Characteristics of Traditional Teaching Mathematics in Indonesia

History of mathematics learning in Indonesia begins after Indonesia take independence from the Dutch. So that the task of rebuilding the nation's character after the colonial period, the government made changes in all fields, including education. Government include mathematics as a compulsory subject to be taught at all levels of education

Learning mathematics at this time is developed based on the theory of learning behaviouristik. This theory assumes that a person has learned something if he can show changes in behavior. According to this theory the most important learning is the stimulus and the response. Stimulus is a question about a problem from the teachers is given to the student in learning activities. While the response is a reaction or response from the stimulus provided by the teacher. The process of stimulus to response is not considered because the important thing is that students can work on or solve the problem given by the teacher. So that learning activities more focus on the activities of practice and repetition. Teachers give a problem and how to resolve the problem to the students. Then the students just do it and then repeat the exercise again. More and more students are doing these activities the students will be more understand.

If viewed from the historical development of mathematics teaching in Indonesia, traditional mathematics developed in Indonesia have different characteristics from that developed in mathematics today. Some of the characteristics found in the traditional mathematics:

1. The teacher's role is central in the learning activities. Teachers teach science, teachers directly prove the arguments, the teacher gives examples of questions. While students must sit neatly and listen, copy the patterns of a given teacher, follow the ways teachers completed the questions.

2. The students very passive. Students are not given the opportunity to develop their potential, students only do the activities undertaken by teachers. Students are given only think about how to do or solve problems, students are not given the opportunity to think why do such steps in solving the problem.

3. Students can only memorize. Students usually busy with memorization methode and practice the skills so students have less opportunity to understand the concept of the material provided. This problem causes students not only understand the concept completely, so that curiosity about the concept become lost. Students will become less interested in understanding the material in more detail.

4. The material is not sustainable. There is a material or topic at the top level that has never been taught in  previous learning. So that students will feel not familiar with the materials provided and cause difficulties for students to understand.

5. The material presented is generally less associated with daily life and many materials used in everyday life is not even taught to students. For example, in the arithmatical not learn statistics whereas statistics in  everyday life more often used. Similarly, in geometry lessons usually taught to calculate area of regular shapes as a cube, prisms, and etc. But rarely taught how to calculate area of irregular shape never though whereas we often meet it in everyday life.