The Dilemma of KKM

Being a teacher has been my dream since I was a child. Imagining to be with students, blend myself to them, make interesting teaching media, all are impeccable.

And now here I am. I am a teacher. Specifically, an English teacher. You may say my dream comes true. I do enjoy my daily activity. I love my job, I love my students.

But you know what, there is something which makes me sad and worry about our education today. This is the students’ lack of passion and curiosity in learning. It does bother me recently. I feel from day to day, our education quality degrades (it will sound classical, I know). I even asked some friends of mine who teach in different cities and schools, and surprisingly everything is the same. I can say then that it is a global phenomenon. Well if you say that it may be caused by the teacher’s methods (our methods), I will tell you.

At my class, I sometimes make some group activities for my students. For example, I asked them to make a group of seven or more to recover a song and presenting about the song. It includes the theme, the purpose, the expressions, and so on. However in the “passive” class, it really didn’t work. They still like have no passion, not showing any interest at all, and more. Anyway I thanked God, in “active” class it worked still. My teacher friend also some days ago showed her students a motivational video, and it didn’t affect them. AT ALL. It was unbelievable. It was actually a video about an interview of Maudy Ayunda, a famous Indonesian actress and singer who had been recently accepted into both Harvard and Stanford universities. You know, both of them are included the top universities in the world, right? Even me who has been this adult was inspired of this video. How come they were not? Somehow the point is, we as the teacher have done our best to educate and motivate our students.

Some time ago I had a little discussion with my teacher friends about it. We tried to figure out why today students have no curiosity in learning, have no passion in any subject, and have no plans for their own future. And we came to a conclusion that one biggest reason of this is the existence of the minimum score or Kriteria Ketuntasan Minimal (KKM).

By the existence of the KKM, students feel too much relaxed. They have no more worry about bad scores printed on their report book. The most KKM in Indonesia is 75 for each subject, for your information. We are sure that our government aimed goodness when firstly launched this KKM. They perhaps hope that it will motivate both teacher and students to pass this lowest score. Somehow in fact, reality is not always as beautiful as the expectation was. There are sooo many students with under-average learning acquisition capability who cannot reach that KKM.

This reality is totally different from “the old generation” scoring system. We were always tried our best to understand every single subject and make the best scores. If we failed, we should be ready for the red scores written in our report books. Literally, the red scores, because teachers would write them down with the red ink. The effect of getting it? Never ask. Our parents would blow their top!

From what I’ve been delivering, I'll say that the KKM should be in an overview. We should remember that not every city in Indonesia is like Jakarta or Surabaya. There are so many small towns or even the isolated ones which are not that lucky in the case of facilities, easiness, etc. which absolutely affect the students’ capability in acquiring good scores. Cheerio!