[caption id="attachment_390374" align="aligncenter" width="560" caption="Comparing Indonesian (left) textbook and Japanese (right) - personal collection"][/caption]
Year 2014 is a turnaround for Indonesian education. In the middle of this year, when the academic year starts, the former ministry of education implemented new curriculum so-called Curriculum of 2013. This curriculum features emphasis on attitude, knowledge, and skills1. All are expected to be integrated in every subject. However, just six months later, the new ministry of education postpones the implementation and announcing that they will review more thoroughly. Integration is not as easy as it was planned. The problems are not only that, but mainly conceptual, like the unconformity in the textbooks with the curriculum designs2. Some technicalities also hindered the implementation, such as many materials has not yet arrived at schools even after half of the academic year passed.
While the official textbooks provide insufficient explanation of required materials, the teachers are autonomously expected to develop unique illustration to transfer the knowledge to the students. This will need a massive effort to train the teachers along with the introduction of the curriculum. In this crucial point, the government failed to satisfy the teachers however the board of education in every municipalities tried to hold seminars and trainings for teachers3 When the curriculum of 2013 is finally suspended, some teachers held a thanksgiving part4. This somewhat shows the non-acceptance of the curriculum from the teachers side.
One of the problem is how to connect between the materials to the 18-characters5 required by the curriculum. From my analysis on English textbooks in Indonesian high school, the contents do not give any clue to assist teacher connecting the material to its aim. They are very poor. In spite of the brilliant idea of making education and morality integrated instead of secularized, the government need to seriously improve the quality of these textbooks.
1. Munir, Syahrul. “Ini Penjelasan M. Nuh Tentang Kurikulum 2013”. News, Edukasi. Kompas. http://edukasi.kompas.com/read/2013/05/04/21062649/Ini.Penjelasan.M.Nuh.Tentang.Kurikulum.2013
3. “Implementasi Kurikulum 2013 Berantakan.”. Sekolahdasar.net.Web. Retrieved 8 January 2015 from
5. http://dikmen.kemdikbud.go.id/html/index.php?id=berita&kode=202
