The Jakarta Post: Imbuing Young Minds with Critical Thinking to Celebrate National Children’s Day

Jaspal Sidhu (The Jakarta Post)

“In the 21st century, with the advancement of artificial intelligence, creative thinking is now considered one of the most important attributes for individuals and students.”

 

hildren are a precious gift to parents but also the nation. As we build our nation to face the challenges of the future, the greatest investment we can make is in ensuring that our children will have the skills, the courage and the empathy to take the country forward. Indonesia has always paid special attention to the development of its youth. Commemorating National Children’s Day today, the Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection Ministry has identified six key points for this year’s celebration under the theme “Children Protected, Indonesia is Advancing”. The six sub-themes chosen are: Smart Children Use a Healthy Internet; Children’s Voices in National Development; Pancasila in the Heart of Indonesian Children; Dare to Lead and Speak Up, Children as Pioneers and Rapporteurs; Proper and Digital Parenting; Violence-free Childhoods; Child Marriage and Child Labor. These are all critically important areas of a child’s development. Kudos to the government for acknowledging that the development of a child must include both the hard sciences, and also ensure that they can grow up in a safe, secure environment to ensure that they develop into well-rounded individuals. Indonesia has made great strides in improving the quality of its public education. Article 31 of the 1945 Constitution and Law No. 20/2003 on national education require the government to allocate at least 20 percent of its annual budget for education.

This has resulted in marked improvements in access for millions of Indonesian children to public education. Over the past few years, the focus of both the public and private sectors has shifted from quantity to quality.

In urban areas, 84 percent of children of primary school age attend school while in rural areas, the figure is 85 percent. More critically, there is no significant gender disparity in either urban or rural areas. As a result, the literacy rate in the country has hit 99.76 percent. That is an impressive achievement and should be celebrated. The next challenge, however, is how to improve the quality of education and to educate children to think critically and therefore become productive members of society able to get decent jobs and decent incomes. In the 21st century, with the advancement of artificial intelligence, creative thinking is now considered one of the most important attributes for individuals and students.

But what exactly is creative thinking and why is it so important? Creative thinking is the ability to come up with new and innovative ideas. It is a valuable skill that can benefit students in all aspects of their education, from problem-solving to communication. Beyond the hard skills of mathematics, reading and writing, creative thinking empowers students to think out of the box and connect the dots. Unfortunately, in this area Indonesia seems to be struggling, but with a big opportunity for improvement. In 2022, as countries were dealing with the lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly 700,000 students from 81 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member and partner economies participated in the International Student Assessment (PISA) test program. The assessment examined 15-year-old students’ capacity to generate diverse and original ideas and to evaluate and improve ideas, across a range of contexts through open-ended communication and problem-solving tasks. It is important to note that academic excellence is not a prerequisite for excellence in creative thinking.

While around half the students who performed at the highest level of creative thinking also scored well in mathematics, many students who did not score very well in mathematics did well in creative thinking. However, very few students who were bad at mathematics excelled in creative thinking. On the OECD’s list of Performance in Creative Thinking, Singapore scored highest with a mean score of 41, followed by South Korea, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in the top-five country list. How about Indonesia? The country ranked sixth from the bottom of the 81 participants with a score of 19. Only the Philippines among the ASEAN countries ranked below Indonesia. The question for educators in Indonesia, therefore, is how can they ignite creative thinking in their students and motivate kids to learn? Can creative thinking be taught in schools and how should it be taught? The answer lies in changing the way we teach our children. As we are looking into Indonesia’s future and national goal to achieve Golden Indonesia in 2045, the challenge is how we should teach our children today because this will determine whether Indonesia will be able to achieve the goals. As more and more jobs become automated, creativity will be in higher demand. “The pace of cultural change is accelerating more quickly than ever before,” according to Liane Gabora, associate professor of psychology and creative studies at the University of British Columbia. As we navigate the complex environmental, social and economic changes of the 21st century, students must be innovative, and use critical thinking purposefully. Indonesia has climbed high up the ladder in terms of providing basic education for its youth. The next step will be to develop their minds by not just filling them with facts but by teaching them how to think. To achieve this, the entire education sector; the government, public schools as well as private schools must work together.

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The writer is founder and chairman of Singapore Intercultural School (SIS) and Inspirasi Group of Schools. The views expressed are his own.

 

Source:

https://www.thejakartapost.com/opinion/2024/07/23/imbuing-young-minds-with-critical-thinking-to-celebrate-national-childrens-day.html