Ghost of National Final Exams that (still) haunts the Indonesian School Libraries' Information Literacy Activities and Students' Reading Interests

Abstract

The Indonesian government introduced the compulsory-nation-wide National Exam (called Ujian Nasional in Bahasa Indonesia shortened to UN) since 2005. The systems required the students of class 6,9 and 12 to pass the National Exam in certain courses. This paper limits to class 12 as they will enroll to higher education. For class 12 there are threee compulsory courses, that are Indonesian Language, English and mathematics. As class 12 was divided into three departments (i.e. natural sciences, social sciences and language), each students must participate in the related-courseexams such those who choose natural sciences must take Physics, Chemistry, Biology; for social sciences the students must take Economics, Geography, Sociology while those from language department must take Indonesian literature, Anthropology and selected foreign languages (Chinese n, Japanese, German, Arab language) respectively. As the National Exam are compulsory, then the schools teach the students mostly in those subjects, sometime sacrificing other courses, the students are crammed only the required courses. Indirectly the students supported by the teachers are involved in information literacy activities albeit limited to certain subjects and usually using widely internet and google (a disadvantage for students with limited technological infrastructure and not 24 hours-electricity facilitiy). As being drilled into National Exam required courses, then the students are not really complete information literate person, they just partly information literate. Sacrificing other subjects, the students do not read literary books, they just read the novel excerps(!) This findings supported the acclaimed Indonesian poet Taufik Ismail who denoted that the Indonesian high school students since 1970s do not literary works at all. Apart from the (controversial) National Exam systems, from library point-of-view it is suggested that the school libraries actively took part in the information literacy holistically not partially in order to support the life long learning through information literacy program.