Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Do you read books?

Sorry for not writing for a long time, was quite busy with moving to Kuala Lumpur and now when I have some free time would like to continue my "This is Indonesia" writings. Back in 2005 I was in Morocco and I was teaching English to the children in Rabat. It was quite nice experience and I really loved it. I loved Morocco too and I would always go back there if someone would ask me to. Teaching children who are actually in love with you is really easy. Every day I found some small gift on my desk or just a drawing on the blackboard or just a compliment that I look beautiful that morning even in the morning I look like flood tossed me out. When I asked my students do they read books and what kind of books do they read I just got this awkward silence in my class. Those children were not reading books, they didn't even have obligatory school literature. When I was visiting people's houses only thing I saw was The Holy book of Quran and maybe some dictionary if the children are learning English or French. The similar thing I found in Indonesia. Actually, I found some books in people's houses but most of them were those American soap books like "What to do when he leaves you!", "The confession of shopaholics" and things like that. Never found more serious literature or anything that I could read. At our university people were sitting at the library and chatting or using the wireless but never used the books around them. Some parts of the library had heavy dust on the shelf.
I met this really nice math teacher in my university and she asked me really nicely if I would like to teach her class on Monday's. They were 3rd semester math students and I got ready to teach them really heavy stuff since my 3rd semester was full of Double and Triple Integrals, Linear Algebra, XML programming, Financial analysis and all other things that I had headache for a long time after. When I got a PowerPoint presentation of the things I need to teach I was stunned. I was teaching them regular trigonometrically transformation with integrals, the things that Serbian students are learning on the last year of high school. I asked around and Indonesians also have 12 years of primary and high school education and I still wonder, what tha hell are they doing for those 12 years if they are learning basic stuff at the university?!? I left that classroom completely disappointed since there were only 2 or 3 students talking to me and interacting and when I asked them about the books only one girl told me that she likes to read and that she read even Ana Karenina by Tolstoy. Then I asked her if she has a computer and she said that she doesn't. That made sense.
The students from other SE Asia countries are coming to Indonesia to study since the educational system is better than in other countries. I really don't believe that is true, especially not on my Uni...
will be continued... :)

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