Beyond the dress: Instilling morality

Beyond the dress: Instilling morality

Mochtar Buchori, Educator, Legislator, Jakarta

There is a new school regulation that has worried many people.
This is the regulation about the Islamic dress that both female
and male students must wear on school days that happen to
coincide with significant dates on the Islamic calendar.
Initially this regulation applied only to schools in the West
Jakarta mayoralty. But the same regulation has reportedly been
applied to schools in Tasikmalaya, Cianjur and Sukabumi in West
Java, Bantul district in Yogyakarta, and Bengkulu, Padang and
Aceh in Sumatra.

The argument behind this regulation are the widespread reports
on immoral behavior such as casual sex, drug addiction, student
brawls, rapes, murder and other forms of violence.

And since there is just no way for media censorship by the
government, local authorities and politicians are very sure that
our students neither have the moral strength nor the intelligence
to select good news from bad, so strengthening students' morality
has been considered the only way to save the young from decline.

Advocates of this new regulation have considered that
compelling students to wear Islamic attire is an educational act
that will instill in them the Islamic spirit if not the mind.
This will enable them to guard themselves against evil intentions
that invade them through stories and images depicting immoral
behavior. This logic now seems to have become a trend in our
current educational thinking.

Two aspects of this new regulation are appalling. First,
coercing students to don Islamic apparel is not an effective way
to instill Islamic morality in them. Morality is the ability to
commit oneself voluntarily to values.

Islamic morality is thus the ability to accept and implement
Islamic values in a voluntary manner. Coerced acceptance of
values is not genuine morality. At best, it is pseudo morality.
Donning Islamic attire does not guarantee adherence to Islamic
morality. And compulsory sporting of Islamic apparel can be just
a mere tailing of a mode of dressing that happens to be popular
at any one time, and may have no moral or religious meaning
whatsoever.

The second thing is that it is only officials who do not work
in schools that have initiated this new regulation. In West
Jakarta it was the local mayor who claimed to be the architect of
this new regulation. In Bantul, it was two of the highest-ranking
officials in the local educational office and the local office
for religious affairs. The rule was later sanctioned by the
regent.

Local school authorities, it seemed, were never consulted when
preparing this decision. Even if they were, they weren't likely
to be in a position to reject or alter the decision.

Do our schools today have no say whatsoever in deciding
matters that are so crucial for the morality of the next
generation? Do our teachers today no longer have the power to
decide on how they are going to guide the young in preparing them
to meet their future?

If this is indeed the case, who has the final responsibility
for what is being done to our children in our schools? Is it the
teachers or the regent or mayor? Or is it the highest-ranking
educational and religious official? Do we have to hand over the
pedagogy of morality building to people who are not involved in
the day-to-day operation of our schools?

If the answer is "yes" this is tantamount to a vote of no-
confidence in our school teachers from our politicians.

Our educational system is not perfect, far from it, but
teachers do not deserve such political maltreatment. Instead of
practically condemning them, we must help them by at least
improving their working conditions.

This generation of politicians will commit a serious
historical mistake, if it continues to disregard the limits of
their area of legitimacy, and continuously invades the domain of
other professions. Education has its own laws and logic, which
are not the same as those of politics. Political decisions cannot
be forcefully superimposed on education without creating
professional damage.

Our politicians should stop tampering with technical issues of
education for which they have neither professional competence nor
legitimate authority.