Hooliganism a failure in education

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