Diliputan media SANGAT bergengsi untuk hal MEMALUKAN!



Tulisan di bawah ini diambil dari The Economist. Sebuah tragedi yang hampir semua dari kita tahu versi Indonesianya yang dan sekarang diliput oleh media bergengsi ini. Sebuah cerita di banyak sekolah di Indonesia yang sudah kita dengar lama akhirnya terkuak dengan keras yang biasanya lirih saja. It's about time. Memang kebusukan ini HARUS diakhiri, SEKARANG!


More cheating, or else!

Scandals in the classroom


IT IS not exactly unusual for children to cheat at school. But Indonesians have learned recently that their teachers add a new twist to a familiar tale: ordering their own pupils to cheat, even if they do not want to. Not surprisingly, the revelation has led to an anxious debate about whether anyone can trust the grades of millions of young men and women who come onto the labour market each year in South-East Asia’s biggest economy.

The scandal came to light at the beginning of June when the mother of a 13-year-old boy in Surabaya, in eastern Java, told the local media that her son had been forced by his teachers to share his answers to a national exam with his classmates. The mother, Siami, first complained to the school but was ignored. So she took her story to a local radio station.
Teachers telling pupils to cheat was bad enough, but the reaction to Siami’s whistle-blowing was worse. Instead of being hailed for her honesty, she found her house surrounded by a mob of neighbours and fellow-parents from the Gadel 2 elementary school, accusing her of “selfishness” and calling her a “disgrace to the school”. She and her family were forced to go and stay with relatives.
Following a probe by the local education authorities the headmaster of the school and two teachers were sacked. The national education ministry does not deny that the teachers ordered the boy, Alifah Ahmad Maulana, to cheat, but they say his actions made no real difference to the school’s results. Despite this rather unconvincing attempt to reassure worried parents, the case merely opened the floodgates.
The past few weeks have seen more parents, pupils and others coming forward with similar stories, contradicting the government’s claim that Alifah’s case was a one-off. In the capital, Jakarta, a team has been set up to investigate allegations of systematic cheating at another state elementary school, SDN 06 Pesanggrahan, after complaints by another angry mother. At a special press conference at the Constitutional Court building on June 16th several people, including teachers, joined Siami in recounting their own tales of mass-cheating, and the bullying and intimidation of pupils and parents who want to come clean.
Teachers defend themselves by saying that they are under enormous pressure to pass everyone on the national tests for the good of the school—and to get more state money. It is too early to say whether these revelations will prompt an overhaul of the way that Indonesia examines its children. Schools in Jakarta have been merrily reporting pass rates of 100% for the May exams, but fewer people will now believe them. Alifah, meanwhile, skipped his school’s graduation ceremony, but still hopes to go onto secondary school. His family has returned home—under police guard.

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