"Bad Teaching", Lack of Classroom Management in the U.S. and Indonesia (Untuk Adik di Pringsurat: lebih banyak lidah yang membahas lidah api, melainkan sedikit yg paham "sumber api")

Washington DC 3.19am / London 8.19am

(This is note started with current situation in the US, then, I wrote about two toddlers in Indonesia, one died, another one got arrested by police because he can’t suffer anymore from systematically bullying-and-then- burn his school)

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U.S.

Reflection before July 4th. Schools across U.S. already downgrading ability to teaching, and especially heartbreaking because it is happening every day, everywhere in 50 states. Would see such an outright attack on public education and students from so many directions happening in th US. The behavior of the governor and the republicans in the several statehouse is a disgrace.

Outcry demanding "nationwide search because no one here is qualified" (same situation in Indonesia, “too low qualified teacher). And someone from some state is brought in. It was rough in urban schools then but at least there was parental support and adequate funding. Teachers don't get enough credit for the work they do in today's schools.

Although these "outsiders" did not always bode well. Where is the current Dept of Education to solve inside U.S. education? Or, the new Supt of DMPS? Who will administer the governor's new private school voucher plan? Hopefully all will do well. Bigger concern here is the message it sends to current educators, administrators, employees, and citizens. What happens to morale in a profession where morale sinks a few more degrees as each day goes by? What's happened to acknowledging and affirming the hard working people who are already here? Is there really no one here who is qualified?

During the pandemic, when many parents had to step-in in the absence of school, teachers won accolades. Parents praised teachers for the tough job they did. But in three short years we are no longer trusted to make the right decisions for our students.

Schools across U.S. (and also the world) are still recovering from the trauma that was caused by Covid. The kids are still struggling. Some are more than a year behind in credits, some are taking five years to graduate, and many of my students were dealing with higher levels of stress, anxiety, and depression in the first place.

This isn’t because teachers don’t know how to do their jobs.  Teaching is hard work.  But many of us lament the current anti-intellectual climate. The state has decided it has an “obligation” to “protect” school children from things that are simply not threatening.

Same problem in higher level, in universities.

Despite these costs, tenure may be a necessary evil: It offers job security and intellectual freedom in exchange for lower pay than other occupations that require advanced degrees.

Instead of abolishing tenure, what if we restructured it? The heart of the problem is that we’ve combined two separate skill sets into a single job. We ask researchers to teach, and teachers to do research, even though these two capabilities have surprisingly little to do with each other. In a comprehensive analysis of data on more than half a million professors, the education experts John Hattie and Herbert Marsh found that “the relationship between teaching and research is zero.” In all fields and all kinds of colleges, there was little connection between research productivity and teaching ratings by students and peers.

Currently, research universities base tenure decisions primarily on research productivity and quality. Teaching matters only after you have cleared the research bar: It is a bonus to teach well.

In my field of organizational psychology, there is a rich body of evidence on designing jobs to promote motivation and productivity. The design of the professor job violates one of the core principles: Tasks should be grouped together based on the skill sets of the individuals who hold them. If we created three kinds of tenure rather than one, we might see net gains in both research and teaching.

A research-only tenure track would be for professors who have the passion and talent for discovering knowledge, but lack the motivation or ability to teach well. This would allow them to do more groundbreaking studies and produce more patents, while sparing students the sorrow of shoddy courses.

Creating more full-time research professorships could combat the decline of research productivity post-tenure, as many productive professors see their nonteaching time consumed by administrative responsibilities. If research professors didn’t teach, administrative duties wouldn’t impede their work.

A teaching-only tenure track would be for professors who excel in communicating knowledge. Granting tenure on the basis of exemplary teaching would be a radical step for research universities but it might improve student learning. In a recent landmark study at Northwestern, students learned more from professors who weren’t on the tenure track. When students took their first course in a subject with a professor who didn’t do research, they got significantly better grades in their next class in that subject.

Currently, universities pay adjunct instructors below the rate of tenure-track faculty and give them short-term contracts. If tenure were available for teaching excellence, with pay and prestige comparable to tenure for research, we could attract and retain more exceptional educators. Replacing adjuncts with tenured teachers would cost more, but there are ways to offset that, perhaps by funding more research with grants.

The third tenure track would be for research and teaching. Professors who succeed in both could maintain this dual role, whereas those who struggle in research could eventually shift to the teaching track, and vice versa.

Of course, this model is not without challenges. Universities have clear criteria for evaluating research productivity and impact, but typically falter by assessing teaching quality solely through student ratings. That said, Dr. Marsh and his colleagues find that student ratings are less biased than many people assume: Contrary to popular belief, students rarely favor teachers who grade leniently — and give higher ratings to teachers who assign heavier workloads.

Still, students can rate professors as great teachers even if they teach information that is wrong. To support tenure on the basis of teaching alone, we need new metrics for evaluating the quality of the knowledge that teachers disseminate in the classroom. For example, research professors could provide updates on discoveries and vet the accuracy of information taught, while teaching professors could curate questions back from the classroom to help researchers pursue meaningful projects.

Skilled researchers burn out after failing in the classroom and gifted teachers lose their positions because university policies limited the number of courses that adjunct professors could teach. Dividing tenure tracks may be what economists call a Pareto improvement: It benefits one group without hurting another. Let’s reserve teaching for professors with the relevant passion and skill — and reward it. Sharing knowledge with students should be a privilege of tenure, not an obligation.

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INDONESIA

Kepada adik pembakar sekolah, kita berbagi pengalaman hampir mirip. We share the same experience.

Dihina dan dikucilkan semasa sekolah seperti adik alami di Kelas 7 / Kelas VII / (dulu dengan penyebutan) Kelas 1 SMPN 2 Pringsurat, Temanggung, Jawa Tengah—istilah Jakselian-nya sekarang dibully, istilah KBBI nya “dirisak”—saya alami dalam periode sama denganmu puluhan tahun silam. Bedanya saya tidak seberani dan seheroik kamu, membakar sekolah. Pem-bully saya kini Banser di suatu kota di Jawa Tengah.

Bukan hanya teman mengolok-olok dan mengeroyokmu, tapi juga beberapa gurumu. Kamu sering diejek, dipanggil dengan nama orangtuamu. Kepala Sekolahmu bahkan lempar badan dan justru menyalahkan kamu.

Kamu sempat melaporkan bullying tersebut kepada guru di kelasmu. Namun. laporanmu tidak pernah ditanggapi. Akibatnya, bullying masih terus terjadi menindas kamu. Tugas prakarya milikmu pernah disebut jelek lalu disobek oleh guru.

Semua warga Indonesia (kecuali guru dan kepala sekolahmu) mungkin sepakat iuran bensin untuk membakar seluruh sekolahmu: sekolah sampah yang nir-pedagogi. Sekolah penuh perangkat dari Kepala Sekolah dan Guru yang tidak tahu diuntung dan pura-pura mengajar padahal tidak punya jiwa mengajar.

Mungkin kamu SEDIKIT lebih beruntung: adik kecil lainnya di Medan, bukan hanya tidak sanggup membakar sekolah. Dirinya benar-benar mati secara fisik akibat ditindas.

Aku merasakan kesedihan dan amukan marah kamu, adik. Bully/Risak/Ditindas masa sekolah sangat menyakitkan. Semoga kelak anakku tidak seujung kuku pun mengalami luka atau siksa di apapun sekolah di Indonesia (/ di luar negeri, jika Mrs Prada adalah orang asing——karena hanya Allah yang Maha Pemberi), dan jika pun ditindas, dirinya nyaman bisa bercerita semua hal pada orang tuanya. Cukup aku dan mungkin Mrs Prada yang mengalami (mungkin) bullying, jangan anak-anak selanjutnya.

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-prada- Adi Mulia Pradana is a Helper. Former adviser (President Indonesia) Jokowi for mapping 2-times election. I used to get paid to catch all these blunders—now I do it for free. Trying to work out what's going on, what happens next. Arch enemies of the tobacco industry, (still) survive after getting doxed. Now figure out, or, prevent catastrophic situations in the Indonesian administration from outside the government. After his mom was nearly killed by a syndicate, now I do it (catch all these blunders, especially blunders by an asshole syndicates) for free.

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