The 20 Hours Method for Better School Graduates in Indonesia

By: Abid Ilmun Fisabil, University of Riau

Introduction

World nowadays has become almost borderless for those who want to be success.
Competing for jobs, titles following our names, seats in the highest board of a profitable company,
making your hobbies are able to fulfill your needs and etcetera. but the problem is, we are not
going to compete alone but also with those who are seeking for the same job or goal as we are.
Many skills are required to reach these goals. To work as an engineer, we need to be good at
science. To work as a CEO, we need to have public speaking skill and the art to be a leader. To be
a professional football player, we need to be good at kicking ball and team working. The question
is how long does it take to master those particular skills, in order to be able to compete in the
globalized world.

Education plays big part of the scenario. It is defined as a planned effort to establish a study
environment and educational process so that the student may develop their own potential in
particular part of skills. When someone being successful enough, they will be asked on how they
can get to this point of life, how they study in the past, which educational institution they have
been and how long it takes to acquire the skill.

It all started in our school time when we try to study things that the government believe it
is important for supporting our life. They decided what subject to be learned from kindergarten to
high school mostly. Not all schools are willing to follow those curriculums. There are also schools
that adapt others curriculum to begin with. At the end of the day, regulations are regulations, if we
want to be officially graduated from those schools and applying for higher national schools, the
final examination should follow the standard which the government have decided, especially
Indonesia. Indonesia has four levels in its educational system, there are pre-primary, primary,
secondary, and tertiary educations which teach us skills needed on the field. School is the place
where those levels are applied and divided into two types, national and private schools. Regardless
of who owns the school, whether it is owned by the government or private party, the curriculum is
the same. It is obligatory for national school to follow what the government have established but
not for private school. Private schools have their own privilege on establishing curriculum. Even
if they have different curriculum, like what has been mentioned above, it must be finished with the
national examination which is the standard for continuing to the next level of education.

Indonesia is doing quite impressive on the system. According to UNESCO it reaches

95.38% in 2016 for the rate of literacy among population aged 15 years and older, 99.67% among
population aged 15 to 24 years. Even so, the Programme for International Student Assessment
(PISA) tests last conducted by the OECD in 2015 showed that Indonesian students were
performing at lower levels in all areas – science, mathematics, and reading – then the OECD
average and even being outperformed by students in neighboring – Malaysia, Vietnam, and
Thailand – that also joined the tests. This happened because the students mostly are unable to have
better quality of teachers that results in less skilled graduates – without denying that certain
schools, that are forming the minority, are doing fine with the quality of its teachers and even
facilities – that are unable to easily adjust to the job field or even more idealist, being success.

Content

Education – as stated in the second paragraph – aims for the students to be able to develop
their own potential. As teacher that is seeing the students from outside, we cannot barely see what’s
their real potential. Keep establishing and changing system or curriculum is not going to help them
developing their potential because the system only affects in general but not partial, meaning that
it will impact the students as a whole without considering whether it is suitable to them as a person.
As an official, it is already a good step by establishing a centralized system which is going to be
the standard of educating students in each institution. But something also needs to be considered
on how we – as a teacher – can also contribute to their development directly. That is why this essay
comes up with a method by Josh Kaufman to be established along with the educational system in
Indonesia known as “the 20 hours method”.

The 20 hours method is one of the ways to learn new skills you want to acquire. It takes
10.000 hours to achieve mastery in a field like what is written in the 1993’s paper by Anders
Ericsson but it only takes 20 hours to be good at something if you practice intelligently. Meaning
that, if you want to replace Cristiano Ronaldo, Sungha Jung, and etcetera, it is going to take 10.000
hours to achieve it. but to only be good as all football players, guitar players, and etcetera, we only
need to practice 20 hours even with skipping couple of days.
 The method will be applied in two parts in teaching activity, that is when the teacher giving
practical lessons and home work. The reason why this essay takes the two parts is because practical
lessons mostly the skill that is demanded by company in searching employees and homework
mostly will gain more understanding on the materials given by the teachers. At the end of the day,
these two parts of teaching will develop students’ potential.

When it comes to the materials that requires practicum to the students, it mostly only has
small amount of duration that – according to Josh Kaufman theory – is not enough to be good at
those particular skills. We cannot hope the students will repeat it at home. Moreover, most of the
practicum requires tools that only schools could provide. We are going to apply the 20 hours
method to fix stated problemss. As all of us have known, not all chapters of the subject require
practicum. Most of them only require good understanding on the theory. Teachers could use the
method by ensuring in one semester the students must complete 20 hours practicum on certain
chapter. 20 hours in a semester is about 3,3 hours each month, adding two or three chapters with
practicum would be no problem. Besides, according to the research conducted by Rasyad A.
Parinduri in 2013, adding more hour on the school term length decreases class repeating.

The question might occur on how this method could also contribute to the students’
understanding. We already know that the majority of the chapters in each subject mostly do not
need practicum. Something that is special from the 20 hours method is it fits to every kind of skills,
whether it is a mind skill or body skill. Understanding chapter and what is inside it could be
regarded as a mind skill. Teachers mostly give homework to be done in a week, and if we apply
this method into it, it only burdens the students more. Teachers in this case could give twenty hours
to the students on completing their home works that is going to be submitted after a month.
Considering that most of schools in Indonesia have 10 – 11 subjects in a week. Meaning that, in
the worst scenario what will happen is, when all subjects require homework each month, students
will spend 220 hours from 720 hours normal time in a month on finishing their home works. That
is why, instead of collecting the home works after a week, teachers – under this method – must
collect it after a month. To make it easier, 20 hours in a month is only 40 minutes each day. Time
ballots are required for students to fill after they finish the first 40 minutes, the second, the third,
and so on.
 At this point, teachers must also understand that this method will only work if the given
home works and practicum acquired deliberate practice. Deliberate practice is the repeating on
certain activity and already included in the 20 hours method. The most important thing on using
the 20 hours method with deliberate practice is feedback. Before the home works reach the dead
line, teachers must control the progress of it by giving feedback toward the incomplete homework
and at the end of each 3,3 hours of practicum. If the students are only doing these two things
without any feedback from the teachers, students will be stagnating in development and slow the
teaching activity. That is how building more understanding and field skill with the 20 hours method
for the students will help the students on developing their potentials.

The 20 hours method will result in adding more school term length. Obviously, most
Indonesian students hate being in the school for longer time because they will feel tired on
studying. But, this disadvantage will be covered with so many benefits that are going to occur
namely better understanding on the subjects, reducing the anxiety of parents who are struggling
on supervising their children when they go home from school, and teachers does not have to rush
the materials to the students before the end of each semester because they already got many times
to complete it from the beginning.

Conclusion

Being concerned about how our children are progressing is a justified and a must thing to
be done by parents, teachers, schools, and even a government because humans are not going to
live forever. Humans will be replaced with younger humans, parents will be replaced with their
children, teachers will be replaced with their students, and a country will be led by its young
generations. It is time for us to think and establish what system that could make this young
generation perform a better world in the future.

Before we make a better system, we should consider what our children’s problem
that requires new system. Indonesia has been known by keep on changing and developing its
educational system, especially in the curriculum. Most of our students are performing under the
average of OECD. The reason why this essay takes OECD as the parameter is because the
Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture still participate in PISA survey with other countries.
Meaning, OECD standard is still one that can state whether our education or students are doing
good or not. To overcome this problem, the 20 hours method is brought to the case. This method
will be applied in parts in teaching activity, that is when the teacher giving practical lessons and
home work. At the end of the day, these two parts of teaching will develop students’ potential as
the definition of education itself and fix the problems occurred in the previous paragraphs.

References

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Indonesia

http://uis.unesco.org/country/ID

https://www.compareyourcountry.org/pisa/country/IDN?lg=en

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26384712

http://sourcesofinsight.com/learn-anything-20-hours/

https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/46158.html

https://www.google.com/amp/s/id.theasianparent.com/kelebihan-dan-kekurangan-full-day-
school/amp?espv=1