Between idealism and pragmatism in education

Between idealism and pragmatism in education

Mochtar Buchori, Jakarta

On Aug. 13, I attended the funeral of a close friend. He was
82 or 83 at the time of his death. I had known him for 40 years.
He came from a well-to-do family. His father was a medical
doctor, and he was a medical student himself, until he was
expelled from medical school during the Japanese occupation.

Since then he led an active political life, as an underground
activist during the Japanese occupation and as a party official
later on. This was until his party was banned by the Sukarno
regime. He then resumed his life as a political activist, quietly
but persistently mentoring young people toward consciously
objecting against any form of totalitarianism.

I became close to him in 1963, when I joined a group of senior
political activists trying to stop Sukarno leaning toward the
left. When it became clear that Sukarno was unstoppable in his
political maneuvers toward the left, the issue became how to
prevent the nation and the country from becoming a totalitarian
state after Sukarno was gone. Then the 1965 failed coup occurred.

This friend of mine was known by many as a quiet political
mentor. He mentored many young people, some of whom since became
national celebrities. I was not mentored by him, but by a close
friend of his.

What broke my heart when I attended the funeral were the
conditions under which he died. For a number of years until his
death he lived in a house owned by a close friend of his who
passed away several years earlier.

He had no family; no wife and no children of his own. His
wife, who was already a widow when he married her, died about 10
years earlier. Before his death he was hospitalized for four
days. Since he had no money a number of his friends took care of
the hospital bills. One friend who had known him longer than I
did called him an "intellectual pauper".

At the funeral I met a great number of people I know
personally, ranging from my friend's generation to the generation
of my daughter. And there were other younger people as well whom
unfortunately I did not know personally. This means to me that my
deceased friend had been mentoring people from various age
groups.

What I noticed about the mourners was that people of his age
did not give the impression that they were rich. Some of the
mourners whom I knew personally were even still unmarried. And
what I know about these people is that they have their entire
adult lives worked for a cause. They live for their idealism.

Their ideals matter more than their personal well-being. In my
younger years I used to live with this kind of idealism. A
romantic idealism, I would say. I was, and still am, very sure of
the rightness of the idealism I pursued, to the point that I
declined a political offer to join the bureaucracy. This idealism
drove me toward hard work, fairness and honesty, several times
neglecting my personal interests. I was fanatical about my
idealism.

But later on, after I felt that I could no longer live alone,
and decided to get married and have children, I gradually changed
my lifestyle. I began to think of my personal needs and
interests, but never at the expense of my idealism. That may be
the reason that until now I am still relatively poor, meaning,
among other things, that I do not even live in a house of my own.
I still live in a government house.

What makes my friend and many people of the same age,
including myself, live the way we do? And what makes my children
and young people from their generation live so differently from
us, people from the older generations?

I think it is education. In my generation a very strong dose
of idealism was injected into our education. Living for a cause
was imprinted in our minds as the only way of living a meaningful
life. Living solely for the purpose of accumulating material
wealth was considered less noble, if not outright vulgar.

But this stark difference in the way of life between two
generations, and its consequences in real personal lives, makes
me wonder whether it is really good to have so much idealism in
one's education.

Wouldn't it be better if we, people of the older generations,
i.e. the generation of my deceased friend down to my generation,
had a little bit of pragmatism in our education? After all, at
the end every one has to take care of himself or herself. No one
else will. Not the government, not the company where you spent
your entire working life and not the insurance company or the
retirement fund. Not your children either.

However, looking at the lives of young people today, I wonder
whether the younger generation doesn't have too much pragmatism
in their education, and whether it would be better to give them a
little bit idealism.

They became affluent at the age of 40, but many of them have
serious physical illnesses, and they do not seem to care very
much about the condition of the country. As long as their
personal interests are not jeopardized everything else seems to
be OK with them.

The question to be solved now is how to strike a balance
between romantic idealism and excessive pragmatism in education.
This is a question I am not sure I can answer intelligently.

The idea that comes to my mind is that we have to provide
education that is realistically idealistic and not excessively
pragmatic. What must be prevented is excessively romantic
idealism and excessively vulgar pragmatism in education.

Can idealism be excessive? I am not sure. What I am sure of is
that it is much easier for pragmatism to become excessive. This
is because pragmatism puts much emphasis on observable practical
consequences. This is not the case with idealism, which envisions
things in ideal form, not in material form. The natural tendency
of idealists is to become romantic, whereas that of pragmatists
is to become materialistic.

Somerset Maugham wrote in 1938, "Excess can be exhilarating on
occasion. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening
effect of a habit." But let us be forewarned, Woodrow Wilson said
in 1918, "Excesses accomplish nothing. Disorder immediately
defeats itself."

Maybe what we should try to develop is education that is
realistically idealistic, which while acknowledging the value of
pragmatism has the ability to resist any temptation to become
excessively pragmatic.

The writer is a former rector of IKIP Muhammadiyah, Jakarta,
and has a PhD in education from Harvard University.