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.