Indonesian Students’ Nightmare

By : Adi Hakim K.

            Indonesian has just finished their big-education-ceremony, national exam, which cost billions of national budget for each stages of education. There are three stages of education which got national exam, senior high, junior high and also primary school which the last held last week. Besides using a huge number of money, national exam is also taking a lot of concentration not only for the participant but also parents and teachers. National exam has brought more harms than good.

            Starting with the idea of national exam which used to measure the equality of education in Indonesia, it turns into a nightmare for the students. How couldn’t be, the idea of equality implemented in our education exam is not followed by the equality of facilities provide by the government. For instance, schools in big city are provided by sophisticated facilities including computer, laboratory and many others. While what we can see in rural area in Indonesia we could hardly find schools with sophisticated facilities, moreover in some area in the border line of Indonesia they do not even have teacher.

The inequalities has led into some problems in the process and also the result of studying for students from different areas. If we compare the quality of education in three area, big city, rural area, and also border line area we will have different result on it. For instance, in English subject students come from big city will have proper facilities and media to support their learning process like language laboratory, books, or even native teacher. On the other hand students come from rural area will get difficulties to get proper facilities to support their learning process. They might do not have laboratory, good books or native teacher to support their learning process. Moreover, if we take a look at students from border line area the existence of teacher, which usually one teacher cover all of subjects to teach, is one thing should be thankful.

The ironic fact exist has led into a serious problem, the inequality facilities given towards the students will definitely affect on students learning process and also result. Students provided by less facilities must have different ability on the thing they learned compared with the one who fully supported. By all this inequality, the government still stands to ask an equal result by doing national exam. Which in the other word we can say that government asks a perfection by the imperfection they made. This is as one homework the government especially the ministry of education, M. Nuh should finish.

The next problems the students have to face is about the society paradigm towards the national exam. Society has thought that national exam is a sacred ceremony and has become a rule that every students must follow. Every students have to be succeed on it, anyone that fails on this ceremony will be seen as fail, stupid, bastard, and even they marked them with criminal because they break the rule. They will mentally isolated to the society imagining the high pressure of embracement they got from their neighboring society if they know it. Moreover, not only the student itself will marked as a fail person, their family will also marked as a fail family by the society, their parents will marked as the one who fail to educate their children. So, the success in national exam is not only for saving themselves but also to save their parents in the society. How amazing burden students must bring on the national exam.

Let us see a case that a student of junior high school in Bali did suicide because she got stressed by the difficult question on her national exam question sheet, which she claimed on her death letter as hard as never been given in try out or other trials, she got. Afraid of making herself and her family embrace by her failure, she chose to end her life and left all burden away. The government closes their eyes on this problem, and keep saying by million persons attending national exam and one suicide is not a big deal. How persons that should taking care of this country could be so naïve. How can the persons that should accept citizen aspiration closing their eyes and standing on their own hands. It could be only one person suicide due to this problem, but it might represent the other millions national exam participants’ feeling, and she was the one who extremely expressed herself.

By some cases, we can see that national exam brings more harms than good. Many evaluation should be taken to make education system in Indonesia better and better. We all do hope that the-person-in-charge of this problem will not only closing their eyes and stand for their own arguments on making policy in this problem. We do hope they will evaluate their systems in a way to make prosperous Indonesia.