ED VAN DEN BERG YANG KUKENAL
Foto di atas memperlihatkan keluarga Ed van den Berg. Paling kiri tentu Dr. Ed van den Berg, di tengah adalah puteri tunggal yaitu Anjulie dan paling kanan Ibu Daday, isteri Pak Ed. Kenal Dr. Ed van den Berg sudah cukup lama, sekitar tahun 1985 ketika ke rumah Dr. Arief Budiman di Salatiga yang kini jadi profeseor di Australia, Dr. Arief Budiman berkata: "Kamu harus kenal Dr. Ed van den Berg!". Sejak itu jadi penasaran siapa sih Dr. Ed van den Berg tsb. Kebetulan BPK PENABUR Jakarta membutuhkan Ahli Pendidikan Fisika untuk membimbing guruguru mempersiapkan media pembelajaran dalam Bidang Studi Fisika. Segera diusulkan nama Dr. Ed van den Berg. Setelah disetujui oleh pengurus maka Dr. Ed van den Berg diundang ke Jakarta. Dra. B. Ginarti Karim mendapat tugas untuk menjemput di bandara. Karena Dr. Ed van den Berg adalah orang Belanda diperkirakan tentu orangnya tinggi besar. Tetapi ketika ketemu ternyata mirip orang Asia tingginya juga tidak besar. Itulah selintas kenangan kenal pertama kali dengan Dr. Ed van den Berg tsb. Selama di Jakarta pernah dijamu makan malam di rumah Dra. Ny. R. Sadikin, alm. di Pondok Indah. Kepribadiannya sederhana dan selalu makan apa yang telah disediakan sehingga hubungan menjadi cepat akrab. Sejak itu Dr. Ed van den Berg sering diminta bantuan dalam bidang pendidikan Fisika bahkan sampai membantu mencarikan guruguru Fisika dari Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana di Salatiga.
Ketika BPK PENABUR Jakarta membuat Video Profile, Dr. Ed van den Berg juga ikutan jadi aktor yang sedang memberikan penataran kepada guruguru Fisika. Ibu Daday juga pernah ikut memberikan penataran kepada guruguru di lingkungan BPK PENABUR Jakarta. Juga ada cerita menarik. Waktu itu D.A. Peransi alm. sedang mempersiapkan slide suara bidang studi Fisika. Salah satu narasinya tertulis "oxygen sedang keluar dari daun". Dr. Willi Toisuta yang mengusulkan pembuatan slide suara tsb meminta bantuan Dr. Ed van den Berg mengoreksi. Ternyata narasi tsb SALAH BESAR karena oxygen tidak dapat dilihat maka tidak dapat dipotret, yang terlihat pada foto adalah uap air. Banyak jasa yang telah diberikan oleh Dr. Ed van den Berg kepada BPK PENANUR Jakarta. Walaupun kini telah tidak tinggal di Indonesia karena telah menetap di Filipina, kemudian balik ke Belanda, tetapi tetap ingat kepada BPK PENABUR Jakarta. Bambang Gunawan
EMAIL PERTAMA DARI BELANDA 1995 Suatu hari dipertengahan bulan Maret 1995 tibatiba ada telepon dari Alwin Sadikin (Franky) yang menawarkan untuk mencoba internet dengan userid: GEMBALA, passwordnya juga diberikan. Dia sudah bayar uang pangkal Rp. 50.000,. dan iuran Rp. 40.000,. per bulan. Disuruh mencoba dengan gratis siapa yang tidak mau? Disket program yang bernama INDOCOMM berikut fotocopy brosur juga diberikan. Maka mulailah petualangan baru di dalam komputer. Kebetulan punya kartu nama Dr. Ed van den Berg di Netherlands lengkap dengan Email: EDBERG@NAT.VU.NL. Isengiseng kirim surat kepadanya. Esok hari jawaban sudah ada di komputer saya.
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 95 16:14:54 From: edberg@nat.vu.nl (Ed van den Berg) To: gembala@server.indo.net.id Subject: Re: Hallo Bp. Bambang yang baik. Ini surprise, melihat nama Anda tampak pada komputer saya! Salam dari negeri Belanda. Awal Januari saya sebentar di Salatiga, tetapi terpaksa lari lagi untuk mengunjungi Filipina dan menulis usulan proyek. Jadi saya hanya mampir di Cengkareng saja dan langsung ke Jateng. Kembalinya sama. Saya masih menunggu berita Bank Dunia. Katanya, mereka ingin mengundang saya bulan Mai, tetapi saya masih menunggu berita resmi. Salam kepada para alumni UKSW di sana. Samasama surprise dan kaget. Rasanya Indonesia dan Netherlands hanya berjarak sejengkal saja. Komunikasi begitu mudah dan cepat. Surat berikutnya juga muncul di komputer penulis. Date: Wed, 29 Mar 95 10:28:11 From: edberg@nat.vu.nl (Ed van den Berg) To: gembala@server.indo.net.id Subject: Re: HEY Bp. Bambang, saya akan ke Jakarta tgl 13 Mai sekitar 27 Mai. Sampai bertemu, Ed van den Berg. Segera surat di atas dijawab pada hari Kamis pagi tgl. 30 Maret 1995 dengan pertanyaan: "Apakah ada waktu untuk BPK PENABUR?". Siang harinya sudah diperoleh jawaban sbb: Bp. Bambang, saat ini jadwal kunjungan saya masih belum pasti dan beban kerja belum juga. Jadi kita lihat nanti saja apakah ada waktu untuk BPK PENABUR. Ed.
Inilah baru asyik, ngobrol jarak jauh tetapi hanya dengan biaya pulsa lokal karena telepon yang dihubungi hanya nomor 4702888. Kabarnya melalui Internet ini, biaya suratsuratan jauh lebih murah bila dibandingkan menggunakan fax.
Dr. Ed van den Berg di depan komputer ketika berkunjung ke Bidang Media Pendidikan.
Ed, Daday, Anjulie van den Berg Mathematics Education Institute University of San Carlos Talamban Campus, Cebu City, Philippines 6000 Tel: 63 – (0)32 – 344 3514 Fax: 63 – (0)32 – 344 3512 CHANGED: Email: edberg@cnms.net December 1999, January 2000 Dear family and friends, January 16, 2000: Today is a beautiful day. In the chapel this morning we saw bright colors from outside reflected on the glass of a cabinet in our chapel. Bright red of roofs, green of the trees and plants, blue of the skies. Today is also the fiesta day of Cebu. The priest mentioned that 60,000 people attended an early mass at the Basilica, the shrine of the Sto Niño where a statue of the infant Jesus is kept. Later in the day there will be colorful street dances which might make it to your homes through a few seconds on CNN. Meanwhile, also in the year 2000, there is other news: wars, aids, muslimchristian battles in Indonesia, etc. By deciding to look at both the positive (the blue sky) and a bit at the negative, we can keep the balance we need to make our own little contributions to a better world. FAMILY: Anjulie is now about 5 cm short of Ed. Ed left the Netherlands so he would not have to look up to all those 8th and 9th grade kids when visiting schools, now he will soon have to look up again. Anjulie is very much into sports. Earlier this year the PE teacher and students from the school were running several early mornings a week. Anjulie was the first and only one who reached the 100mile mark. For several months this year she played basketball 4 afternoons per week and Taekwondo (selfdefense) 3x per week so she will be able to keep the boys at a proper distance. She was on the school teams for basketball and soccer, representing the school in games in Baguio, more than 500 km north of us. They won everything except for a draw in soccer. During our leave in the Netherlands we checked on the school situation. It seems that Anjulie either has to enter in grade 9 (3rd year secondary) or do all her secondary abroad. Now she is in grade 7. Anjulie’s International School just received permission to run the International Baccalaureate (IB) program, the Diploma of which gives potential access to most major universities in Europe and the USA. However, we still have to see to what extent the school will have quality teachers to run this. Now our plan is to stay another 1 ½ years and then return to the Netherlands. If the International Baccalaureate program goes well, we might opt to stay longer. Anjulie’s vacation choice was Italy and we were able to route ourselves through Italy on the way to the Netherlands. First time for all of us. Our time was mainly spent in the cities: Rome, Florence, Venice, and Milan. Fascinating history. We spent a full day in the Vatican museum. We observed the contrasts between the required dressing code for people entering St. Peter and the dressing code on the paintings and statues. If the dressing code had been applied to the statues and paintings, little would have remained of the Roman and Greek as well as Renaissance art. Luckily, the popes have been more enlightened in their own
backyard than outside the walls of the Vatican. After visiting Italy, we thought the Netherlands would be disappointing, but that was not the case. History in the Netherlands is just as interesting though not as glamorous. WORK AND FUTURE: A project document for the second 4 years of the science/math teacher education project was submitted to the Netherlands Government in September and will be decided upon in March 2000. We now have over 120 good students spread over 4year levels. So each year we expect to graduate about 30 PhysicsChemistry / PhysicsMathematics teachers. We are now also learning from our students. Ed already had two articles in The Physics Teacher (an American journal) coauthored with students. A science play our students wrote has been performed on numerous occasions with great success. Similarly colleagues are now starting to present at conferences. Meanwhile our routines continue. Daday was heavily involved in the promotion campaign, doing a circus of demonstrations to generate interest in Physics among High School students. She also plays a big role in the training of colleagues through team teaching, a sensitive job. Daday most enjoys teaching her own Physics courses. With colleagues, she presented a workshop on interactive teaching at a Physics Conference. PHILIPPINES: The Philippines did weather the Asian crisis better than most other countries. Yet, it is perhaps only this year that the common people are feeling the crisis. For example, for the first time in several years the teachers may not get an annual bonus which is almost equivalent to one month salary. Local, provincial, and national government do not provide much leadership for future development. In the practice of governing there is insufficient separation of executive and legislative powers. Politicians interfere into everything such as teacher transfers and appointments, promotions of government officials (even low ranks), etc. But we do have a very active and very open press, easily the most open press in S.E. Asia. It got to the point that President Estrada got his business friends and government corporations to avoid advertising in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Fortunately, that most critical paper seems to survive easily. TAIWAN: The year ended with a bang! Ed had been invited to Taiwan to speak at a science teacher conference. The conference was postponed from October to the third week of December due to the September earthquake. All of us went and Ed had two 1 ½ hour sessions at the conference, mixing in lots of demonstrations to illustrate the message about visualizing science. Our host Dr. Judy Chang and some graduate students took us around. We spent part of a day to visit earthquake areas. Somehow the CNN viewer and newspaper reader got the impression that whole towns are flattened. Yet what you see is many buildings standing with no damage, minor damage, more damage and reinforcement, and some buildings completely collapsed. The damage of the severe earthquake was bad, very bad and we talked to teachers who lost colleagues and students. The effort in cleaning up was impressive. Most of the remains of collapsed buildings are gone. Temporary schools and shelters were built although some people are still living in tents. One heavily damaged school was rebuilt completely and already in concrete in just two months. The weather was cold and getting colder while we were there. The cold was welcome after the 30degree weather year round in Cebu, but 6 degrees with hard wind was quite cold for us. The success of Taiwan again impressed us. From one of the poorest nations in the 1950s it has now become one of the most prosperous in Asia. Furthermore, from a dictatorship it has become a free country. Not free from bad politicians (which country is?), but with lots of opportunities to criticize and increasing checks and balances in the system.
1999 was packed with war, violence, and greed, but if you looked well enough, you would have seen also smiles, love, and people helping each other. We pray that peace may come in 2000, in peoples’ hearts, in families, in countries (like Indonesia!), and in the world. Let all of us be inspired by Christ and become peacemakers and share our talents and wealth with the world. We wish you and your loved ones the best for 2000! Ed, Daday, Anjulie
NEWS 2003 Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 09:43:02 +0200 From: Ed van den Berg Subject: salam Bp. Bambang yang baik, Sudah lama kita tidak bertemu dan tidak berkomunikasi. Barangkali sejak saringan komputer di universitas gagal dan kami semua terpaksa ganti alamat e mail ataupun lebih lama lagi. Bulan Agustus yang lalu (2002) kami pulang dari Filipina sebab Anjulie harus sekolah di Belanda. Saya akan melampirkan newsletter terakhir kami. Alamat email sekarang tertulis di bawah. Kebetulan malam ini saya mencari website RECSAM dan bertemu berita mengenai kunjungan direktur RECSAM ke BPK Penabur. Sekarang saya bekerja di Vrije Universiteit lagi, tetapi juga di dua proyek pendidikan Fisika di Belanda di Universitas ASmsterdam dan Universitas Utrecht. Salam hangat, Ed van den Berg Ed, Daday, Anjulie van den Berg De Achtkant 25 1852 BV Heiloo Netherlands Tel: 31(0)72 532 2818 Email: NEW edberg51@planet.nl Dear Family and Friends, As many of you already know, we left the Philippines in July. We could have stayed another 18 months, but we felt it would be better that Anjulie complete her senior secondary education in the Netherlands so that later she would have easier access to higher education here. We very much regretted leaving our hard working and motivated colleagues and students. The work is the most interesting work that Daday and I could ever hope to do and also the most satisfying and meaningful. But all things come to an end. In 1996 we planned to leave for 3 years so that Anjulie would be back for secondary. It became 6 ½ great years! Our 2001 Newsletter reached you in March 2002. Our 2002 Newsletter should reach you by early January 2003. Much has happened. In April and May our team ran a host of different parallel programs for elementary Science and
Mathematics teachers, secondary General Science teachers, Alumni, Masters students, academic course development for University of San Carlos faculty, and many individual and small group projects of our 3rd year teacher education students. It was exhausting but exciting and a good last dose of life before returning to respectively office work (Ed) and home work (Daday) in the Netherlands. Two of our colleagues completed their PhD studies with very good theses and they took over the management parts of our work. The teaching parts of our jobs went to various other colleagues and we are confident they will be able to further develop the Science and Mathematics Education Institute (SMEI) and its programs. For our team this was one of the most appropriate times for taking over, so our departure reinforced the further institutionalization and maturation of our program. The farewells were very touching and creative. All our students performed songs, dances, and theater. The 4th year students played Sir Ed and Ma'am Daday as they were leaving and beautifully and humorously touched the right tone and feelings with a well organized and controlled Ma'am Daday and a nervous Sir Ed who would forget things if not reminded by Daday. That is indeed how it is with us. Colleagues at the SMEI and at the College of Education gave swinging farewells as well with touching songs and words and dances. The films of these experiences are stored in our minds and many pictures are on a CD thanks to our Dutch colleague Dede. Anjulie completed her Philippine experience by playing a soccer tournament in Manila as member of the University of San Carlos team which represented Cebu City. As in 2001 her name was in the local papers regularly and there was even a 1/3page article by a journalist intern . Luckily she is not affected by this and does not suffer from the lack of special soccer attention in the Netherlands now. We visited her top three choices for eating out in Cebu in the weeks before departure. Many of you would have liked to join us for very good meals at US$4 per person! On the way to the Netherlands we were able to use frequent flyer points to stop over in Perth where Ed gave two seminars and had a last PhD thesis meeting with David Treagust and Marilou Gallos (our colleague). We enjoyed Perth in the mild Australian winter and saw the apartment building where we stayed for 6 months in 1986. Anjulie and Daday did their best to go around the City while Ed went to the University. A trip down South showed the tremendous construction boom of nice housing near the sea, but also the large wide open areas Australia is so famous for. Then back to the Netherlands, arrival on August 3 in the middle of pleasant Summer weather. Our house was left in excellent condition and super clean, except that all fixtures like lamps, curtain rails and so on had to be put in again. Over the past months we have slowly been making some changes.
Anjulie has been going to school for 4 months already. From day 1 she had to work hard and often until 10.30 or even 11.00 pm and she has done so. She was fluent in Dutch but is now slowly acquiring the specific language in subjects like Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, but also History. She is adjusting to the much higher pace and to the extreme independence currently required in the pre university stream. Some teachers interpret that to mean that they only give assignments without any explanation or direction. At the moment it looks as if Anjulie has closed the gap with her classmates and the teachers are quite confident that she will make it this year. Also in social life she has been a model for adaptation. She went to soccer and got friends there. She even wanted a little job and as we saw her dedication, we could not refuse. Daday is back to her routine as homemaker but she is also starting to apply for parttime jobs teaching in the few English language schools or perhaps non teaching jobs which would make use of her skills in editing technical English documents. She does aerobics twice a week and that feels good. Daday makes lots of kilometers with the bicycle, transporting the goods that she then converts into those famous great meals which have already made Anjulie en Ed gain weight (while aarobics and bicyling made Daday loose weight!). Ed has been able to get a mix of jobs which still provides opportunities to visit classrooms and deal with education directly rather than from behind a desk. Necessarily this is a mix of parttime arrangements but under the umbrella of a tenured job at the Vrije Universiteit. One of the projects deals with science and technology education in primary education (new for Ed, University of Amsterdam), another the teaching of modern physics in the senior year of the preuniversity track of High School (with Utrecht University). The time for the Vrije Universiteit will be mainly spent on missions to still support the Philippine project. We will have to see whether these arrangements involving three different universities are manageable in terms of time and energy. Meanwhile the world keeps turning in a mix of evil and good as it has always done, all effects, both good and bad are amplified by technology. We pray for peace, particularly for peace between religions in the Philippines and Indonesia as well as in other countries. Ed, Daday, Anjulie
From ber02660(at)planet.nl Date Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 1:59 PM Bp. Bambang yang baik, Saya senang masuk kantor dan melihat berita Anda. Jadi masuk pensiun tetapi tetap aktif. Kapankapan saya ingin mampir di Jakarta dan bertemu dengan alumni UKSW, tetapi sementara belum ada rencana. Tahun lalu kami mengunjungi Indonesia setelah menunggu 13 tahun, tetapi tidak sempat ke Jakarta. Banyak yang berubah di Salatiga, tetapi masih ada banyak teman dan program pendidikan MIPA tetap berjalan. Sekarang juga ada cukup banyak mahasiswa yang dikirim oleh pemerintah daerah dari beberapa propinsi. Saya akan melihat websitenya, enak kalau pekerjaan dapat dikelola dari rumah. Dengan sepeda.....berarti sekarang siap untuk mengunjungi Belanda! Umur saya sendiri hampir 58. Kalau di Belanda umur pensiun adalah 65. Tahun 90an banyak yang pensiun sebelum umur 65, tetapi sekarang semakin ada kecenderungan menaikkan umur pensiun dan semakin sedikit jumlah orang yang sempat pensiun awal. Kalau saya sendiri tetap berharap untuk sekali lagi bekerja di luar negeri. Barangkali dua tahun lagi kami akan mencoba, tetapi sama sekali masih belum tentu. Salam, Ed van den Berg edberg51(at)planet.nl
Ed, Daday, Anjulie van den Berg De Achtkant 25, 1852 BV Heiloo Netherlands
Tel: 31-(0)72 – 532 2818 E-mail: edberg51@planet.nl
December 2009 Dear family and friends, The sun is low on the horizon shining almost horizontally through the colored autumn leaves with many sparkles from fresh rain drops. Our office room at home has a very pretty location as some of you know. The year started freezing but pretty. We remember taking my mother on a wheelchair to a covered bridge high between two parts of the nursing home where she could see the skating below on the canal in the sun. Two weeks later she passed away after struggling with Parkinson for several years. She was 89 and had a long and good life rich in experiences to be thankful for. Ed’s father (now 94) had a hard time giving care but now he is frail but well and always up-to-date with the news. Throughout the process we were impressed with the Dutch care system. For almost two years assistant nurses provided home care, first once a day and eventually 2 or 3 times/day. Then there was a hospital stay of 4 weeks with outstanding care and near perfect communication with us. Finally there were nursing homes, one chaotic and too full, the other modern and warm. There are always cases where care fails and these are put under magnifying glasses in the media, but we think we should be proud of our care providers and our system. The nurses and aids deserve bonuses rather than the bankers. Daday’s dear aunty Edna passed away in Guam. Daday and her family had always been very close with the Licanto’s and Daday had lived with them when they were still in Manila. We still remember that aunty Edna, uncle Nestor and cousins Diane and Norman were over from Guam for our wedding in 1983. Anjulie continued her physiotherapy studies and is now well into her second year. She continues to work two days a week at an international advertizing agency and enjoys going out, and making use of the cheap air tickets to fly to interesting places in Europe. Sometimes we still travel together such as on a short two day trip to Dusseldorf (about 200 km) and a trip to the mountainous, volcanic island of Madeira for our Christmas vacation. The three of us Christmas 2009 (Photo Jan)
Daday keeps bicycling around Heiloo and with the “Zumba” shifted to sports thrice a week instead of once. She is now the most sporty in the family while Ed’s sports is limited to bicycling from and to stations in Heiloo and in Amsterdam. Occasionally there is an opportunity for Daday to assist with some science education activities such as editing English lesson materials with sensors or observing in-service participants at work in their classrooms. Ed is busy mostly in elementary science and technology education, a very new experience for him with lots of challenges and lots to learn, very interesting. Working with dedicated colleagues is always inspiring and we do have a good team. On November 10 our Dean announced that he would eliminate our well known AMSTEL Institute due to very serious budget problems in the Faculty of Science (not in our institute). Our Institute has about 40 people (including part-time teachers) working in the equivalent of 24 full-time positions of which 2/3 is financed through a steady stream of projects. He wants to withdraw to core activities of the faculty and does not consider science education part of that. Science education is sometimes considered a stepchild of science. There is a chance that Ed’s
inaugural lecture next June 16 might be followed by closure of the institute on July 1, but we are putting up a hard fight to retain our institute. Whatever happens, there will be interesting work to do in science education somewhere in the world. We felt quite honored to welcome Paul and Lilian Hewitt to our home. Paul is the author of the Conceptual Physics, one of the best and most popular physics books ever written, the book that we used for ideas in the 1980s in Indonesia and that we used as textbook in the Philippines to successfully inspire our students. We had a good time touring tulip fields and the historical city Alkmaar! After 5 years Steve Banta visited us again on his way to Poland. He still checks up on us as one of his duties as best man at our wedding in 1983. Daday and Ed had a short May vacation in the beautiful Elzas region of France with many historical towns that have been nicely maintained and restored. Discoveries every day! We also attended our annual European conference of the POLLEN project, this time in Berlin. We stayed in a very vibrant part of former East Berlin (Alexanderplatz). Another trip took us to the ESERA science education conference in Istanbul. Great city, great history and very friendly people everywhere. We also met many friends including Ed’s thesis advisor Vincent Lunetta whom we had not seen for 11 years as well as David Treagust, Reinders Duit, Leonie Rennie, Peter Fensham, Ken and Barbara Tobin, Fatih Tasar, our court photographer, Bhupati Chakrabarti, and many other friends. We hope to visit another part of Turkey someday. We continue to very much enjoy and value the contact with our alumni and colleagues from Salatiga and Cebu. Our colleagues in Cebu and their students continued the annual science theater tradition which was started by the first batch in 1998 and which Ed recently described in The Physics Teacher. Alumni in Cebu have run a local science teachers’ association with monthly activities for some time. An alumnus in Bohol is chairing the local association there. Alumni who are now teaching in the USA have presented workshops during visits back in Cebu. Of 142 alumni who graduated in the period 2000 – 2004, over 80% are still teaching, more than 5 years after graduation and quite a Us in 2006 (photo Bhupati Chakrabarti) few of them have obtained a Masters degree or are currently enrolled. Thanks also to the Philippine Department of Science and Technology which often provides scholarship support. These promising young teachers are now entering the phase of life when they can make big contributions not only to their own students but also at school and community levels. In fact some alumni of our (earlier) Indonesia program are already heads of their schools and one of them (Ferdi Rondonuwu) is now Vice-President for Research and Outreach Programs at our former Satya Wacana Christian University. As they work for better education for students, for better schools and for a better world, let’s pray that their motivation will be sustained and that they will succeed. We wish you all a happy and healthy 2010! Love always,
Ed and Daday and Anjulie