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