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any people misunderstand ISO as International Standards Organization. Unfortunately, ISO is not an abbreviation!

ISO derived from isos (Greek) which means equal. However ISO is well-known as an international organization dealing with standardization. It is usually called the International Organization for Standardization. If an abbreviation is needed, it should be IOS, not ISO.

The management of big companies should be handled by people with certain capabilities and competences. Those people are usually professionals. Big companies are managed professionally with management standards, so the company and its employees usually have various certificates such as ISO, CIA (Certified Internal Auditor), etc.

A company’s professionalism and quality is inseparable from its certificates.

Production processes should be carried out systematically and thoroughly based on expected standards. Zero defects becomes the standard of performance. Standardization in industry is absolute and taken very seriously by companies that prioritize quality.

Standardization allows the efficiency of a production process to be assessed. Quality management standards pays more attention to “how” than “what” because standardized processes create expected products. Standardization means the production process will be effective, efficient without depending on the final result.

Standard production steps must be followed. If the process does not produce optimal products, it can be concluded that there is something that does not comply with the standard. From this context, the term “do it right the first time” (DRIFT) is appropriate for production processes.

Nevertheless, standardization is only possible when materials, equipment and tools are uniform, when employee performance fulfills predetermined criteria and the steps are orderly. If one of the components is not in place, it is impossible to get the same quality.

As a consequence, standardization in business can only be acheived if the components are identical.

Recently, most of the principles of education management come from business. Educational management is inseparable from basic principles of management in business and industry

The Indonesian educational system uses certification to create the standardization.

Qualifications, competence and certification of teachers and lecturers improve the quality of national education. Institutions compete for ISO certification to show that their management meets international standard.

However, according to an educational observer, standardization and certification in education leads to sterility, incompetence, and a monotonous “corporate” spirit. Education should be varied, innovative and dialectical.

The principle of corporate standardization as explained above, is not appropriate. If high school students with similar intellectual capabilities are taught with the same materials and by the same teachers, the results — the “products” — must be different. Some of them want to be doctors, others electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, a psychologist, an architect, teachers, scientists, businessmen, and even social worker or two and, perhaps, an
artist.

Education is not a specific product like in industry. Education should develop creatively and based on the uniqueness of every pupil or student.

Aries Musnandar
Malang, East Java