A repost of my article in Kompas newspaper, 25 February 2013 on why Indonesian scholars are not writing; available online here.
Karena kurang optimalnya Surat Edaran Ditjen Dikti No 152/E/T/2012 yang mewajibkan doktor memublikasikan karya ilmiah, tahun ini kewajiban tersebut akan diperketat.
Strategi yang diambil Direktorat Jenderal Pendidikan Tinggi (Ditjen Dikti) secara teknis juga menarik. Demi meningkatkan kualitas jurnal ilmiah di Indonesia, Januari lalu, Dikti—bersama Lembaga Penelitian dan Pengembangan Masyarakat ITB— meluncurkan Indeks Sitasi Indonesia. Ke depan, diharapkan laman tersebut bisa menjadi basis data abstrak dan sitasi dalam skala nasional.
Membangun jejaring yang mampu mengakomodasi publikasi ilmiah dosen dan peneliti dalam negeri yang terpencar tentu merupakan langkah baik. Namun, di saat bersamaan, sebagai redaktur pelaksana jurnal ilmiah nasional, saya merasakan sendiri bagaimana budaya menulis ilmiah—yang didukung kajian literatur yang serius, data yang kuat, dan analisis yang mampu mengungkap bagaimana temuan akan bermanfaat bagi publik yang lebih luas—amat langka.
Ditjen Dikti dan ITB sebagai pelaksana teknis mengambil langkah progresif menggunakan perkembangan teknologi informasi untuk mengatasi permasalahan minimnya publikasi ilmiah dalam negeri. Tetapi, jika publikasi ilmiah yang berkualitas itu langka, apakah peningkatan jumlah sitasi artikel akan menghasilkan peningkatan kualitas keilmuannya?
Ketimbang mengungkap permasalahan struktural secara normatif, saya ingin menyampaikan bahwa minimnya publikasi ilmiah ini adalah kelalaian bersama. Permasalahan struktural ini dengan reflektif dijelaskan oleh para pengajar di Universitas Indonesia (Membangun di Atas Puing Integritas, 2012).
Permasalahan ekonomi-politik sistem pendidikan tinggi dalam negeri juga sudah menjadi pembahasan sejak 1990-an. Masalah ini makin kompleks sekitar tahun 2000-an. Dengan status Badan Hukum Milik Negara, di mana otonomi kampus dari segi keuangan ternyata tidak berkorelasi dengan peningkatan mutu pendidikan.
Berbicara dalam konteks perguruan tinggi negeri (PTN) tempat saya bekerja, banyak dosen yang tidak sempat menulis dan berkarya karena dibebankan enam mata kuliah (18 SKS) per semester (setara dengan 30-35 jam kerja per minggu) di luar memegang jabatan struktural (setara dengan posisi manajer dalam perusahaan, juga 30-35 jam kerja per minggu). Hal ini disebabkan perubahan status PTN yang memiliki implikasi sistem keuangan yang mempersulit para pemimpin departemen memproyeksikan berapa jumlah dosen baru yang perlu direkrut untuk mengatasi ketimpangan rasio dosen-mahasiswa.
Karena itu, yang diambil adalah solusi-solusi jangka pendek yang amat pragmatis. Sebutlah pemberian beban kerja berlebihan atau memberikan mata kuliah tidak sesuai keahlian akibat kurangnya dosen tetap.
Perihal peningkatan kualitas akademik, Dikti sebetulnya sudah berupaya mengembangkan kapasitas dosen dengan memberikan beasiswa doktoral untuk menempuh studi di luar negeri. Namun, karena permasalahan struktural tadi belum diatasi, ketika kembali ke Tanah Air para dosen ini kembali diberi beban mengajar yang berat, yang mempersulit mereka untuk berkarya.
Tidak ada peningkatan jumlah karya ilmiah sejak beasiswa tersebut tersedia karena permasalahan kurangnya sumber daya pengajar belum diatasi. Tak heran bila Indonesia tertinggal jauh dibandingkan negara-negara dalam regional yang sama (Evers, 2003). Sebagai ilustrasi, Singapura memiliki 94 jurnal internasional dan Malaysia memiliki 45 jurnal internasional, sementara Indonesia hanya memiliki 12 jurnal internasional.
Memikirkan solusi
Dengan mempertimbangkan kenyataan hambatan struktural, maka inisiatif Dikti melalui Indeks Sitasi Indonesia tidak akan membuahkan hasil signifikan. Begitu pula langkah Dikti membatasi beasiswa doktoral khusus untuk program studi yang menghasilkan publikasi di jurnal internasional. Permasalahannya, setiap program studi tidak mampu membangun lingkungan akademik yang sehat sehingga menghambat pengembangan kapasitas dosen dan penelitinya.
Oleh karena itu, jika obyektif, untuk meningkatkan kualitas penelitian dan publikasi ilmiah, yang pertama harus dilakukan bukan hanya menelurkan kebijakan dari atas, tapi juga identifikasi masalah di bawah: memahami akarnya dari realitas keseharian para pengajar.
Sebagai ilustrasi, ada satu jurnal internasional—yang tak jelas peninjau dan asal-usulnya—yang menawari dosen ”negara berkembang” memublikasi karyanya dengan biaya 1.000 dollar AS dengan mengirim surat elektronik secara serentak. Solusi laissez-faire macam ini muncul karena pihak-pihak tertentu mengidentifikasi adanya ”permintaan” yang tidak dibarengi kemampuan pihak yang terlibat untuk memenuhinya. Jika Dikti tak segera mengisi ruang vakum tersebut, kemungkinan solusi macam inilah yang akan diambil, seperti dilakukan begitu banyak sektor lain di negara kita.
Oleh karena itu, yang pertama harus dilakukan adalah memberikan pelatihan kepada staf pengajar untuk membangun budaya menulis akademik. Namun, karena peneliti senior dalam negeri yang memiliki publikasi yang diakui kolega internasional amat langka, akan kurang efektif jika pelatihan tersebut dijalankan secara in-house di tiap universitas. Konsekuensinya, pelatihan ini harus melibatkan akademisi Indonesia yang juga pegawai di sejumlah institusi pendidikan di negara seperti Australia, Belanda, dan Jepang, yang memiliki basis kajian Indonesia yang kuat.
Program Scheme for Academic Mobility 2013 (SAME) yang mendanai kerja sama antara institusi pendidikan dalam dan luar negeri bisa mengakomodasi pelatihan semacam ini. Jadi, sebetulnya pelatihan bisa direalisasikan dan dana sudah dialokasikan Dikti. Masalahnya, apakah setiap pihak yang terlibat mampu secara independen berjejaring untuk jadi bagian dari solusi.
Saturday, March 02, 2013
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Present in Presence
To those living in cities with high usage of smartphones, this may be a common sight:
A group of friends, eating together, but busily typing on their phones. Taking pictures of each other, smiling to the small, built-in camera. Quickly going back to their phones, posting the pictures on the social media space they're part of. Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Path. They would periodically check their phones, sometimes typing away as their friend is talking - half listening, half nodding, half-everything.
Now. Think about billboards. As we're stuck in traffic, how much waste of unnecessary advertising blinking before our eyes. Some billboards are even moving images. Products we don't need, lifestyles that don't make us any happier or fulfilled. We train ourselves to ignore them, block out noise. We desensitise ourselves.
This noise block reminds me of putting on headphones to block out car honks and people yelling. It reminds me of scrolling down my Twitter timelines, feeling claustrophobic reading dozens of people reporting what they're eating, where they are, replying to mentions with 'OK'. Like ignoring commercial during TV breaks.
Our attention span becomes shorter, easily diverted because if we don't train ourselves to block out noise, we would be overwhelmed with unusable information (how does one respond to a headline saying 'Bieber publicist: Stolen laptop tweet not hoax' that is mentally healthier than self-induced amnesia?). This poor attention span relates to that friend typing away on their smartphone a second after they asked how we are, nodding away while they give us half-attention over our half-explanation.
It made me think about the notion of 'present'. And this is when I give you my disclaimer of 'bear with me now I will soon go into a very boring monologue'.
'Western' civilisation has taught us with the concept of linear time. Past, present, future. There's a desire of fixity, of predictability. Hearing 'Can we meet on 6 pm' is so much more reliable than 'Meet around Magrib?'. Our activities become planned according to our predictions of what will happen in the future. From our television news programmes to our 10-year career plans and our children's education. Anything else that doesn't fall into that fixity, we block out. Like commercials, like billboards, like trivial Tweets.
Compare this with the Inuits who centre their lives around activities, particularly hunting. A father teaches his son on patience while waiting for a prey to come, for nature always gives as needed. They hunt as they need to survive and do not believe in accumulation and savings. Consequently, the notion of greed is void in such culture. It is considered offensive to ask 'May I have a glass of water' to an Inuit. They do not see food as property. It is no one's. Everyone's. The winnings of a hunt, for instance, is not the property of the hunter - it is shared throughout the community. No half-attention span, no greed, no accumulation of property to be happy and secure.
Sounds like a good life, eh?
I then reflected on how my own smartphone, my own noise-blocking, my own concept of time and 'present' have left impressions on my mind and mentality. Have I ever checked my phone as my son was calling me? Yes. Have I ever interacted superficially with strangers on Twitter? Yes. Have I ever sat on a table during dinner and participated in an interaction where everyone was typing on their smartphones? Also yes.
It isn't about (negative) technological determinism. Some of my most meaningful friendships were cultivated through long distance communication. Mediated interaction does not always mean meaningless exchanges. It is about being present or listening, not about timeliness. Answering instantly.
It is about when we are relating to another human being, a friend, our children, our loved ones, we are in that moment - not blocking out a single thing. Our whole being, is being there.
It is something we sense when we read a book to our children and kiss the top of their heads. It is the sense we get when reading that long email we received from an old friend living abroad. Or when we shut our phones off before the plane takes off, close our eyes, and enjoy that moment of utter silence.
It is about feeling and being.
And I realise, now, more than ever, how we have let the overabundance of information and the multiple features made available by technology take that away from us.
So I have uninstalled all of the social media applications from my own smartphone. I have stopped my push emails, so that I don't read a work-related email on a Saturday during lunch with family. When I am ready and focused, I check my emails and respond to my colleagues (and sometimes also during a weekend, as I also sometimes have a family day on a workday!).
It's isn't about the technology or the mediated space of social media. But doing it when we choose to, not just because it arrives on our doorstep. Interacting when we know we can read properly and not half-critically respond just for the sake of instantaneity (this noun does exist! Check Merriam-Webster).
It reminds me a bit of Fromm's 'freedom from' and 'freedom to (Escape from Freedom, 1941). For Fromm, 'freedom from' (I think there are some parallels with 'escaping') is to free oneself from social conventions. Like an oppressed Catholic student who turned into a liberal feminist, or the exact opposite, a born-again Muslim turning to religion because of culture shock living in a 'Western' country. It becomes a kind of 'religious conversion' or jumping ships, being scared and finding sanctum. I don't think moderating information exposure is about running away from social conventions. About leaving mediated social interactions or not accessing information. It's about 'freedom to'. To decide for ourselves what kind of person we would like to be, what makes us whole and content. And in that, it includes some features of the 'thing we were 'running from'' (pardon the multiple quotes). I choose to be present in presence. And in that, I will choose what information I invite into my own mind, and I do not escape information altogether.
I may disagree with her policies, but this quote by Margaret Thatcher is pristine (in my defence, I see Meryl Streep mouthing it in the Iron Lady):
Watch your thoughts for they become words.
Watch your words for they become actions.
Watch your actions for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become your character.
And watch your character, for it becomes your destiny!
What we think we become.
Have a happy Sunday! Toodles.
A group of friends, eating together, but busily typing on their phones. Taking pictures of each other, smiling to the small, built-in camera. Quickly going back to their phones, posting the pictures on the social media space they're part of. Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Path. They would periodically check their phones, sometimes typing away as their friend is talking - half listening, half nodding, half-everything.
Now. Think about billboards. As we're stuck in traffic, how much waste of unnecessary advertising blinking before our eyes. Some billboards are even moving images. Products we don't need, lifestyles that don't make us any happier or fulfilled. We train ourselves to ignore them, block out noise. We desensitise ourselves.
This noise block reminds me of putting on headphones to block out car honks and people yelling. It reminds me of scrolling down my Twitter timelines, feeling claustrophobic reading dozens of people reporting what they're eating, where they are, replying to mentions with 'OK'. Like ignoring commercial during TV breaks.
Our attention span becomes shorter, easily diverted because if we don't train ourselves to block out noise, we would be overwhelmed with unusable information (how does one respond to a headline saying 'Bieber publicist: Stolen laptop tweet not hoax' that is mentally healthier than self-induced amnesia?). This poor attention span relates to that friend typing away on their smartphone a second after they asked how we are, nodding away while they give us half-attention over our half-explanation.
It made me think about the notion of 'present'. And this is when I give you my disclaimer of 'bear with me now I will soon go into a very boring monologue'.
'Western' civilisation has taught us with the concept of linear time. Past, present, future. There's a desire of fixity, of predictability. Hearing 'Can we meet on 6 pm' is so much more reliable than 'Meet around Magrib?'. Our activities become planned according to our predictions of what will happen in the future. From our television news programmes to our 10-year career plans and our children's education. Anything else that doesn't fall into that fixity, we block out. Like commercials, like billboards, like trivial Tweets.
Compare this with the Inuits who centre their lives around activities, particularly hunting. A father teaches his son on patience while waiting for a prey to come, for nature always gives as needed. They hunt as they need to survive and do not believe in accumulation and savings. Consequently, the notion of greed is void in such culture. It is considered offensive to ask 'May I have a glass of water' to an Inuit. They do not see food as property. It is no one's. Everyone's. The winnings of a hunt, for instance, is not the property of the hunter - it is shared throughout the community. No half-attention span, no greed, no accumulation of property to be happy and secure.
Sounds like a good life, eh?
I then reflected on how my own smartphone, my own noise-blocking, my own concept of time and 'present' have left impressions on my mind and mentality. Have I ever checked my phone as my son was calling me? Yes. Have I ever interacted superficially with strangers on Twitter? Yes. Have I ever sat on a table during dinner and participated in an interaction where everyone was typing on their smartphones? Also yes.
It isn't about (negative) technological determinism. Some of my most meaningful friendships were cultivated through long distance communication. Mediated interaction does not always mean meaningless exchanges. It is about being present or listening, not about timeliness. Answering instantly.
It is about when we are relating to another human being, a friend, our children, our loved ones, we are in that moment - not blocking out a single thing. Our whole being, is being there.
It is something we sense when we read a book to our children and kiss the top of their heads. It is the sense we get when reading that long email we received from an old friend living abroad. Or when we shut our phones off before the plane takes off, close our eyes, and enjoy that moment of utter silence.
It is about feeling and being.
And I realise, now, more than ever, how we have let the overabundance of information and the multiple features made available by technology take that away from us.
So I have uninstalled all of the social media applications from my own smartphone. I have stopped my push emails, so that I don't read a work-related email on a Saturday during lunch with family. When I am ready and focused, I check my emails and respond to my colleagues (and sometimes also during a weekend, as I also sometimes have a family day on a workday!).
It's isn't about the technology or the mediated space of social media. But doing it when we choose to, not just because it arrives on our doorstep. Interacting when we know we can read properly and not half-critically respond just for the sake of instantaneity (this noun does exist! Check Merriam-Webster).
It reminds me a bit of Fromm's 'freedom from' and 'freedom to (Escape from Freedom, 1941). For Fromm, 'freedom from' (I think there are some parallels with 'escaping') is to free oneself from social conventions. Like an oppressed Catholic student who turned into a liberal feminist, or the exact opposite, a born-again Muslim turning to religion because of culture shock living in a 'Western' country. It becomes a kind of 'religious conversion' or jumping ships, being scared and finding sanctum. I don't think moderating information exposure is about running away from social conventions. About leaving mediated social interactions or not accessing information. It's about 'freedom to'. To decide for ourselves what kind of person we would like to be, what makes us whole and content. And in that, it includes some features of the 'thing we were 'running from'' (pardon the multiple quotes). I choose to be present in presence. And in that, I will choose what information I invite into my own mind, and I do not escape information altogether.
I may disagree with her policies, but this quote by Margaret Thatcher is pristine (in my defence, I see Meryl Streep mouthing it in the Iron Lady):
Watch your thoughts for they become words.
Watch your words for they become actions.
Watch your actions for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become your character.
And watch your character, for it becomes your destiny!
What we think we become.
Have a happy Sunday! Toodles.
Saturday, April 07, 2012
On Soulmate(s)
There are many views on soulmates. Plato, in the Symposium, told the story of how Zeus, fearing the power of humans, split them in two - making them spend their entire lives searching for the other half. In Abrahamic religions, soulmates are generally believed to be predestined, one for each, and kept by building marriages to maintain order and fairness. Postmodern views on soulmates break them into several people; releasing love from institutional binds and allowing law to protect the vulnerable.
All the while Hollywood cashes in on our insecurities and dreams of finding the perfect person. Titanic grossed $1,851,561,750. I rest my case.
But I refuse to reduce the concept of soulmates into one person. The definition of mate is 'one of a matched pair'. It assumes that a soul has a form. I do not see souls, by definition an 'immaterial essence', as something that can be matched. Wong ngga ada bentuknya, gimana caranya ada pasangannya.
I cannot seem to stop citing on Erich Fromm's Having and Being; that in a post-industrial society we are designed to see people as objects. We forget that life is about experiencing and learning, not about possessing. By this assumption, soulmates are not to be attained, but to be experienced.
And what is experience if not present in various entities. I define soulmate(s) then as a soul's companion or entities through which we find meaningful experiences.
It may come through objects, like being inspired by a painting.
It may come from activities, like praying or hugging.
It may come from places, like when we take a deep breath after seeing a breathtaking view.
It may come from life periods, defining moments in our lives - a childhood memory.
And it may come from people. From our children, partners, meaningful friendships, and a genuine moment with a stranger.
They may be simultaneous, isolated, individual, collective, separate, intact; but they have one thing in common. In their meaningfulness, they contribute to our wholeness. And in that, they accompany our souls in the only way I relate to: that they are not ours to possess.
But a means to realise that we are living.
All the while Hollywood cashes in on our insecurities and dreams of finding the perfect person. Titanic grossed $1,851,561,750. I rest my case.
But I refuse to reduce the concept of soulmates into one person. The definition of mate is 'one of a matched pair'. It assumes that a soul has a form. I do not see souls, by definition an 'immaterial essence', as something that can be matched. Wong ngga ada bentuknya, gimana caranya ada pasangannya.
I cannot seem to stop citing on Erich Fromm's Having and Being; that in a post-industrial society we are designed to see people as objects. We forget that life is about experiencing and learning, not about possessing. By this assumption, soulmates are not to be attained, but to be experienced.
And what is experience if not present in various entities. I define soulmate(s) then as a soul's companion or entities through which we find meaningful experiences.
It may come through objects, like being inspired by a painting.It may come from activities, like praying or hugging.
It may come from places, like when we take a deep breath after seeing a breathtaking view.
It may come from life periods, defining moments in our lives - a childhood memory.
And it may come from people. From our children, partners, meaningful friendships, and a genuine moment with a stranger.
They may be simultaneous, isolated, individual, collective, separate, intact; but they have one thing in common. In their meaningfulness, they contribute to our wholeness. And in that, they accompany our souls in the only way I relate to: that they are not ours to possess.
But a means to realise that we are living.
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