Dean of Faculty of Art and Letter, Pasundan University - Bandung
“The great end of life is not knowlegde but action.” That was Thomas Henry Huxley’ words, quoted by Chaedar Alwasilah in his last book, “Pokoknya Studi Kasus” (2015).
Those words are not meaningless, he really meant it. Four months before he passed away, Chaedar did not lose his power to keep writing a book that he thought to be the last series of Pokoknya. It seemed that he had got a feeling that Izrail, the angel of death, would soon take his life, so he should compete with the time. Chaedar affirmed that his professorate professionalism should be articulated in a form of books even though he was very ill. His works, including books, articles, research, journal articles, are the footprints of his dedication towards knowledge that will be beneficial for many people.
Since the very beginning, he planned to have 7 books in Pokoknya series. The first six books are Pokoknya Kualitatif (2002), Pokoknya Menulis (2005), Pokoknya Sunda (2006), Pokoknya BHMN (2008), Pokoknya Action Research (2011), and Pokoknya Rekayasa Literasi (2012). The seventh book was published two weeks after his leaving, it is entitled Pokoknya Studi Kasus (2015).
From all those seven books of Pokoknya series, Pokoknya Kualitatif is the most used and popular book in Indonesia. There are plenty of positive testimonies of this book. They state that theories of qualitative research are quite difficult to understand, yet Chaedar present them in a very nice way, so it is easy to understand and even provides limitless insights. Well, that’s the way Chaedar wrote. It was always simple, clear, direct, and easy to comprehend.
His students and colleagues stated that Chaedar was an easy going academician, and able to work with any people. He had high sense of humor and had extraordinary concerns towards the development of liberal arts in Indonesia. He had spent his efforts, power, thoughts and times to introduce liberal arts, which has not been well-known yet by many Indonesian academicians.
In 30 years, Chaedar had written more than 30 books and hundreds of article published in local and national media. Some of his articles, which were published in The Jakarta Post, were compiled as a book and became phenomenal since its release in December 2013. It is entitled Islam, Culture, and Education: Essays on Contemporary Indonesia. This book was one of the books exhibited in Frankfurt Book Fair, Germany 2014.
His writing career was started since he was young. After getting his bachelor degree, he wrote two books on linguistics and two books on learning English grammar. Those books are still being used as resource books by his students.
Chaedar had inspired many people with his simple yet unexpected thoughts. Once, he openly said that based on his research, MKDU Bahasa Indonesia course is a failure. Many people disagreed and showed their disputation. Calmly, he asked those people to write an open polemic in a newspaper.
Yes, that is Chaedar. This book, which is opened with an introduction written by Prof. Judith Puncochar of Northern Michigan University’s, and closed by an epilogue written by Dr. Riswanda Setiadi of Indonesia University of Education, became the end of his writing journey. His outshining spirit in writing and furthering education in Indonesia should be maintained as a form of our respect to his dedication.***
Bandung October 11, 2015
Senny Suzanna Alwasilah
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