Lessons to be learned

Lessons to be learned

The failure of the House of Representatives to reach a solid
decision on the national education bill that has been lying
before it for months, effectively accentuates the deep rifts that
time and sectarian politics have over the years created among
groups in Indonesian society. As reported, the House deferred
taking a decision on whether or not to immediately pass the
controversial bill -- as it had been long scheduled to do --
after hours of intensive lobbying and heated debate among
factions failed to yield a compromise on contentious points in
the bill.

Points in contention concern Articles 3 and 4 of the proposed
new law, which deal with the foundations and function of the
national education system, respectively. Article 3, in its rather
wordy text, mentions in essence the steps that must be taken in
order to educate the nation and instill in it the character and
skills needed to ensure that it holds a respectable place among
nations. Article 4, formulated in similarly lofty wording,
expounds that the aim of the national education system shall be
to educate the nation and encourage the growth of the "complete
Indonesian being" -- "which is," the text says in loose
translation, "a being possessed of iman (faith) and takwa (piety)
toward One God, imbued with high morals, possesses good knowledge
and skills, is healthy in body and soul, has a secure
personality, is self-reliant and is responsible socially and
nationally."

But while opponents of the bill have voiced objection to the
use of terms such as iman and takwa, which they feel have Islamic
overtones, the most heated point debated has been the obligation
for schools, including private religion-based schools, to provide
religious instruction to students of a religions background other
than that on which the school is based. Thus, schools run by
Catholic and Protestant organizations, which many Muslim students
attend, therefore, will be required to provide Islamic religious
instruction by teachers who are Muslims. In a move that further
ignited emotions, the Ministry of Religious Affairs offered to
provide 70,000 teachers of religion for private schools, all on
the government's payroll. Rightly or wrongly, this apparent
gesture of goodwill was taken by opponents of the bill as
government interference, or even "nationalization" of private
educational institutions by the state.

Party and group politics aside, one aspect that clearly
surfaced in yesterday's prolonged debate was, unfortunately, the
depth of the distrust that years of conflict and suppressed
discontent has created among sectarian groups in Indonesia. It
is, of course, perfectly correct to say that minority groups in a
democratic country such as Indonesia must be guaranteed the same
rights as enjoyed by the majority of Indonesians. Translated in
the context of the current debate on education, that would mean
that the right of, say, Catholic or Protestant schools to
maintain their own identity must be respected.

Yet, when distrust is put aside, it would appear that obliging
Catholic schools to provide Islamic teaching by Muslim teachers
may not be so detrimental to such schools or institutions, after
all. In Medan, North Sumatra, for example, a school of a certain
religious background is said to have of its own free will hired
Buddhist teachers to teach Buddhism to its Buddhist students, who
are mostly of Chinese ancestry. That was before the clamor over
the education bill, and that move has proved to be financially
beneficial to the school concerned by attracting more Chinese-
Indonesian students.

An inescapable offshoot of this climate of distrust is that
the whole issue of national education is being heavily
politicized. No longer is the interests of the child or student
in the focus of the present controversy, but rather that of the
political parties that are assumed to represent the people. As
for the government, it would appear that the past decades of
authoritarian rule have left such an indelible impression on the
present political culture of Indonesia that it is hard for the
authorities to keep their hands out of affairs that should be
strictly the domain of the private sector.

All in all, we hope that the nation will for once show itself
capable of drawing lessons from past mistakes. Legislation that
has the potential to provoke serious controversy will do the
nation no good. While it may be true that education and politics
must always to a certain extent go hand-in-hand, in the field of
education it is the experts that should be consulted and heard
first of all. In any case, we do hope that the government decrees
that are required to implement the education bill can eliminate
any injustices this new legislation may bring.