Perspective
have rights and freedoms to develop their own curriculum. Different from 12-year education, Elementary to Senior high schools, there is no normative or standard curriculum for
universities to follow. Each university will conduct their own curriculum under the supervision of Accreditation Bureau of Tertiary Education on behalf Education ministry. The
eligibility and quality of university will be assessed and standardized within a certain period of time.
Stenhouse 1975 p.142 defines a curriculum as ‘An attempt to communicate the essential principles and features of an educational proposal in such a form that it is open to critical
scrutiny and capable of effective translation into practice. This echoes that curriculum is one of the essential elements supporting education. However, Bordier and Passeron 1977 as
cited in Auerbach and Burgess 1985, p.476 claim that no curriculum is neutral. There are always particular cultural and social values that underlie in pedagogical implementation. I
acknowledge that the sense of imperialism by dominant power of NES is strongly embedded in Indonesia curriculum as the perfect model. As the product of NES teaching, there will be
illogical admiration of NESs which tr iggers NNESs’ desire to become a member of NES
culture Shridhar and Shridar, 1994, as cited in McKay, 2002 p.40. It will be problematic since students will undermine their own local heritage.
2. ENGLISH DEPARTMENT BACKGROUND AND GOALS
As it has been explained before about the imperialism of NES, students tend to subjectively change their culture into NES cultures. The reason is although culture is spelled C by many
educational institutions, yet it is not perceived a major part of language curriculum Steele Suozzo 1994, p.120 which is assumed here as source and international cultures. When
curriculum is developed, educators should be careful to elaborate it, as Auerbach and Burgess 1985 accentuate The choices that educator make reflect their views of learning process, the
social context for learning, and the students place in society” p.476. Based on the observation, English department as a part of faculty of teachers training and educational
science in Pattimura University has already set the go al “to generate professional, competent
and highly dedicated, innovative and competitive English graduates to sensitive in dynamic social development in Maluku and Indonesia” Kemendiknas, 2009.
Perspective
Obviously, this department is ready to answer the global demand for the competent English teachers who proactively maintain the cultural heritage. Nevertheless, the implication of
teaching EIL and intercultural acquisition have not been contextualized clearly in the classroom as it will be discussed further.
3. CROSS CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING CLASS
Since curriculum is developed by each university, therefore the English department is in charge with of its own curriculum and each lecturer is encouraged to design his or her own
syllabus. It is asserted that that there are three different ways to teach culture. First method is eclectic method, in which culture is into incorporated curriculum. Second one is incorporation
with cultural syllabus. While the last method is culture taught isolated as part of intercultural studies Lessard-Clouston, 2009. In this study, Cross Cultural Understanding CCU is
described. The number of students in this course is 60 students and teachers have about 90 minutes every meeting in class. They enroll this course in semester four in the age of 20.
Students come from different source cultures such as Tual, Ambon, Saumlaki and other districts in my province, Maluku. Class discussion and lecture are mostly done as a part of
ELT activities. There are two teachers in this class, yet they take a turn to teach this course every half semester. Basically, the goal of this course is students are expected to be able to
use the target language appropriately so that they can avoid misunderstanding and misbehaving, either in using or comprehending the target language. Target and native cultures
will be critically analysed together in this class. It means that the goal of this course is to give the perspective of two different cultures both target and local cultures, how students embrace
the difference and similarities and deal with the problem that is possibly raised in society. There are some particular issues that need to be revised according to the theories discussed.
Firstly, the class is teacher-centred in which teachers are the sources of knowledge. Students have little chance to gain information related to particular culture autonomously because all
the resources come from teacher. Secondly, target culture is the centre of this course as it can be seen from the choice of the topic per each meeting e.g. village life the farm, a tea party,
town industry London, Black hat. Instead of exposing students to target culture and establishing NES imperialism in the classroom, source and international cultures need to be
