To make an adjective into a noun - pasif

Indonesian's a great language to learn as it has some nice rules to follow. For instance, to make an adjective into a noun, simply add "ke-" and "-an" to the base word. My example is pasif (passive). Why make this adjective into a noun? Because I'm teaching Indonesian students.

Another excruciating attempt to encourage students to talk spontaneously, having to resort to a Javanese hand gesture that is more polite than Australian pointing to indicate which student is to speak. Once again defeated when confronted with a class of 40 students, none of whom wished to voice an opinion. Assumed, wrongly, that the students would come to the lesson prepared. Well, not prepared in the way we expect students to be prepared in Australia. They come prepared to duduk berdiam, mendengarkan, menulis catatan, dan meperlakukan guru sebagai Tuhan (to sit quietly, listen, write notes, and to treat the teacher as a God). Pleasant as it is to have my every utterance treated as something God-like and to have whatever I scrawl on the whiteboard hastily copied as it if were commandments 11, 12, and 13, it would be more pleasant if the students could answer a question like, say, What is the newspaper article about? Silence. (Okay, rephrase the question) What is the main topic of the article? Silence. (Okay, restate in another way). What does the writer of the article focus on in the article? Has anyone read the article that I'm talking about? 40 heads looking down. Minutes pass. I explain that the lesson will be much shorter if they participate. 40 students find something fascinating to do with their shoelaces. Eventually, one student replies. Somewhere, a glacier moves a millimetre.

Ironically, as the students worked on an exercise, I had to chance to read the Education section in Kompas, a national newspaper, which reported that President SBY called on the Ministry of Education to change teaching and learning methods. Timely, but more is needed to instil a culture of active learning. A class of 40, which is common at UKSW, makes it difficult to create that culture. Better if the class was split in two and I ran two 1-hour tutorials. Other articles earlier this week focused on the lack of initiative and creativity shown by Indonesian students and the implications that has on the economy. Developing an educational culture that values creativity, independence, initiative, and critical thinking will require considerable resourcing. Other news in today's paper: Indonesia can not yet make 12 years of schooling compulsory.

After the class, feeling exhausted and frustrated, checked with Grace next door, asking if pasif had become a noun - kepasifan. Yes, she said, it had. "So I can use kepasifan mahasiswa Indonesia." She laughed, yes.