i usually ask why did

you send your kids here why did you send

your kids there

their reasons mostly have nothing to do

with education

it’s logic it’s distance oh because the

school is right in front of my house

oh because the school is next to the

elder sibling school

right but this decision it makes you sit

in that uniform for

at least six years you follow the rules

you follow whatever the adult called

teacher tells you to do

all the homework that you’re supposed to

do but why

why right what were your reasons if we

asked

kids nowadays or when i was teaching i

asked them why

are you here why do you go to school no

obviously they are still

very young and they don’t know all they

told me was that

oh i just have to go to school you just

have to but why

there’s there’s no reason no logic

behind that or another reasons that they

are told is schools will make you smart

also how why is it because of the

homework that you were doing

is it because of the exams that you were

taking or is it because of the people

that you were meeting

why is going to this specific building

five days a week for more than four

hours would actually make you smarter

see if we’re lucky we are conscious

about what we are doing in that time

in that primary schooling but then if

we’re not probably we only realize that

in middle school

or high school or sometimes in

university

and it’s all right and everyone will

have an opinion because

get this education is never neutral

our country has been independent for 75

years

right and the curriculum has changed

more than ten times

why because indonesia is cherishing an

ideology called

pancha sila panchatila is very much

secured there and wants to be nurtured

into this young citizens so that they

grow up and they can

guard it with all their hearts too

hajir dewantara

as he was fighting for the country’s

independence he came up with this idea

of taman siswa

and then he talked about this idea with

maria montessori whose name we also

might be familiar with and then he’s

advocating play

in learning but he’s also nurturing

nationalism

and the identity of being indonesian

there education is never neutral

my first class in university as a future

teacher it’s called fundamentals of

thinking

which made me think well my fundamentals

of thinking is different than

my next chair buddy

um fundamental of thinking right is

clearly subjective

to the culture and that is seen as your

first class your first ammunition

your first responsibility as a teacher

and it makes me think as to how my own

culture as an indonesian

as in jakarta culture 2 to be more exact

what is that culture what is that

fundamentals of thinking

and how me as a teacher standing in

front of the classroom

how am i going to impart that to this

little people

who are ready and eager with their

pencil with their paper

listing and writing everything that i’m

saying

get this people go to school for various

reasons

through my travels i meet people in

urban cities right jakarta

bandung surabaya and most of these

people’s reasoning to go to school

is economy i want to go to school and

become a doctor so that i can earn a

good livelihood so that i could

provide a roof for my family and bring

food every night every evening for my

family it’s economy it makes sense

life is hard and if you are spending

that amount of time off

in school you do want to get some

financial compensation for that

but it’s different when i went to visit

um right there the reasoning for people

to go to school

is social status you might go to middle

school high school

go on to university masters phd and then

you become the being

pride and joy of your family it doesn’t

matter what you do it doesn’t matter how

much money you have in your bank

as long as you go to school that is a

social status see that’s different

right it’s different again with middle

school kids that i met in kalimantan

where they are in school just waiting to

be married off to their neighbors

to their family friends because that is

the reasoning for them sitting in that

chair

all throughout the day all throughout

the week now with that i invite you to

think

when schooling becomes a chosen

experience as

we are getting older what are your

reasons

what did you get yourself away from the

schooling experience

if we did not know that it’s our loss

see our schooling experience was

unchosen but we choose what we make out

of it

we choose what we take away from that

unchosen experience

i’m going to use an example from ibu

cartini who we know is a pioneer in

female education here in indonesia

right if she’s around i imagine with her

character

she’d be partying with us in seno party

jakarta

ibukartini got a taste of education

until she was 12 years old

right she got a chance of all exploring

these are some ideas

this is what being learned means this is

what being able to

count feels like this is what being able

to play around frolic around with ideas

feels like and then boom limited

as a japanese girl at the time she had

to stay home

see she can be bitter right and probably

she was we didn’t know

we knew the good stories but she chose

to make the better part of it

she chose to not stop learning through

the books that she

continued reading from her brother she

chose to not stop learning from the

letters that she

kept writing to her friends both in

netherlands and also in indonesia beyond

the confinement

of her house we also did a little survey

to friends from itb what did you

actually take away

from your schooling experience all

through grade school grade school means

s day all the way through assam aya

primary through high school

some people said that oh i learned that

great

it’s not that important i only realized

it later

so why did you sit on all those tests

why did you study so hard

why did you listen to your teacher

saying oh study study study if

grades are important anyways another

comment said that oh i learned that i

shouldn’t take things

seriously because what you learn is not

that important anyways

so what is a good social capital that

you can bring to life

if not the things that you learn in

schools another comment also said oh i

learned about how people dream without

any concrete action plan

see you see all this building that we

can

all have various experience of schooling

it can be unchosen

but also you can make something out of

it we also read comments where people

think oh

again like the one that i just mentioned

how people dream without any concrete

action plans

you can visualize something but then

also you need to come up with

execution steps right what are the next

actionable plans

you also learn about tolerance as you

were meeting

a buddhist friend as you’re meeting a

muslim friend you’re meeting a catholic

friend

how does it look like how does it feel

like if we all live together

you learn how to deal with different

people too from teachers

to fellow students to canteen ladies you

learn how to navigate those social

dynamics

and for some people who were away since

they were young

they learned about independence they

learn about living on their own

we mold those experience into lessons

through what

through the time that we sit down with

ourselves reflecting

through the time that we sit down with

ourselves making sense of each single

episode that is happening in our life

and seeing what are the path

what is this pattern what is the

similarity what is the difference and

where am i going in this life where am i

supposed where is life leading me

and in that reflection is how our

unchosen schooling experience

in our early years of life was part of

it

that probably you are an advocate for

social justice because you had a teacher

who is very um idealistic

that society is poor is already lost

because of the system for example

or that you are an artist because you

had a teacher who

knew that you had that talent and

actually gave you an opportunity to

develop that

and went to the distance of talking to

your parents your primary school

experience matter

it’s how we all look at it see coming

back to that dinner party in the

beginning of this talk

everyone has opinions about schooling

and it can be sometimes pretty

annoying but i choose to see that

everyone is hopeful

everyone is hopeful that schooling could

better serve their lives as adults that

if they learn about empathy

they could better relate to other people

that if they learn about financial

literacy they could avoid that family

bankruptcy

and actually save more for their kids

college funds that if they learn about

emotional regulations they could have a

more fulfilling life

with their family and significant other

i also chose to see those comments

that everyone is hopeful on how the next

generation could benefit further

from schooling that regardless of how

irrelevant the things that you’re

learning in school

regardless of how boring it is

regardless of how much money you might

be spending

on schooling that education is still

the key to better livelihood that the

faith is

education is still so massive that they

become so opinionated about it

so that the next generation through

schooling could live a more fulfilling

more wealthy more healthy life and that

opinion that they are throwing

it’s their contribution to make

schooling

more better to make schooling more

fulfilling and meaningful

and relevant the schooling experience is

universal

but it was started very much as an

unchosen path for most of us here today

we didn’t choose our primary schooling

but at the very least we would walk away

from this talk and seeing the silver

lining being able

to point out that i might get bullet but

i now became a more courageous

individual

i’m able to talk to all kinds of people

scary people kind people

quiet people i’m okay because of that

probably pretty not nice experience of

being bullied

i hope we can all look back and see the

silver lining the optimistic

meaning that we will carry with us and

how we all have

metamorphosized through the ears since

that day when we were carried by our

parents

in that uniform being sat down in that

chair as a first grader

up to now until we’re in college until

we’re together in this event and

probably later

as you’re moving on in your career and

how also looking ahead

we will continue to metamorphosize and

become sharper individuals

and with that tips literally thank you

for coming to my ted talk