More moral subjects 'unnecessary'

JAKARTA (JP): School children already have enough subjects touching on issues of morality and thus there is no need to formally add yet another subject to the laden curriculum, Minister of National Education Yahya A. Muhaimin said on Friday.

"We already have religion, civics and sports subjects. Why should students have more subjects in school ?" Yahya told journalists at his office here.

Yahya's remark came in response to a suggestion made by President Abdurrahman Wahid on Tuesday that moral lessons should be made into a separate subject in school.

Yahya maintained that it would be better to integrate such lessons into existing subjects.

"The most crucial thing is the substance. It is better for instance to create a positive atmosphere where teachers and students respect each other and communicate with each other," he said.

Yahya admitted that he had received many requests from other ministers to put their respective areas into the curriculum.

"The Minister of Maritime Exploration and Fishery asked me to add a subject about maritime. State Minister of the Empowerment of Women, State Minister of Human Rights Affairs, and State Minister of Cooperatives, Small and Medium Enterprises also asked the same thing," he said.

Yahya said that while it is impossible to grant everybody's wish, he would try to accommodate their requests in some way.

For human rights affairs for example, Yahya said that the ministry has coordinated with 10 public universities in Indonesia to establish a center of human rights affairs study.

"But to add more subjects, I'm afraid we won't do that as we are already being criticized for putting too many subjects in the curriculum," he said.

The Ministry has recently been criticized for leaks of the nationwide senior high school final examinations (Ebtanas) in several high schools in Greater Jakarta, which resulted in some 3,500 students having to retake their examinations.

Yahya has admitted that the leaks came from inside the Ministry's Directorate General of Elementary and Secondary Education (Dikdasmen).

Five staff members are said to be under scrutiny for negligence in handling copies of the exam.

"They knew about the documents being missing early on but didn't report it," Yahya said.

Another two staff members are under police investigation.(09)