Plis Deh Jakarta!

The city administration is currently pushing their green building agenda into schools, which from the article, a green building is seemingly defined:

• less use of wood to decrease the need of chopping down forersts
• use of solar panels for power (the article says the use of ‘panel tata surya’; I assume that’s a mistype)
• better ventilation as to decrease the need for air conditioning
• more efficient use of water and electricty
• independent waste management, whatever that means
• and more use of wood in building construction (yes, the article contradicts itself)

They say it is part of an effort to educate children on the need of eco-friendly buildings, with the bill going up to a total of Rp 16 billion for two school locations.

In the meantime, many schools, even in Jakarta, are in no condition to be used as a place to learn. The schools might become, um, a bit nicer, but what’s to say about the general living conditions of the surrounding neighborhood?

When I read the headline, I thought the term ‘smart park’ was used like it is used for ‘smart phone’, ‘smart car’ and ‘smart house’, whereas the object involved becomes ‘smart’ and can anticipate a user’s needs due to certain hardware or software. So what of ‘smart parks’? Automatic irrigation, automatic umbrellas, and when you leave the park money is automatically deducted from your bank account for parking or something? Oh, nooo.

These ‘smart parks’, or Taman Pintar, are meant to give an experience of reading outdoors to students, giving an alternative to the classroom, where reading interest is low.

This is interesting – some government officials, obviously appealed by the romaticism of relaxing in a park to read a book, just like in those American movies, made this move – where I don’t think said officials have hardly ever read a book outside in Jakarta’s daily weather, even under a tree’s shade. The scorching heat or the torrential rains, complete with air and noise pollution, wouldn’t be a very attractive place to read. Can you imagine some high school kid trying to get through a quantum physics book, sweating like a pig in the heat, or sitting under a small umbrella in a storm?

My opinion? The desire to read is actually high – but just not study material

Remember feeling stupid in SD? When you couldn’t understand a single sentence from those lousy hand-me-down textbooks? Seems that some researchers got together and made that official – to the extent of saying that the textbooks are not appropriate for class.

Well, I don’t think they use those outdated Balai Pustaka textbooks anymore, but since then many schoolbook publishers have turned up, while not necessarily fulfilling the requirements and needs of kids in 1st and 2nd grade. Well, there is a national standarization board of some kind, but somehow they missed reviewing all the books invovled in this research. Why? No budget.

Anyway, if you read the article it also states findings that in one instance, the writer mistakenly thought an issue to discuss about gender became an issue to discuss about sex, and goes on describing… I’ll stop there. And that’s not mentioning the level of language and usage of knowledge in the books are far too high for 1st and 2nd graders.

And here I was under the impression that school textbooks should be written by somebody smart?