NO STUPID CHILD

Damn! Why don’t you understand this subject? It’s so easy! You’re stupid boy!

We often hear this snapping or perhaps we also have snapped the children who did not understand the subject which we had been taught them. We were not aware that we had labelled them as the stupid boy. Actually, this statement make them not believe their teachers—this is called cognitive shut down.

So, why are many children hard to understand the subjects? There are many reasons—keen intelligence, mentality, style of learning, ect. Each student have different keenness of intelligence with the others. Some students reading the subject just once are understandability immedietly, and also other students need to read the subject in many times to understand. If we know that our students have low keen intelligence, we should help them to study hard. Mentality also affect that the students can learn a subject easily or hard. For example, childhood traumas, a child is difficult to learn.

The learning way among students is different. There are students who like reading loudly and also weakly, understand the object seen, and understand object imagined. The teachers must know how their students learn.

According to explanation above, nobody of the students is stupid but they only do not yet know the right way of learning so that the teachers must aware it. In this case, the teachers are not only people who teach in school but also student’s family in home especially parents. The question is what we have tried to become teacher who understands the student. If not yet, let us learn and learn then practise!

If we still believe that they are stupid, we seem blasphemously because children are the creation of God and we know that God creates humans as the best creature. As evidence, humans are given brain as the best memory in the world. It likes we say that “the cake on the table is so bad and not delicious”—we have humiliated the chef who make that cake. It is a parable.

The teachers and parents must believe that each child has talent. Munif Chatif, an expert of education in Indonesia, said that all children are the winner. Of course we will never know all children as the winner if we always think the winner students are the children having mathematics smartness, reading text fluently, or having beautiful writing. It is not enough—we must know their other intelligences.

In Theory of Multiple Intelligences, intelligences of the people divide into eight kinds that is linguistics, mathematics, visual-spatial, music, kinetics, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist. Linguistics is abilities about reading, writing, discussion, making argumentation and debating. Mathematics is abilities in arithmetic, logical reasoning, and problem solving. Visual-spatial is abilities of drawing, photographing, created sculptures, and designing. Music is abilities about singing, making rhythm, and hearing tones from musical instruments. Kinetics is abilities of producing movement and equilibrium. Interpersonal is abilities to connect with relationships between people. Intrapersonal is abilities about self recognizing deeply, having intuition and high motivation, and very sensitive about life objectives. Naturalist is abilities to describe nature happening, clarification, and identification.

Therefore, do not label the child who do not understand mathematics as the stupid boy because perhaps he has ability to draw, sing, or associate. There is the child who hard associate but perhaps he is able to dance—or there is the child who has all intelligences above. So we must omit all negative prejudice about the stupid children. We must be optimism and patient to educate our students so that they can learn better. 

Having exercise in field of Gili Island

Team of Kercengan

Danial is reading-holic

Note: 

Catatan ini dibuat dalam bahasa Inggris juga untuk peningkatan kemampuan bahasa inggris saya. Jika ada kesalahan struktur dan pemilihan kata, harap dimaklumi. Saya lebih senang lagi jika anda memberikan masukan untuk memperbaiki kesalahan tersebut.Thanks!