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When teachers are the bullies, where do students go?
A World Bank report in 2020 has called for a 'teacher reform' in Indonesia, saying that Indonesian teachers’ knowledge in language, math and pedagogy was very low compared with other countries.
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Nation’s educators: A number of teachers attend an appointment ceremony as civil servants at Tegar Beriman ground in Cibinong, Bogor Regency, West Java, on July 5, 2023. Antara/Yulius Satria Wijaya (Antara/Yulius Satria Wijaya)
After a high school student in Temanggung Regency, Central Java, tried to burn down his school on June 27, Indonesian social media was awash with one question: Why?
As the news cycle unfolded, it turns out the 14-year-old is a victim of physical and verbal bullying not only by his schoolmates but also by some of his teachers. He shared in a press conference that his teacher would rip his school assignment to pieces.
The school principal, Bejo Pranoto, described him to media outlets as an “attention seeker” who would puke when he was called into the teachers’ room.
Also in June, a female student at a state high school in Nunukan, North Borneo, was reportedly slapped by a social studies teacher at school. Seeing the bruise on her face, her parents demanded that the teacher be removed from office as her daughter was scared to go to school again.
“We’ll leave it to the parents to see. Did the teacher hit the kid with a sense of hatred? Did the teacher hit her with full force? I don’t think so,” Akhmad, head of Nunukan Education Agency, said on Monday to try to mediate tensions, as quoted by Kompas.com.
Her mother Maslina is still fighting an uphill battle to get the teacher even sanctioned.
