Do student strikes reflect a crisis in education ?

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): Early one morning last week, my phone rang. "I would like to ask your opinion on the student strikes in Jakarta, sir," the caller said. "It seems to me that it is going to be an epidemic. After students at one high school succeeded, through striking, in having their principal, who they considered authoritarian and corrupt, removed, other high schools followed suit. If this method of dismissing unpopular principals and teachers is going to become more and more common, don't you think that a precarious situation is arising? Can such a practice be justified?"

The act of forcing the removal of principals and teachers through strikes is not critically dangerous, I told the caller, but the prevalence of situations that lead to such practices is. Student strikes definitely indicate an unhealthy situation in schools. If such a situation persists it is bound to create tension and erode the authority of schools, their principals and perhaps even the authority of some of their teachers.

In such a situation, blaming the students solves nothing. Student actions -- be they strikes or other disruptive acts -- are usually no more than attempts to end situations which they consider unbearable. The blame must be directed at those who ignore unhealthy situations while having the power to intervene. If we sincerely want to remedy a problem, it is, in my opinion, not the student strikes which should become the focus of our attention but the conditions that lead to the strikes.

"Thus until you inform me of the conditions that have evoked these strikes, " I told the young man, "I cannot give you my opinion."

The young man is a reporter. He seemed to know much about the strikes. He said that schools where students went on strike were generally marked by the following institutional characteristics: the principals and the majority of teachers were considered authoritarian by most students; the schools charged fairly high "obligatory contribution fees" on top of their formal tuition fees; many cocurricular and extracurricular activities were compulsory for all students forcing students to pay more fees; students' parents tended to be indifferent toward school's problems and the complaints of their children, thinking that they had sent their children to a reputable school, which could not possibly be besieged by unsolvable problems.

My experience with interviews like this is that my counterpart will ask how a particular problem can be solved. This kind of question always irritates me. I get the feeling I have been triggered into talking about very trivial problems that can be solved instantly. So I immediately told this young reporter that this phenomenon of student strikes was a complex situation which required elaborate deliberation.

I said that when there is a student strike there is no longer trust and authority at the school. The students no longer trust most of their teachers and the school as a whole no longer has authority over its students. This vanishing trust cannot be restored by authoritarian acts. Trust can only be restored through efforts which clearly demonstrate the willingness of the school to mend a deteriorating situation. Talks without sincerity are worthless. And talks which merely flaunt official authority are even worse in cases like this. These will not restore students' trust or the school's authority in the slightest.

Collective efforts must be made to identify events, actions and situations which have caused this loss of trust and authority. Grievances about tuition fees may be one source, but it has never been the only source of authority crises. I think that in a really reputable school, grievances on school fees never arise. Parents know in advance how much the school charges for each of their children. But they are also informed clearly in advance about the kind of educational services their children will receive throughout the year.

Thus, if there is resentment at school fees, there must be something wrong with the process. Either parents and students are not clearly informed prior to enrollments on the total fees to be paid, or the services that the students later received were considered unequal to the high fees paid. Resentment like this can only be overcome through open, honest and fair discussions to root out lingering doubts, suspicions and misunderstanding on how a school was run in the past and how it should be run in future.

Again, I would like to emphasize the importance of identifying and discussing all possible causes of the existing crisis. Only if all important causes have been identified and exhaustively discussed will trust and authority be restored. If such comprehensive and exhaustive discussions do not occur, every kind of solution that ensues will be a pseudo-solution. If trust and authority are not genuinely restored, no real education will happen.

We should consider whether formal discussions on these issues are preceded by preliminary meetings and encounters aimed at preparing principals and teachers, students and parents for open and honest talks. Without such preliminary meetings, discussions among school authorities, parents and students often end in mere formal agreements that do not bring about real and lasting improvements in schools.

Is the phenomenon of student strikes a reflection of deteriorating conditions in our schools and society, or are they merely "a trend" among high school students, as some educational authorities claim?

I really do not know. But whatever the answer, I still think they are a worrying reflection of our schools today. Even if the strikes are "merely a trend", they are still very worrying. It is certainly a stupid trend that should never have happened. Our teachers must be clumsy and powerless, which I do not believe, to let the students adopt this trend.

The writer is an observer of social and cultural affairs.