Bill reduces education to religious matters

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Despite strong criticism and opposition from numerous parties, the government and the House of Representatives looked set to go ahead with the controversial education system bill, which would reduce national education to religious matters.

The bill, with a minor change in its latest version, fell short of identifying the agents of education and defining the intelligence, as opposed to the behavioral, factor as the main goal of national education, and instead stipulated that the main goal of national education was to create faithful and devoted citizens.

Education is a vast field, but in its various aspects, it can be divided into formal and informal education. Formal education aims at increasing the knowledge and skills of educational recipients and is provided by educational institutions, while informal education, including ethics and morality, falls within the responsibility of society.

One thing the bill fails to cover, and which omission sparked strong criticism from education experts and professionals, is the important role families and religious institutions play in encouraging learning.

According to education experts, families and religious institutions should play an active role as agents of education, because they are part of students' daily environment, and therefore, religious education should not be entrusted to educational institutions.

"The thesis is that moral decadence should not be blamed on educational institutions, but on families and religious institutions which assume responsibility in religious education. The prevalent corrupt, collusive and nepotistic practices should not be blamed on formal education institutions, which have been accused of failing to educate their graduates to behave well," education expert Mochtar Buchori said recently.

Article 13 of the bill focuses on students' right to religious education, and requires schools to recruit special teachers to provide religious instruction for their students. Critics say this stipulation is erroneous, because this responsibility should fall on families and religious institutions, including mosques, churches and temples.

Rev. I. Ismartono of the Bishop Conference of Indonesia (KWI) concurred and said that the government and the House should hastily endorse the bill to avoid causing friction in society.

"It's regretful that the bill reduces national education to religious matters," he said.

The House was schedule to endorse the bill on May 2 to mark National Education Day.

The bill also stipulates that the principle of equality in the national education system had indeed retained the discriminative practice of allowing religious organizations to run their own educational institutions.

The problem as to why Muslim students go to Christian schools, or vice versa, should not be solved through the contentious Article 13, because it went against religion-based school missions.

The ruling should prevail for state-run schools and universities.

A minor change has been already made but it does not solve the problem. With the minor change, the recruitment of special teachers for religious instructions is mandatory for schools with ten students or more.

"It will, for example, force Catholic schools to admit less than 10 Muslim students to avoid the obligation," said Ismartono.

Such issues in the education bill has sparked a number of religious leaders and education experts to call for a delay of the planned endorsement of the bill in May.

The bill also requires citizens between the ages of seven and 15 to undertake religious education according to their faith, but it does not determine who should assume this responsibility.