Decentralized education a must
By A. Chaedar Alwasilah
BANDUNG (JP): All human rights are universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated. It stands to reason that the United Nations Organization has long established the UN Human Rights Commission. The belated establishment of Komnasham (National Commission for Human Rights) in Indonesia suggests that the Indonesian government did not fully recognize human rights as a political agenda until the world strongly recommended the government to do so.
At home the cases of slain labor activist Marsinah, missing political activists, and military operation policy on the province of Aceh constitute stains on our rights history. The military involvement in the brutal murder of alleged separatist rebels In Aceh (The Jakarta Post, Jan. 13, 1999) indicates that the military simply do not understand the social psychology of primordialism.
Such violations by the government and the military have brought about a series of primordial radicalism definitely threatening national integrity. The main reason is that people have lost trust in the central government who in the past lost sight of the importance of decentralization. Aceh and East Timor separatist movements are factual examples of radicalism motivated by primordialism. As such they generate the greatest amount of sympathy, and produces the most extreme forms of fanaticism.
Recent infighting and communal clashes in Lampung, Lhoksemauwe, Karawang, and Ambon are evidence enough of primordial radicalism. Observers are sounding alarms over the spate of these violence and unrest and demanding the government take concrete measures to prevent further violence. In the era of reformation anti transparency military solutions will even generate massive flare-ups.
It is public knowledge that in the last three decades national developments were concentrated in the Western part of Indonesia, thus creating recurring conflict potentials: marginalization, displacement, and dispossession. It is a note that these conflict potentials are defined in ethnic, religious, linguistic, and other primordial terms. Now the desire for liberation among elements in the nation is in sight, practically to redeem the violated rights during the New Order regime. Never before was the country socially conflicted such that the government and especially the military should develop the highest sense of national crisis.
It is high time for the government and the military to review and redefine the current policies of centralization, nationalism, and military roles in politics. Primordial affiliations are mutually reinforcing. Apter (1987) observes that "the more primordial a terrorist movement, the more fundamentalist, and the more difficult to deal with". The Tamil movements in Sri Lanka, Hindu-Muslim conflict in India, and Kurdish nationalism in Iraq are manifestations of primordial radicalism in which separatism is ritualized. All of these are a good lesson for Habibie's administration and the military.
As always education in its broadest sense is a panacea of social and political ills. Religious education as part of national education should also be redefined to maximize its roles in building the nation. Educators, bureaucrats, informal leaders, social workers politicians, NGO activists, and religious propagators are held responsible for resurrecting the nation; therefore, they have to develop a holistic understanding of education.
The rampant radicalism across the country calls for a redefinition of education for human rights, which is aimed at developing in every individual a sense of universal values and the types of behavior on which a culture of living together peacefully is predicated. Those values comprise equality and justices loving and caring, respect for self and others, freedom of speech expression, belief and worship; protection of the rights of children, women and labor; human dignity responsibility and security.
In a multicultural society like Indonesia, education for nationalism presupposes education for human rights. The hypothesis is that respecting human rights which are universal among all the ethnic groups will necessarily develop a culture of living together peacefully. It is through education that primordial fanaticism is gradually minimized, where common languages history and universal values are taught. This is crucial because nationalism depends on some degree of political and economic consensus of the ethnic groups. Education for nationalism does not mean any domestication or eradication of primordial potentials at all.
The United States is an outstanding example of highly diverse racial and ethnic groups trying to live together. Bringing the "hyphenated Americans" -- German-, Chinese, Afro-, to mention just a few -- into the mainstream has been a central concern of recent times. The only vehicle available for this assimilation is public school education. By the same token, national education should provide all Indonesian citizens-regardless of their ethnic backgrounds religions, and gender -- with equal opportunity to be part of the mainstream. Given all the analyses above, nationalism that all Indonesians strive for is to based on cultures of the mainstream consisting of and bolstered by all the ethnic groups with all their primordial terms.
Following are listed major observations and their educational implications.
* Primordial radicalism not only creates individual heroes but recalls previous radicalism. Teachers especially of religions and social studies should present value analyses and explanations of heroes. Heroism should be defined broadly in terms of nationalism, namely its contribution and significance for people in general not an exclusive group of people in a particular area. Heroism is not limited to politics, but also to other areas such as economy, education, and other humanitarian endeavors. Teachers should also encourage fair academic discussions on radicalism as part of critical thinking development.
* Primordial radicalism in a particular area inspires other types of radicalism in other areas. Recent radicalism in Aceh, Lampung and Ambon exhibited religious overtones, and all of these might inspire and generate similar radicalism in other areas across the country. Anticipating this tendency, local governments across the archipelago should be vigilant of any similar radicalism so that it can be prevented as early as possible.
In most cases, the local traditional and religious leaders, rather than the military or the formal leaders that could solve the situation in effortless ways. Educationally, current primordial radicalism should be explained and handled by redefining the concept of "local content" curriculum policy. Education is essentially to inculcate the students with sense of shared responsibility among diversity, and to empower students to solve their own problems.
The fact that people now can be easily fueled by unfounded rumors to fight suggests that national education has failed to empower the local potentials and local genius to solve social problems in immediate surroundings. The reason is that centralized education as practiced up to now has domesticated local potentials and local genius to develop to the full.
* Most primordial radicalism aims at independence, autonomy, or a state of one's own; or at least at purification within the ritual boundaries of primordial affiliation. We are reminded of resentment of the Balinese who threatened to create an independent state as an emotional reaction to a minister's statement on Megawati's religious commitment. This social phenomenon indicates that as a nation Indonesians are not used to differing opinions and psychologically are not ready to appreciate freedom of speech.
It is high time for us to recognize the roles of informal leaders in the society and to reposition education as a decentralized but deliberate and continued effort to empower the local genius and potentials to solve social problems in their immediate environment. Basic to this decentralized education is a political will of the central government to provide provinces with autonomy to run their own governance.
The writer is a lecturer at Graduate School of the Teachers' Training Institute (IKIP) Bandung, West Java.