Independence in education
Until the fall of the New Order regime and the birth of the reform movement in 1999, Indonesia's 1945 Constitution -- so called because it was decreed on Aug.18, 1945, just a day after the country's proclamation of independence -- was without doubt one of the most admired documents in the country's history.
Sure, it was terse, and even vague and spartan in its description of the rights and duties of the state and its citizens. But, its proponents said, it provided for a stable government while seeking to promote the well-being of the common man. True, too, as one of the document's formulators remarked at the time, much would depend on the "man behind the gun", but in 1945 nobody feared that anyone chosen to lead the nation would abuse his or her power and steal the people's money.
Unfortunately, it wasn't long before all those assumptions proved to be false. In 1959, president Sukarno used the 1945 Constitution to establish what he termed "guided democracy", which was in effect a form of dictatorship, with him as president for life. A bloody leftist coup took place in 1965, which, in 1967, led to the dictatorial and utterly corrupt regime of president Soeharto.
With the downfall of Soeharto, a fairly elected parliament, comprising the House of Representatives (DPR) and the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR), sought to remedy those constitutional shortcomings. The 1945 Constitution was duly amended, but its preamble, which contains what might be considered a kind of "social contract" -- a compromise formula known as Pancasila, to keep Indonesia's immensely diverse societal groups united -- was maintained intact.
It is on the basis of that preamble, which is, of necessity, terse in its vocabulary, that the government has drawn up a draft for Indonesia's new education law that now lies before the House of Representatives for deliberation. The draft is expected to be submitted to the appropriate House Committee next month and passed into law on May 2, Indonesia's National Education Day.
Unfortunately, the spirit of democratic reform that had inspired the earlier drive to amend the 1945 Constitution does not seem to have trickled down to those who drafted the new law. Critics have been quick to detect in the draft a certain ambition on the part of the state to reestablish its old grip on the private lives of citizens. This, of course, is evident from the very fact that the new law seeks to regulate every level of education, from kindergarten to university. Nowhere, though, is this as glaring as in the field of religious instruction and education.
Besides general subjects, such as history or mathematics, students at every level of education are entitled to receive religious instruction "according to the faith they adhere to, taught by teachers of a religion identical to that of their own", the draft says. Education, after all, it says in its preamble, must be aimed at "establishing keimanan (faith) and ketakwaan (piety) in Indonesians, besides imparting general skills that are aimed at "promoting the intelligence of the nation."
Bickering over terms such as ketakwaan aside -- which, in the view of many, has unmistakable Islamic overtones -- there is a strong feeling among Indonesians, even the pious, that religious education (as opposed to religious instruction, which many reject) should be left to the home and the family. Some critics even see the religious conflicts of late as recent phenomena and the natural consequences of mandatory religious instruction for all students under the Soeharto regime.
Given such far-reaching, long-term consequences of making the wrong decisions, let us hope that our legislators will let themselves be guided, not only by their conscience and wisdom, but by the same spirit of reform that ousted the previous authoritarian regime and brought them to their present positions of power. Let's not take the education of our children, and thereby, the future of the nation, lightly.