The Role of Parents in delivering Ndongeng

a. The Role of Parents in delivering Ndongeng

The parents or teachers in language learning has an important role in delivering the children to reach the expected goal which is the children have a good character and are able to use the language well. It means that before arranging the children to understand the literature, parents or teachers must have the knowledge and experience of the literary work before hand. Such circumstances are expected that the parents’ or teachers’ experiences in understanding literary works can be transformed to the children.

Talking about children, biologically, a child (plural: children) is a human between the stages of birth and puberty around the age of 16 years old. The legal definition of the children generally refers to age or as known as a person younger than the age of majority. The children’s development has a critical period in the language development. In this context, the writer looked at children under the age of 16 in Indonesia as students who attend either elementary schools or junior high schools including their social lives outside the schools.

According to competency-based curriculum (CBC) 2004, at Subiyantoro (2013;

5) ndongeng (narrate), or in the broader sense of story-telling, for junior high school students (storytelling in Bahasa, and ndongeng in Java) can develop: (a) religious moral values with increasing confidence to God, the Almighty, laying the basic character to become good citizens; and (b) the self-development of social and 5) ndongeng (narrate), or in the broader sense of story-telling, for junior high school students (storytelling in Bahasa, and ndongeng in Java) can develop: (a) religious moral values with increasing confidence to God, the Almighty, laying the basic character to become good citizens; and (b) the self-development of social and

In a study conducted by Faridi (2013: 3) which examined the process of language learning in elementary school in Central Java with 200 respondents representing 200 elementary school summed up the activities of teaching and learning cannot run naturally or as expected by the curricula because of several reasons. Among others are the teachers, including qualifications and educational background. Following is the table consisting detailed information on the obstacles.

Table 1. Obstacles in English Teaching and Learning No Component

Description

1 Teacher - Some of them are class teacher - Most of them do not have English education

background; there are some teachers who took the course or learn by themselves. Only

several teachers are in English education program.

2 Curriculum - 60% of the teacher has the guideline / curriculum for English language teaching - Different curriculum materials especially which are taught to the students

3 Teaching Materials - Most of the book or teaching materials are

incomplete (50%) - Only 20% of the books which are published - 15% of the book are published by the

publisher with the recommendation from Educational Ministry

4 Availability of the - Some of them are not enough (85%) appropriate books

- 15% of them are not available

5 Knowledge on - Range from good (7%), adequate (60%) and teaching method

poor (33%).

( Faridi, 2013;3)

Based on the table, the role of parents is required in implementation of cultural values in the character building of the children which can be seen when they read their children fairy tales before going to bed.

The role of parents compared to teachers’ role in schools are certainly more important because they spend more time with their children. Let's look at the frequency of meetings, the kids are usually at school between 6 to 8 hours per day, 6 days per week and 24 days in a month. How often are they at home? They are usually at home between 16 to 18 hours minus sleep time between 8 to 10 hours remains 8 to 10 hours awake. The question is whether the parents are very busy or not so they don't have time to be with the children while asking for their experiences in school or out of school. This is important because children can ask or tell their difficulties to their parents, how to solve problems and so on.

Sending a child to join additional lessons or private learning do not solve the problem of the character building. In a private learning, children only being trained mechanically to do academic matter without getting any psychological development which the target is how to complete the lessons as soon as possible. If parents switch the liability to the housekeeper, it is even worse. The problem is that they are not trained or knowledgeable enough to respond to children’s questions. They just answer based on the instant view without considering the future impact on children's psychological development.

As a medium in children’s character building, parents or teachers can choose any topics including learning mother tongue. Parents can develop children’s language skills, for example by giving some story books to their children to read in order to develop their reading habit. Through reading, the children can access information and get ideas. To achieve these goals, parents should be able to choose the reading materials appropriately for their children. The goal is to guide them the right approach to be applied at the level of children’s intellectual development. If it is done properly, there will be a learning process which is the process of two-way communication between parents and children (Sagala, 2005: 61).