Arsip untuk English Teaching

The nature and benefits of teaching ESP

3 Maret 2009 · Disimpan dalam English Teaching

The complexities of language and language learning.

t is difficult to come to an understanding of the nature and benefits of teaching ESP unless one has a grasp of the full complexity of language, and hence of language learning.

Language is multifaceted to the extent that human activity is various. There is an enormous variety of walks of life, each of which has its own language and cultural setting. We may divide these walks of life into two categories: those that are common to everybody and those that are concerned with specialised topics familiar only to a few.

Obviously, those walks of life which are common to many people are concerned with everyday existence. Examples of these universal topics are socialising, shopping, travelling, eating out, telephoning friends, greetings and introductions, and reading newspapers. So, when one learns a language, one must be exposed to linguistic items relating to these universal topics. This is the task of a General English course.

Yet in addition to such topics, there is an enormous range of specialised topics which are of significant importance only to sections of the population. Examples of these are as follows: sports, hobbies and interests, business, banking and finance, medicine, academics, literary criticism, travel and tourism, biology, chemistry, physics, agriculture and law. The list is endless. Everybody will have some need to discuss at least some of these topics, so it is common, in General English courses, to find material pertaining to some of them. However, such material caters only to the interest of the layman, the man in the street who might read an article on such a topic in the newspaper. The extent to which an individual will need language pertaining to any of these specific topics depends upon how important the topic is to him in his everyday life. If the topic is not at all important for him, there is no need for him to know any of the linguistic items pertaining to it. At the other end of the scale, when we reach the stage at which any topic constitutes an individual’s profession, it becomes crucial that he have a mastery of the specialised language pertaining to it.

Each topic will contain certain tasks, specific to it, which an individual will need to accomplish and which require him to use language. Here are some examples taken from different fields:

University Professor: Giving lectures, participating in seminars, reading and writing papers for publication, reading and writing books, discussing academic topics with students and conducting examinations, oral and written.

Businessman: Giving presentations, negotiating, participating in meetings, writing reports, press releases, letters, faxes and memos, telephoning, note-taking, socialising and entertaining.

Research Scientist: Writing the results of experiments, writing reports on the significance of the results, giving presentations, participating in seminars, reading recent research.

Professional Sportsman: Giving interviews to the press, discussing tactics, giving instructions.

These lists are quite general in scope. It is possible, and desirable, to define the fields of expertise more specifically so that the accompanying tasks can be defined precisely. In addition, each defined task should be divided into its various subtasks, so that the linguistic items to be learned may be identified more easily.

In general, we may state the situation as follows. Human life, and hence human language, is concerned with many and various topics. Each topic requires certain communicative tasks to be performed, and these tasks require mastery of certain task-based skills. Such skills are: reading and writing texts of various styles register and lengths, listening in various styles, accents and registers, speaking appropriately in a variety of contexts including socialising, negotiating, interviewing, presenting information and pronouncing material in a clear and culturally acceptable way. People who are engaged in different activities need to master different skills.

In order to acquire the desired skills, a range of linguistic items specific to each skill must be mastered.

Specialised vocabulary: Each field will have vocabulary which is special to it. Some of the words may have meanings specific to the field, different from their meanings in everyday life.

Register: Basically, register is concerned with the levels of politeness and formality to be found in language and the attitudes or values conveyed by certain words and phrases. Within each field, there will be specific registers to be learned. Speaking and writing in different social and cultural contexts require language with different levels of formality and politeness. Register is very complex and highly developed in English and includes not only certain forms of grammatical structure, but also specific kinds of vocabulary. Using even a single word inappropriately can have disastrous consequences.

Functions: Each field will have different linguistic functions which need to be performed, such as apologising, complaining, introducing, requesting, refusing requests and making suggestions. Each function may be performed in different registers.

Structures: Certain tasks require certain structures much more than others. For example, a mastery of the various forms of conditional sentence is essential for writing philosophy, but is hardly needed at all for writing personal letters.

Now let’s turn to the complexities surrounding language learning. Given the complexities of language just outlined, how do people manage to acquire a mastery of even their own language, never mind that of a foreign country? It seems that there is simply too much to learn, and each aspect of language contains a mountain of difficulties and material to be learnt. Actually, the answer to the problem is simple. It is that nobody needs complete mastery of a language.

To illustrate the point, consider the case of someone who has acquired enormous linguistic competence relative to others in society, a British university professor in English Language and Literature. Let’s consider such a person’s linguistic needs. He will, of course, require language pertaining to everyday life, and his hobbies and interests. He will also need to be acquainted with the language of academic research in general. More particularly, he will need the language of literary criticism and, since he must be familiar with all periods of English literature to some extent, he will possess a knowledge of vocabulary, structures and expressions which were in common use in the past yet which are no longer used. In addition, being highly educated and mixing with the intellectual elite of his country, he will have a knowledge of vocabulary, expressions and register which enables him to display at least a passing acquaintance with political and current affairs, including recent developments in science and technology.

In short, his linguistic competence will be enormous. However, we should not be misled by this. Compared with the totality of the English Language, his competence will be small. There will be vast areas of language of which he is completely ignorant. He is unlikely, for instance, to be able to carry on a conversation about banking and finance, business, and any number of other specialist areas such as law, agriculture, biochemistry, medicine, physics, mathematics and logic, etcetera. Further, his knowledge of politics, current affairs and science will be limited to what can be expressed in layman’s terms. So, we see that our Professor of English does not possess such a great competence after all. However, he does possess, in abundance, the particular linguistic competencies he needs in order to function well in everyday life and to pursue his career effectively.

I chose the above example precisely because it shows the linguistic limitations of a person who is one of the most competent users of English available. In the case of other people, their linguistic competence is much smaller and the amount they don’t know is much greater. From this discovery we can draw some highly significant conclusions. Each language is so vast and complicated that it is literally impossible to master it completely. Indeed, to try to do so would result in a massive waste of learning resources.

As a matter of fact, when native speakers learn their own language, they learn what they need, when they need it.

Each of us grows up in a particular cultural and social environment within our own country. This environment will determine what kind of language we use in everyday life as we grow up. For instance, someone from the North of England, growing up in a working class home, is likely to speak highly colloquial English in a low register and have a distinctive pattern of pronunciation. By contrast, someone growing up in a middle class home in the south-east of England is likely to speak much less colloquially, use a higher register and have standard pronunciation. Further linguistic differences will appear as the cultural and social setting has an effect on hobbies, interests and occupation. Consequently, people in different social groups will have their own vocabulary, register, functions and pronunciation. As we move to an individual level, we will find that everybody has a different vocabulary and style of speaking dependent upon his precise position in society. As people find themselves in different positions in society their activities change, so their linguistic needs change and they learn accordingly.

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THE AIMS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE LEARNING

25 Agustus 2008 · Disimpan dalam English Teaching, Gado-Gado

THE AIMS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE LEARNING

Learning is generally regarded as “the acquisition and development of memories and behaviors, including skills, knowledge, understanding, values, and wisdom”. It is also a process of acquiring good personality, all of which are needed to face life problems, technology, and chance.

English literature learning does not intend that you will forget Indonesian Literature. On the contrary, it will widen your knowledge and visions to understand more about some great literary works, famous authors, and their thoughts. It will also make you get acquainted with their ideas, their feelings, and their attitudes towards life, man nature and God. You’ll knows them through their experiences, observations, understanding, intelligence, vast readings, with their solved and unsolved problems in English Literature, hopefully with little guidance from me, the lecturer.

Their culture and belief are different from ours, but you are expected to learn or absorb theirs carefully since our own culture and belief are based upon Islamic principles. Therefore, before learning English literature, through which you also learn foreign culture(s), you should 1st esteem your Islamic culture and belief. You should have a deep feeling and motivation in the sense of belonging to it, a strong hold on it, and sound self-confidence.

This is very important for you to filter and select all elements or aspects of foreign culture(s) as some of which may do a lot of harmful effects upon ours rather than give beneficial things for us. On the other hand, you will not be hesitant to apply new good things in your life. English literature learning helps to improve and develop your senses, reasoning ability, attitudes, social and religious understanding, values, and thought processes, useful to live in society. This will help you grow to become a mature member of society. Both English literature and English literary sources also give some contribution to the revelation of human values, from which you can draw lessons for your own life.

So, English literature learning also indirectly gives some good guidance to the students since literature is also a means of transformation, that is, indirectly it may lead the wrong back to the right path although not all literary works are preaching and moralizing. The readers may (or should) find good lessons of life regardless whatever literary works they are. These one can be philosophic, religious, moralistic, social, etc. The students are indirectly guided to select good lessons they may search for themselves from English literary works, their writers, their critics, their readers, through his reading experiences, through his discussions with their classmates, by analyzing the work(s) and giving their appreciation to them.

Literature helps us to be (become more) realistic, mature, wise and humane. It helps understand human sentiments, human interests, human problems, human values, etc. It brings us closer to other human beings of the same or different nationalities, cultures, human values, etc. Our lives become more tolerant, more balanced, and fuller. We are able to sympathize with others’ sufferings. We admire their endurance, perseverance, and their remarkable motivations. We learn to appreciate what others appreciate properly. In this way our capacity for feeling and appreciation increases, and so does our capacity for enjoyment. We become richer through our literary experience, richer in life and knowledge of man.

Literature gives us knowledge of other peoples, nations, histories, lands, etc. and we may also learn new emotions, new values, new appreciation, new methods of literary writing, and the others that we would never have realized if we remained out of touch with foreign literature. Through the lectures of “Introduction to Literature”, it is hoped that you will improve your inter-relationships with others, regardless their ethnic, their religions, their beliefs, not their nationalities. The student may also get closer to his own, nature, God, and everything fine, good, surrounding him, here and elsewhere, at present, in the past, and even in the future.

Literature endows us with the vision, form that we can draw our conclusions and interpretations about behavior, and about what is worth striving for in life, etc. and in so doing it gives us something far more ultimate in value than scientific books. It helps us adapt to life problems, for our welfare at present life and the future one as well.

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The killer-nya Hemingway

25 Agustus 2008 · Disimpan dalam English Teaching

Harian The Guardian punya rubrik tetap. Namanya Digested Read. Inti rubriknya adalah memberikan versi singkat sebuah buku, semacam rangkuman, tapi saya nggak bisa melihat niatan serius dari rubrik ini kecuali untuk mem-bitchslap (duh Facebook sekali) si penulis buku.

Saya tak punya alasan untuk mem-bitchslap The Killers-nya Hemingway sebenarnya, tapi ini cara nge-blog yang belum pernah saya lakukan sebelumnya )

Oke, ini digested read-nya (versi saya):

Dua pria bersarung tangan masuk ke sebuah kedai, memesan menu makan malam yang belum waktunya disajikan. Walaupun sudah dijelaskan oleh si pelayan bahwa waktu makan malam belum tiba, mereka berkeras memesan menu makan malam. We want dinner! We want dinner! (bukan kata-kata tepatnya, tapi itu intinya) sebelum akhirnya mereka mengalah, memesan roti isi dan memakan roti masih mengenakan sarung tangan. Seorang Nick Adams (alter ego ‘paling terkenal’ Hemingway) juga ada di situ. Seusai makan, dua pria itu menyandera dan mengikat Adams dan juru masak di dapur (ugghh, mengikat orang dengan perut penuh habis makan sepertinya pekerjaan berat deh), sementara si pelayan di depan disuruh mengusiri orang-orang sampai target yang diincar para pembunuh bayaran itu datang (kenali ciri-ciri pembunuh bayaran: Makan roti isi mengenakan sarung tangan. Waspadalah!). Yang ditunggu tak muncul, para pembunuh bayaran pun pergi. Adams dengan segala konflik moralnya ingin mengingatkan si target pembunuhan. Si target pembunuhan ternyata sedang bersembunyi di kamar kos sewaannya dan tidak bisa memutuskan, keluar kamar nggak ya? Atau sembunyi di sini saja? Mati di luar nggak ya? Atau hidup tapi nggak bisa ke mana-mana? Di kamar atau ke luar? Ke luar atau di kamar? I really can’t decide.
asline ono ing bahasa inggris..klik mriki nggih

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Sejarah munculnya homeschooling

19 Juli 2008 · Disimpan dalam English Teaching, HomeSchooling

homeschooling boyz

Menilik sejarah kemunculan Homeschooling atau home education yang ditulis oleh Mary Griffith dalam buku berjudul “The Unschooling handbook, how to use the whole world as your child’s classroom”, sekolah—rumah tidak menjadi sebuah gerakan sampai tahun 1970-an, saat pendidik bernama John Holt , mulai mengenalkan konsep sekolah-rumah pada publik. Holt yakin bahwa reformasi pendidikan yang terpusat pada anak-anak, yang dia percaya diperlukan, tidak akan- bahkan tidak bisa- terjadi di di dalam pemprograman wajib belajar di sekolah formal-konvensional.

Pada tahun 1977, Holt mulai mempublikasikan buletin berita yang dia namai “Growing Without Schooling”(tumbuh tanpa sekolah) untuk keluarga-keluarga yang mempunyai ide-ide untuk membantu anak-anak mereka belajar di luar sekolah.

Ide-ide Holt mempengaruhi banyak orang tua yang beraliran Puritan yang menganggap bahwa sekolah–sekolah formal di Amerika saat itu telah gagal mencetak siswa yang mempunyai kemandirian dalam belajar dan cenderung bobrok dalam moralitas. Menurut beberapa sumber diperkirakan di Amerika Serikat sekarang ini ada 1,5 juta sampai 2 juta anak yang bersekolah di rumah . Jumlah yang cukup besar tersebut merupakan data resmi jumlah sisiwa yang mengikuti kurikulum untuk bersekolah di rumah, karena para orang tua ingin agar sistem pendidikan mempunyai konsep dan visi yang jelas.

Di negeri kita konsep sekolah rumah sudah diterapkan lama oleh sebagian kecil masyarakat kita. Tengok saja di pondok-pondok pesantren para Kiai secara khusus telah mendidik anak-anaknya sendiri karena merasa lebih mengena dan puas bisa mengajarkan ilmu pada putra sendiri daripada sekadar mempercayakan pada orang lain.

Tokoh-tokoh terkenal seperti KH Agus Salim, Ki Hajar Dewantoro atau Buya Hamka juga mengembangkan cara belajar dengan sistem persekolahan di rumah ini. Metode ini dijalankan bukan sekedar agar anak didik lulus ujian kemudian mendapatkan ijazah, namun agar lebih mencintai dan punya semangat yang tinggi dalam mengembangkan ilmu yang dipelajari.

Bagi keluarga-keluarga yang telah menerapkan konsep ini, pendidikan yang mereka jalani adalah pendidikan yang penuh pemikiran, permainan bebas dan eksplorasi. Ini melepaskan kekakuan kalimat yang sering diucapkan guru di kelas seperti “Kalian seharusnya..”, “Kalian sebaiknya..” atau “Anak-anak, Pelajaran kita hari ini adalah..”. Kenapa demikian? Karena Homeschooling pada dasarnya merupakan metode pembelajaran yang menekankan pada masalah sikap dan pendekatan belajar yang lebih mandiri. Di Homeschooling pembelajar bisa memilih materi pelajaran apa yang mau dikaji tiap harinya sesuai dengan minatnya. Sederhananya sekolah-rumah menempatkan wewenang di tangan si pembelajar.

Salah satu contoh menarik adalah cerita yang dimuat di Kompas (13/3/2005) mengenai Wanti wowor (39) ibu empat anak yang berhasil mendidik dua anaknya Fini dan Fini sejak kecil belajar di rumah sampai akhirnya Fini melanjutkan sekolah desain mode di Esmond Jakarta, sedangkan Fina diterima di Universitas Indonesia program Internasional. Kelebihan yang ada pada mereka dibandingkan dengan mahasiswa yang sebelumnya telah terbiasa mengikuti sekolah formal-konvensional adalah kemandirian yang besar dalam belajar, kedisplinan yang tinggi dalam mengerjakan tugas-tugas perkuliahan dan juga lebih berani mengemukan pendapat dan berdebat.

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Pioneers in Homeschool Philosophy

14 Juli 2008 · Disimpan dalam English Teaching, Gado-Gado, HomeSchooling · Tagged , , , , ,

John Holt

Main article: John Holt (educator)

In 1964, John Caldwell Holt, a former World War II submariner with no professional training in education, published a book entitled How Children Fail which criticized traditional schools. The book was based on a theory he had developed as a teacher and an observer of children and education; that the academic failure of schoolchildren was caused by pressure placed on children in schools. The book became controversial[citation needed], and Holt began making appearances on major TV talk shows and writing book reviews for Life magazine. He also appeared as a guest on the To Tell The Truth TV game show.[4] In his follow-up work, How Children Learn, 1967, he tried to demonstrate the learning process of children and why he believed school short circuits this process.

In these books, Holt had not suggested any alternative to institutional schooling; he had hoped to initiate a profound rethinking of education to make schools friendlier toward children. As the years passed he became convinced that the way schools were was what society wanted, and that a serious re-examination was not going to happen in his lifetime.

Leaving teaching to publicize his ideas about education full time, he encountered books by other authors questioning the premises and efficacy of compulsory schooling, like Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich, 1970, and No More Public School by Harold Bennet, 1972. Then, in 1976, he published Instead of Education; Ways to Help People Do Things Better. In its conclusion he called for a “Children’s Underground Railroad” to help children escape compulsory schooling.[4] In response, Holt was contacted by families from around the U.S. to tell him that they were educating their children at home. In 1977, after corresponding with a number of these families, Holt began producing a magazine dedicated to home education: Growing Without Schooling.[5]

Holt later wrote a book about homeschooling, Teach Your Own, in 1981, and continued to hope for more expansive reform within education until his death in 1985.

Holt’s said: “… the human animal is a learning animal; we like to learn; we are good at it; we don’t need to be shown how or made to do it. What kills the processes are the people interfering with it or trying to regulate it or control it.”[6]. Holt later said, in 1980, “I want to make it clear that I don’t see homeschooling as some kind of answer to badness of schools. I think that the home is the proper base for the exploration of the world which we call learning or education. Home would be the best base no matter how good the schools were.”[6]

[edit] Raymond and Dorothy Moore

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, educational professionals Raymond and Dorothy Moore began to research the academic validity of the rapidly growing Early Childhood Education movement. This research included independent studies by other researchers and a review of over 8,000 studies bearing on Early Childhood Education and the physical and mental development of children.

They asserted that formal schooling before ages 8—12 not only lacked the anticipated effectiveness, but was actually harmful to children. The Moores began to publish their view that formal schooling was damaging young children academically, socially, mentally, and even physiologically. They presented evidence that childhood problems such as juvenile delinquency, nearsightedness increased enrollment of students in special education classes, and behavioral problems were the result of increasingly earlier enrollment of students.[7] The Moores cited studies demonstrating that orphans who were given surrogate mothers were measurably more intelligent, with superior long term effects – even though the mothers were mentally retarded teenagers – and that illiterate tribal mothers in Africa produced children who were socially and emotionally more advanced than typical western children, by western standards of measurement.[7]

Their primary assertion was that the bonds and emotional development made at home with parents during these years produced critical long term results that were cut short by enrollment in schools, and could neither be replaced nor afterward corrected in an institutional setting.[7] Recognizing a necessity for early out-of-home care for some children — particularly special needs and starkly impoverished children, and children from exceptionally inferior homes — they maintained that the vast majority of children are far better situated at home — even with mediocre parents — than with the most gifted and motivated teachers in a school setting (assuming that the child has a gifted and motivated teacher). They described the difference as follows: “This is like saying, if you can help a child by taking him off the cold street and housing him in a warm tent, then warm tents should be provided for all children — when obviously most children already have even more secure housing.”[8]

Similar to Holt, the Moores embraced homeschooling after the publication of their first work, Better Late Than Early, 1975, and went on to become important homeschool advocates and consultants with the publication of books like Home Grown Kids, 1981, Home School Burnout, and others.[7]

One common theme in the homeschool philosophies of both Holt and the Moores is that home education should not be an attempt to bring the school construct into the home, or a view of education as an academic preliminary to life. They viewed it as a natural, experiential aspect of life that occurs as the members of the family are involved with one another in daily living.

More infos: Wikipedia.org

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ISLAMIC HOME-SCHOOLING

10 Juli 2008 · Disimpan dalam English Teaching, Gado-Gado, HomeSchooling, My Feeling and emotion · Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Islamic Home-Schooling (Selanjutnya akan disingkat IHS) adalah Home-Schooling yang diselenggarakan bertitik tolak dari pertimbangan syar’i, yakni kewajiban orangtua untuk mengasuh dan mendidik anak, serta dijalankan dengan mengikuti tuntunan AlQuran dan AsSunnah sebagaimana dipahami dan diamalkan para pendahulu ummat ini yang shalih (AsSalafush Sholih).

Tujuannya adalah :

1. Terciptanya keluarga sakinah; yang di dalamnya semua hak dan kewajiban tertunaikan dengan sebaik-baiknya

2. Terbentuknya generasi penerus yang bertauhid, berpegang kepada sunnah, berakhlaq mulia, berbadan sehat, multi-cerdas, kreatif dan mandiri serta memiliki semangat untuk membela Islam dan kaum muslimin

SUBYEK IHS

IHS PERMATA HATI dimaksudkan bagi anak usia 0 – 13 tahun secara umum. Atau sampai anak berusia 16 tahun bagi orangtua yang memiliki kemampuan mengajarkan gramatika Bahasa Arab (kitab gundul) dan ilmu-ilmu syar’i tingkat menengah. Adapun setelah anak memasuki usia baligh maka anak harus diarahkan untuk melakukan rihlah ilmiyyah guna menimba ilmu dari para ulama, jika hal itu memungkinkan (dan memang harus diupayakan).

MENGAPA “ISLAMIC HOME-SCHOOLING” ?

Menyelenggarakan IHS membutuhkan motivasi yang luar biasa besar dari pihak orangtua. Motivasi akan muncul ketika seseorang dengan sadar dan yakin memahami alasan mengapa dia melakukan sesuatu. Maka kita dituntut untuk memiliki prinsip.

Ada beberapa pertimbangan yang dapat dijadikan prinsip dalam menyelenggarakan IHS :

1. Pertimbangan syar’i. Dalam syari’at, kewajiban mendidik anak adalah tanggung jawab orangtua.

“Hai orang-orang yang beriman, peliharalah dirimu dan keluargamu dari api neraka yang bahan bakarnya adalah manusia dan batu; penjaganya malaikat-malaikat yang kasar, keras, dan tidak mendurhakai Allah terhadap apa yang diperintahkan-Nya kepada mereka dan selalu mengerjakan apa yang diperintahkan.” (QS. At Tahrim : 6)

“Setiap anak yang dilahirkan berada di atas fithroh (Islam), maka kedua orangtuanyalah yang menjadikan dia yahudi atau nasrani atau majusi.” (HSR. Malik, Ahmad, AlBukhori, Muslim, Abu Daud, AtTirmidzi)

2. Pertimbangan fakta sejarah. Banyak kisah dalam AlQuran yang menggambarkan peran orangtua dalam mengasuh dan mendidik anak-anak mereka. (Baca : Qs. Maryam 54-55, QS. Luqman : 13) Interaksi Rasulullah shallallaahu ‘alaihi wasallam dengan cucu beliau, Hasan dan Husain, atau dengan sepupu beliau, Ibnu Abbas, atau dengan putera asuhnya yang berkhidmat kepada beliau, Anas bin Malik juga dapat kita jadikan referensi. Dari kalangan ulama Islam, tercatat misalnya Ibnul jauzi yang menulis kitab khusus untuk puteranya yang berisi petunjuk menuntut ilmu secara lengkap, Laftatul kabid fi nashihatil walad (Kitab ini patut menjadi rujukan dalam IHS).

3. Pertimbangan naturalitas. Perhatikanlah, anak ayam belajar tentang hidup kepada induknya. Anak kucing belajar tentang hidup kepada induknya. Bayi ikan paus belajar tentang hidup berpuluh tahun pada induknya. Tapi lihatlah si ujang dan si nyai. Kepada siapa mereka belajar tentang hidup ? Ah kasihan sekali, mereka belajar tentang hidup kepada orang lain yang tidak benar-benar mengenalnya !

4. Pertimbangan orisinalitas dan individualitas anak. Orisinalitas (keaslian) seorang anak adalah : fithroh, keingintahuan dan kreatifitasnya. Sedangkan individualitas (ke-diri-an), meliputi qolb dan jasad (contoh yang jelas : sidik jari, suara dan DNA). Orisinalitas dan individualitas menyebabkan tiap anak unik dalam segala hal, termasuk cara belajar mereka. Agar mereka dapat menemukan cara belajar mereka yang unik, anak wajib mendapatkan kebebasan. [4]

DARI MANA KITA MEMULAI ?
Klik yang ini ya: Islamic homeschooling ,how to begin

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Jaringan Homeschooling Islam

10 Juli 2008 · Disimpan dalam English Teaching, Gado-Gado, HomeSchooling · Tagged , , ,

Jaringan homeschooling berbasis agama sangat banyak. Diantara situs-situs Internet yang membahas homeschooling berdasarkan nilai-nilai Islam antara lain:

http://www.missionislam.com/homed/

http://www.ourseeds- islamiclinks

http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/

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Why Schools Don’t Educate

6 Juli 2008 · Disimpan dalam English Teaching, Gado-Gado

by John Taylor Gatto

I accept this award on behalf of all the fine teachers I’ve known over the years who’ve struggled to make their transactions with children honorable ones, men and women who are never complacent, always questioning, always wrestling to define and redefine endlessly what the word “education” should mean. A Teacher of the Year is not the best teacher around, those people are too quiet to be easily uncovered, but he is a standard-bearer, symbolic of these private people who spend their lives gladly in the service of children. This is their award as well as mine.

We live in a time of great school crisis. Our children rank at the bottom of nineteen industrial nations in reading, writing and arithmetic. At the very bottom. The world’s narcotic economy is based upon our own consumption of the commodity, if we didn’t buy so many powdered dreams the business would collapse – and schools are an important sales outlet. Our teenage suicide rate is the highest in the world and suicidal kids are rich kids for the most part, not the poor. In Manhattan fifty per cent of all new marriages last less than five years. So something is wrong for sure.

Our school crisis is a reflection of this greater social crisis. We seem to have lost our identity. Children and old people are penned up and locked away from the business of the world to a degree without precedent – nobody talks to them anymore and without children and old people mixing in daily life a community has no future and no past, only a continuous present. In fact, the name “community” hardly applies to the way we interact with each other. We live in networks, not communities, and everyone I know is lonely because of that. In some strange way school is a major actor in this tragedy just as it is a major actor in the widening guilt among social classes. Using school as a sorting mechanism we appear to be on the way to creating a caste system, complete with untouchables who wander through subway trains begging and sleep on the streets.

I’ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my twenty-five years of teaching – that schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers do care and do work very hard, the institution is psychopathic – it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to different cell where he must memorize that man and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.

Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the state of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted – sometimes with guns – by an estimated eighty per cent of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost in Barnstable on Cape Cod not surrendering its children until the 1880’s when the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard.

Now here is a curious idea to ponder. Senator Ted Kennedy’s office released a paper not too long ago claiming that prior to compulsory education the state literacy rate was 98% and after it the figure never again reached above 91% where it stands in 1990. I hope that interests you.

Here is another curiosity to think about. The homeschooling movement has quietly grown to a size where one and a half million young people are being educated entirely by their own parents. Last month the education press reported the amazing news that children schooled at home seem to be five or even ten years ahead of their formally trained peers in their ability to think.

I don’t think we’ll get rid of schools anytime soon, certainly not in my lifetime, but if we’re going to change what is rapidly becoming a disaster of ignorance, we need to realize that the school institution “schools” very well, but it does not “educate” – that’s inherent in the design of the thing. It’s not the fault of bad teachers or too little money spent, it’s just impossible for education and schooling ever to be the same thing.

Schools were designed by Horace Mann and Barnard Sears and Harper of the University of Chicago and Thorndyke of Columbia Teachers College and some other men to be instruments of the scientific management of a mass population. Schools are intended to produce through the application of formulae, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.

To a very great extent, schools succeed in doing this. But our society is disintegrating, and in such a society, the only successful people are self-reliant, confident, and individualistic – because the community life which protects the dependent and the weak is dead. The products of schooling are, as I’ve said, irrelevant. Well-schooled people are irrelevant. They can sell film and razor blades, push paper and talk on the telephones, or sit mindlessly before a flickering computer terminal but as human beings they are useless. Useless to others and useless to themselves.

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Homeschooling,Unschooling or Deschooling

3 Juli 2008 · Disimpan dalam English Teaching, Gado-Gado, HomeSchooling

Homeschooling ( also called home education), home learning or homeschool – is the education of children at home, typically by parents or professional tutors, rather than in a public or private school.

Although prior to the introduction of compulsory school attendance laws, most childhood education occurred within the family or community[1], homeschooling in the modern sense is an alternative in developed countries to formal education.

In many places homeschooling is a legal option for parents who wish to provide their children with a different learning environment than exists in nearby schools. These motivations range from a dissatisfaction with the schools in their area to the dissatisfaction of modern schools in general. It is also an alternative for families living in isolated rural locations and those who choose, for practical or personal reasons, not to have their children attend school.

Homeschooling may also refer to instruction in the home under the supervision of correspondence schools or umbrella schools. In some places, an approved curriculum is legally required if children are to be home-schooled. A curriculum-free philosophy of homeschooling may be called unschooling, a term coined in 1977 by American educator John Holt in his magazine Growing Without Schooling
Sumberipun niki nggih: Wikipedia.org/homeschooling,Yes!

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Pengajaran Bahasa Inggris di Perguruan Tinggi

14 Juni 2008 · Disimpan dalam English Teaching

Penelitian Alwasilah meski sudah lewat beberapa tahun yang lalu masih layak untuk dijadikan bahan kajian pengajaran bahasa Inggris di Perguruan Tinggi. Penelitian tersebut mengambil sampel sebanyak 111 responden yang mewakili tiga universitas di Bandung dan universitas lainnya terungkap bahwa 65,8% responden menganggap mata kuliah bahasa Inggris tidak memenuhi harapan mereka, dan sebagian besar responden (56,8%) tidak mengetahui silabus perkuliahan. Sebanyak 45,9% mengharapkan agar mata kuliah bahasa Inggris diberi bobot 4-6 SKS, dan ditawarkan pada semester 1 atau 2 (57,4%). Data statistik ini merupakan lampu kuning bahwa mata kuliah bahasa Inggris belum dikelola secara professional, dan belum berfungsi sebagaimana mestinya.

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