What I try to focus on is not to try to stop the march of technological progress. Instead, I try to run faster. If Amazon knows you better than you know yourself, then the game is up.
Yuval Noah Harari
The development of science, knowledge, and technology nowadays has gone beyond what was predicted some decades ago. The rapid advance that marked the world with a new era, namely the era of the Industry 4.0. The appearance of new technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence, and genetic editing in biotechnology will immediately change all aspects of human life. One example of this is how technology plays a significant role in life where the internet can connect people globally with a massive spectrum and almost without limitations, so there are many transactions starting from lifestyles, work and cultural exchange. Citations from The Economist magazine uses the term “techlash” to mark the time when technology will become the ruler, not only from a economic aspect, but also social, political and cultural aspects.
Industry 4.0 came in one package in the form of positive benefits and negative impacts. Technology indeed aims to help human activities, but it can also cause a change of life order in society called disruption. These days, Indonesia has been in the stage of disruption era. It can be seen from human resource factors from which the country is still not ready. According to data reported by the World Economic Forum (WEF) related with global competitiveness index in the 2017-2018 WEF Report, Indonesia occupied the 36th position, raised up to 5 rank from the previous year at 41st position from 137 countries. From the data, Indonesia experienced an increase in rank, but the country is still below in comparison to Thailand (32nd), Malaysia (23rd) and Singapore (3rd). One of the causes of Indonesia remaining below those countries is due weak health and primary education pillars.Three indicators can be identified as the case can be identified as the case First, Indonesia ranks 101 out of 137 countries (Thailand 72nd, Malaysia 66, Singapore 8th) with life expectancy. Secondly, Indonesia also ranks 47 out of 137 (Thailand 89th, Malaysia 23rd, Singapore 3rd) regarding quality of primary education. Thirdly, the country also ranks 106 of 137 (Thailand 100, Malaysia 32nd, Singapore 1st) with its primary education enrollment rates.
According to the WEF, health and primary education is one out of four main pillars of the basic requirements of sustainability in society welfare of a country. Further, WEF also published a report entitled “Future of Job” which implied that to face the disruption, someone should have ten basic skills among them including : complex problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity, people management, coordinating with others, emotional intelligence, service orientation, negotiation, cognitive flexibility, judgment and decision-making. However, those basic skills should be taught early which can be difficult to obtain in Indonesian primary education.
To prepare for the challenges of the age of disruption especially in the education field, Project Child Indonesia (PCI) as a Non-Government Organization created a program called “Sekolah Sungai” (River School) in 2011. PCI realized that the current formal education in Indonesia at the present time is not optimal. This is because of the lack of distribution of education infrastructure, the need to improve teachers’ quality, and improve curriculum that is not in accordance with the need of today’s students. Therefore, the program was created to complement their existing formal education. “Sekolah Sungai” is held at three places in Yogyakarta including Kricak, Gadjah Wong and Code.
“Sekolah Sungai” is a program in PCI that implements a method called Project Based Learning (PBL) which has been adjusted to the community conditions surrounding the river sites. PBL is used to prepare students for the 21st century challenges to work on real problems and solve them directly using their analytical and practical skills.Often a product or presentation can be the end-result of the project.Children are expected to work on the project during a period of time given by the facilitators. Moreover, PBL is suitable for our community classes in the spirit of alternative education as it indulges critical thinking, creativity and communication skills as supplementary skills for their education. In this batch, PBL discussed two projects named “Public Places in Your Neighborhood ” and “Literacy Project”. The first project was designed to spark the awareness of children related to their own neighborhood with them expected to find solutions to the real world problems found through their projects. The second project aims to improve children’s interest in literary works such as picture books, magazines, comics, novels, and many more. It also trains their creativity and flexibility to think and share their ideas in creative ways.
Sekolah Sungai located in Gadjah Wong, called “SS Gadjah Wong” is one of the river school sites. Acquiring basic education through formal schooling is still not yet effective, and the children in that place are not yet familiar with literacy. This added with the fairly low socio-economic conditions of the area make it challenging for the people to develop basic skills such as critical thinking, creativity and cognitive flexibility to answer the challenges of the age of disruption. Sekolah Sungai volunteers assist the children with ages varied from 6-14 years through PBL. The 10 week duration of PBL meetings showed positive results to the development of students as they became more daring to express themselves, more creative, and better able to coordinate with other people. The first project that started from the first to sixth week, was about “Public Places in Your Neighborhood”. The students were assisted by volunteers to do public place observations. It aimed to gather information about the history, function of the problems that exist, and then discuss the possible solutions related to the problems altogether. The second project called “Literacy Project”, was held on the seventh to tenth week of the meetings. It began with reading stories to children in order for them to gain exposure to literary works. After that, they were guided by volunteers to create an outline that was to be developed as a story. Upon finishing the story, the students created literacy projects such as short stories, comics, and picture stories. During the projects, various obstacles were found however, they contribute as great insight for curriculum development, students, and the improvement of the Indonesian education system in a broader spectrum.
Written by: Ega Kusuma Ahimsa- Teaching-Learning Assessor Intern
Bibliography
https://www.economist.com/news/2013/11/18/the-coming-tech-lash
https://www.quora.com/What-does-the-techlash-mean
https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-future-of-jobs-report-2018
https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-competitiveness-report-2017-2018
