Grammar of Schooling: A Conservative Idea fits for Indonesia

Having glimpse title of an article “Why the Grammar of Schooling Persists by David Tyack & Larry Cuban” questions me why most western people doubt it. I am thinking and contemplating that its system gives more benefits to Indonesia rather than John Dewey’s idea about progressive education. Why I say so?

Local Content Curriculum: Immature program for Teachers

LCC is a way of educational reform. Since its coming the existence of LCC influenced to the teachers’ contribution in the education system. Teachers are not only demanded to revise their teachers’ identity but also need to transform it. I assume that it needs a very hard work and an extra energy to erase the assumption of teachers as civil servants in which they need to be loyal to the country and change the primary duty related to the instruction. I see this as this program is immature for teachers seen from facts about teachers based on my own experiences.

Local Content Curriculum: Why does MOEC Need to Persist it?

Discussing with the colleagues about the Local Content Curriculum (LCC) has brought my thinking to 1994. Released by the MOEC, this program has puzzled teachers. Some maybe refute the curriculum, but I personally support the existence of the curriculum. I will show the reasonable arguments seen from 2 perspectives why I agree that the policy makers continue the notion principles of LCC in current curriculum.

The Ungaran Farm School

SCHOOL PROFILE

• School Name           :    The Ungaran Farm School
• Institution type         :    Secondary Vocational School – Vocational Education and Training (VET)
• Academic Program :    Agricultural Education
• Length of Study :    3 years

INTRODUCTION
For many decades, it has been known that Indonesia is one of agrarian country with 70% from 186 million hectares used to the agricultural sector (Widiarta, 2009). It means that agriculture cannot be neglected and its big potency becomes Indonesian people livelihoods. The Indonesian Statistic Central Committee claimed that in 2007 around 42.5% from 95.5 million people work in agricultural sector which doubled than work trade sector at 20.13% and is much higher than industrial and service sector, at 12.46% and 11.90%, respectively (Widiarta, 2009). It can be clearly seen that the agriculture become core sector to support Indonesian living.

It is believed that the proportion of people work in the agricultural sector will yield potencies and be beneficial to support national demands on food. In fact, over a period of ten years, statistics shows that the national food security cannot fulfill its demands within the nation. Government has imported rice and other natural products from Thailand to foster household food consumption. Of course, it will bring drawbacks rather than the positive effects.

As an educational practitioner, I offer a solution to overcome the problems. I have an idea to develop Vocational Educational and Training (VET) school in agricultural sector. I believe that education has its right to educate people how to cultivate their farming land which can produce agricultural and bring back our role as an international leader in food supplier.

Semarang Regency, as well, which administratively borders to Kendal and Temanggung in the west, Salatiga in the south and Semarang city in the north, has one forth around 24.417ha for farm area from the total of Semarang Regency area of 95.02ha (wikipedia). The natural conditions such as air temperature which is relatively cold, fertile ground indicator then positively support my idea to build a vocational school namely, ‘The Ungaran Farm School’.

Twister Tongue (Seri A1)

1. A big black bear sat on the big black bug.
2. A big black bear bit a big black bug and the big black bug bled black blood.
3. A big black bug bit a big black dog on his black nose!
4. A big bug bit the little beetle but the little beetle bit the big bug back.
5. A bitter biting bittern, bit a better brother bittern, and the bitter better bittern, bit the biter back. And the bitter bittern, bitten, by the better bitten bittern, said: “I’m a bitter biter bit, alack!”

GAGA(LNYA) REPRESENTASI BUDAYA BARAT

Gaun panjang nanelegan dengan dominasi warna hijau lemon yang dikenakan saat turun dari bandara Sungshan Taipe, Taiwan, Rabu 16 Mei 2012, tak serta-merta mengubah sosok unik dan nyentrik Lady Gaga di tengah santernya pemberitaan bakal konsernya di Indonesia.

Eskalasi wacana kedatangannya awal Juni ini yang semula menjadi trending topik pemberitaan sebulan terakhir kini tinggal menyisakan kekecewaan bagi penggemar dan promotor karena batalnya konser tersebut. Para Little Monster-sebutan untuk penggemar Gaga yang sudah jauh-jauh hari memesan tiket kini harus berdesak-desakan lagi mengembalikan tiket/refund ke penyelenggara. Promotor pastinya menjadi pihak yang paling dirugikan secara finansial karena batalnya konser. Namun, apakah kerugian finansial tersebut akan sebanding dengan keuntungan secara sosial-kebudayaan masyarakat kita? Tentu ini pilihan yang sulit, jika harus mengorbankan generasi muda kini yang telah teracuni dan terombang-ambingkan oleh penjajahan psikis yang disebut hedonisme.

SENSE PROPERTIES (Analytic, Synthetic, and Contradictory Sentences)

          In daily life, people communicate and need to reach practical agreement on the meanings of words they use in order to yield effective and meaningful communication. It is known that some show their disagreement about the rule of constructing a meaning from a word. However, we find that we as speakers or hearers understand all words since people who involved in the conversation are having indispensable hard core of meaning. Thus, this vital meaning is called as sense of expression.

        In semantics, experts argue there are two main ways of teaching sense of expression such as sense relation with other expression and sense properties. Sense properties consists of two words which have literal meaning i.e. sense and property. The former means a meaning conveyed or intended while the latter is defined as a quality or trait belonging and especially peculiar to an individual or thing (merriam-webster.com). I propose that sense properties refer to a quality or trait belongs to conveyed meanings. The quality of conveyed meaning usually can be done if a language is uttered or written in a sentence not in a word. It is because sentence meaning is proposition which means possess literal meaning or locution while a word is only a concept. Hurford and Heasley suggest that there are three ways of identifying a quality of a sentence such as analytic, synthetic, and contradictory.