Improving Approaches

After watching the 3 programmes, it is my opinion that in Indonesia improvements could be made to exercise programs, vocational education and performing arts.

Indonesia should encourage children to do exercise before school to focus children and expand their concentration spans. Classrooms are very crowded here, so perhaps smaller class sizes will be beneficial to allow students to move more freely and teachers can introduce more active learning activities. This country should include teachings of the importance of exercise and a healthy lifestyle in the Physical Exercise curriculum because children here spend way too much time playing computer games or staying inside air conditioned houses, this could lead to serious health problems in the future. Heat is a major factor in children not wanting to exercise outside so schools should lead by example designing indoor air conditioned sports facilities. Swimming pools could be utilised much more and swimming should be made a priority. School hours could be made longer so children can incorporate more sports activities. To increase children's competitive and team spirit Saturday sports game fixtures should be mandatory.

Vocational education in Indonesia should enable students to do an apprenticeship or a work experience placement, this would dramatically improve this countries employment and widen children's horizons when looking for a career. An improvement would be the placement of a careers advisor in each school who could offer career guidance, they would teach students and put into practice skills necessary to survive in different work environments. In many schools here they have various food vendors which sell lunch and snacks to students, schools could allow students to set up their own canteen or a similar business, the implementation of a school business in each school could give students practical business education, team work skills, confidence and encourage them to think for themselves.

Being in Asia, drama is not seen as an important subject, I would like to see more teaching of the cultural importance and history of the performing arts in Indonesia and think that schools should teach puppetry and various traditional Indonesian dances, this could be incorporated into the 'Indonesian' and 'History' curriculum. As they do in Cuba, students could teach other students what they have learnt so students gain leadership qualities as well as being creative.