Hooliganism a failure in education

By A. Chaedar Alwasilah

BANDUNG (JP): What are the most significant characteristics of Indonesian soccer? Violence, brawls and brutality perhaps. Recent media reports of train accidents killing 10 soccer fans and the decision to move the final match of the fifth Indonesian Soccer League playoffs from Senayan sports stadium in Jakarta to Klabat sports stadium in Manado, North Sulawesi, are telling evidence that in Indonesian discourse, soccer is a multidimensional social phenomena.

Last year we were shocked to learn that soccer matches were a lucrative area of monkey business, red tape and bribery. We were left to doubt whether the winning teams were really genuine and sporting champs. And earlier this month, scores of fans were arrested at Senayan stadium for carrying dangerous objects, including explosives and sharp weapons. Sports stadiums in Indonesian discourse suggest melee and killing fields.

The nation has played soccer for a long time, yet every year the playoffs are marred by brutality. The organizing committee and the security officers are simply incapable of holding the games without disruptions and violations. Maybe all of this constitutes the inherent and unalterable characteristics of Indonesian soccer and Indonesian sports in general.

The coined phrase bonek (penniless and reckless soccer supporters) suggests three things: Soccer in the Indonesian context represents regionalism and primordialism rather than professionalism. Regionalism and localism are wrongly perceived as patriotism. Soccer is the country's most popular entertainment, yet few fans can afford it. "Popular" does not necessarily mean "affordable".

Because soccer matches entail the above social disturbances, it is important to see them in a broader social and psychological context. Soccer fans constitute crowds which are temporary, relatively unorganized gatherings of people in close physical proximity. Social psychologists classify such a gathering as a conventional crowd, where fans assemble to support their favorite teams.

A conventional crowd may turn into an expressive crowd, where fans reach a stage of self-stimulation and personal gratification. For example, when their favorite team leads the game. The final and most critical stage is commonly called an acting crowd, where excited fans are engaged in aggressive behavior in which established norms carry little weight. When their favorite team loses the game, fans feel they are less worthy than the other team and they tend to become aggressive. They turn into hooligans.

There are three characteristics common in crowds: suggestibility, deindividualization and invulnerability. Members of a crowd are more suggestible than they are in established social settings. In other words, they tend to readily accept directions and propositions emanating from others. In this stage, it is emotion rather than reasoning which works.

Deindividualization is a psychological state of reduced identity and self-awareness. Crowd members are not themselves, therefore they may commit asocial acts which contradict their self-awareness. Their sense of belonging to a temporary group overrides individual uniqueness and distinctiveness.

In crowd settings, fans acquire a sense of being more powerful and invincible than when they are in routine settings. They feel as if they are immune to public responsibility. No wonder they tend to commit acts of aggression, risk-taking, self-enhancement, theft, vandalism as well as uttering obscenities in public.

There are at least two preconditions for the collective behaviors mentioned above: * Structural strain: A theory exists that when important aspects of a social system are "out of joint", structural strain occurs. Prolonged economic crisis disrupts the traditional rhythm of life. People are now increasingly susceptible to courses of action not defined by existing institutional arrangements. Robbery, theft and coercion are a common sight on the streets. * Precipitating factors: These refer to factors which trigger mass or collective asocial actions. Recently we have witnessed a number of events which could set such actions in motion. To mention just a few, bank liquidations, bankruptcies and prolonged unemployment have the potential to bring about collective asocial behavior.

How can we prevent or at least minimize such collective asocial behaviors? The decision to move the soccer final from Jakarta to Manado was an operation of social control, meant to prevent the occurrence of vandalism, brawls and infighting among soccer fans. As expected, the final ran smoothly and safely.

How effective is such an operation? There are two types of social controls: repression and prevention. The former refers to an attempt to repress an episode of collective asocial behavior after it has begun. And that is what the soccer federation, in collaboration with the police, were doing and have done from year to year. Repression is local and temporal in nature, as it eradicates the symptom but not the disease.

Prevention refers to a deliberately designed attempt to prevent the occurrence of an episode of collective asocial behavior by lessening conduciveness and strain. Welfare and decent employment, for example, are good examples of preventing crowds from engaging in collective asocial behavior. The fact that the annual soccer competition always features infighting, vandalism and brutality demonstrates that our society is still far from welfare and decent employment, all of which causes social illness and chaos.

Education is only one way a culture inducts schoolchildren into its canonical ways. What does all this have to do with physical education (PE) in schools? Underlying PE is the belief that a person cannot think without a body, nor are his motor responses independent of thought. PE is aimed at promoting the vigor of the human organism, neuromuscular skills, good interpersonal behavior, emotional balance and control and sound judgment.

Among all these qualities, it is interpersonal behavior and emotional balance and control which are the least developed in both soccer players and their fans. In the eyes of educators, the hidden curriculum of schools plays a role in educating children. It consists of a complex of unarticulated values, attitudes and behaviors which subtly mold children in the image preferred by the dominant institutions. Thus, the asocial attitudes and destructive behavior of soccer fans as reported in the media shape schoolchildren's attitudes toward sports, competition and social institutions in general.

Criticizing the practice of education, many analysts take a psychological or sociological approach. Ideally perhaps we should situate education, including PE, in a much broader examination of education in different cultural settings. Soccer matches, like pop music, are part of popular culture, and constitute a dominant cultural setting. Interpersonal behavior and emotional balance and control are mental activities. And we will never understand them unless we take into account cultural settings and resources.

Dwelling on the principles of cultural psychology as defined above, we can hypothesize that educating schoolchildren and youth in general should imply the following: First, popular culture constitutes a hidden curriculum which shapes children's culture, suggesting that a school's curriculum should be continuously revised to "compete" with popular culture. That hooliganism wins soccer games reflects social chaos, which in turn suggests the failure of education.

Second, the social and moral values taught in schools, such as respect for others, tolerance of differences and discipline, are vulnerable outside the classroom. Thus, society is the laboratory where moral and social values are tested. This implies that successful education is not left to teachers alone. It is also the responsibility of society in general.

Third, formal education should play the role of operating social controls. Student brawls, truancy, vandalism and other aggressive behavior should be minimized if not eradicated by curricular as well as extracurricular programs. This suggests that schooling is not merely transferring knowledge, but also the skills for conflict resolution. Thus sources of conflict, such as ethnic and cultural differences, should be included in the curriculum, especially in social studies. Such differences are not to be treated as a frightening monster, but as realities to be tamed by objective, academic and scholarly examination.

Fourth, PE, when executed professionally, enhances not only physical fitness and dexterity but also mental equilibrium and discipline. It is necessary that teachers understand the philosophy of PE.

The writer is a lecturer at the graduate school of the Teachers Training Institute in Bandung, West Java