Teaching Graduates; Easy Come Easy Go

Who doesn’t know Singing Contests nowadays? In (approximately) 2004, it firstly started in Indonesian TV stations and has been mushrooming till today. Not only in Pop genre, now even there is a booming Dangdut Singing Contest.

Some people thinks that such shows are very good, for they widely open chances to those whose voice is beautiful to have a good career and to enrich Indonesian musical industry. While the opposite one assumes that such shows are not really promising, for the “products” can only survive just for a little time after the celebration. That is what also happens with teaching graduates. What I found funny was that suddenly my brain (I didn’t know why) automatically analogized these two phenomena.

I live in Central Java. In this province only, there are so many universities which lay teaching graduates, whether from a department of a university or from a university which is specialized for teachers-to be. In a year, a university can graduate thousands of students for about three times. Then don’t forget to multiply them by the number of universities. The result? Yeah, there would be “uncountable” teaching graduates!

Back to the analogy I said. We can analogy that four year in learning the teaching material is as the “quarantine times”. Students are taught of how to be a good teacher, how to make good students, how to make a fun class, and so forth. After that is the final project session that can be analogized as the “final show” that followed by the graduation. Graduation held and taddaa… Flowers, congratulation texts, and snapshots are coming!

            But what happens next? Where are they going? Yeah, teaching graduates are then busy looking for a job, looking for a school which is willing to hire them. Salary—or wage, I think to call it wage is better—is the next-number thing. A friend of mine even told me, “Go ahead looking for a school even if you aren’t paid! The most important thing, you’ll get the certification later!” Wow, what a statement! How come a person work without being paid? How long will it be until the certification comes? Don’t we need some pennies to save our life?

Unfortunately the capacity between school and the applier is really really not balance, everyone knows that, does know that. Those who finally find a place is the lucky ones, while the rest are the “eliminated” ones, just like the contestants in singing contest who easy come, easy go. I don’t say that the lucky one is the best one in their field, or the opposite as well. I said this is the case of lucky-unlucky. The final decisions for the “rest” of teaching graduates are finally only two: choose to be a disguised unemployment by busying their own selves, or choose to look for another job. The second option means that the materials learned along college won’t be used in many ways. The worse thing, some enterprises don’t hire teaching graduates, which I don’t know why.

There was a talk show on TV which moved my heart yesterday, Hitam Putih, which presented an actual story about a teaching graduate of Physic Department of a university in Yogyakarta. The girl namely Sutriyani, finally chose to sell herbs around. She told that she had already enrolled for jobs for many times, but the result is nil. Then that she is. It doesn’t mean selling herbs is a bad work, no. But we see that this job has no relation with her educational background. This is a reality, and I don’t blame anything or anyone for this case in this writing. There are so many of us, teaching graduates, who easy come and easy go just like the contestants of singing contests.

After watching Hitam Putih, I said to a friend of mine, “I’m anxious if I will be the next guest in this talk show.”