What Are You?: Understand It And Be It!

By : Daniel Pasaribu


Reading the title above will lead you to come up with ideas of its meaning , but I want to lead you to relate this simple question in to our theme issued this month. Sound silly? Not really, just by adding phrases like ‘assessment, final test and so on’ to the sentence I think it has something to do with EXAMINATION. Just by that simple way? And how it does come? Let me show you, be patient ok?

Before I forget to tell you what I want to say, I write down my purpose implicitly below and hopefully help you to get my point: that is to encourage you to study harder if you are a student.

It has become a tradition in our education calendar where after a final test, school or students have a holiday. Most students, but not all, prefer a holiday to test or have an examination. This situation can be seen from students’ behavior toward tests they will have. Some students study late until night just before the day of test, some feel very anxious, even some change of their life style. These are indicators of students who lack of preparation. These students do not understand what they supposed to be, what they have to do in the case of responsibility.

Here we want to see deeper beyond a test and a holiday. I believe we all have a clear understanding between the two. A test and a holiday can not stand alone; they can not be separated with aspects such as curriculum, syllabus, etc. They should be holistic as a union. That is also as an answer to question why there is not a holiday and a test only, but it’s also made clearly in one semester what a school has to do. There is time to study, do home work as written in the education calendar or in the syllabus on every subject of study, so once again these parts can not stand alone, it is impossible for students to have tests before completing a certain planning of study. If it happens, we will find the situation like presented above and students will fail to meet the demanding of the curriculum as written.

Talking about education calendar also can involve when a test will be held, when the holiday and the amount of time will be spent for a subject. And the term curriculum means to plan time and the purposes (BPNKTSP, 2:2006) Do you know who is in charge in curriculum? Yes , the government by education and culture minister responsible to pass the law called KEPMENDIKNAS , this law continued to SATUAN PENDIDIKAN and then this institution construct the education calendar and it must be based on STANDARD ISI ( if you want to know more about ‘curriculum’ come and joint with Mr. Sophian’s lecture). Now let us make a light analyzing: we have government, we have laws, teachers, students, Satuan Pendidikan, national education standard. They all work together just for one purpose, and I believe if one of them does not work there will be problems. And so it is the same for example students break rules, do not perform the curriculum, finally they hate the test because they are not well prepared.

Back to the question above; where are you? Now I think you can understand that this question refers to which category you belong to? Are you a student? A teacher? Or you are a student at the same time you are as a teacher? Understand what you must do! I really believe you will love when time of examination comes, when holiday is coming and you like sitting in the classroom to attend all subject written in the curriculum.

Here is to make it clearer: where are you? Determined by what your role and your work. Understand means we must play our role as its category. By understanding our role we will be more motivated, more focused to study, so if once again we are students and we will not hate a test any more.

Good luck!