Official says low cultural sensitivity breeds brutality
JAKARTA (JP): The Ministry of Education and Culture is urgently prioritizing the filling of what it says is a gap in understanding of the humanities among people here.
Director General of Culture Edi Sedyawati said Monday that better awareness of culture and history could help curb the rampant violence the nation has seen this year. Without such awareness people were unable to be critical, she said.
"Our society is lost and trapped in an unbalanced tide of information... we are moving too fast and only care about political and economic matters, leaving out the essence of the humanities, which is culture and history."
Edi told a year-ender media briefing that the ongoing war of ideologies in a country where the average level of education was still low could be dangerous if manipulated by parties intent on seeking the nation's disintegration.
Lack of cultural sensitivity, she said, was evident in the regression of morality and ethics among the people. In reference to what she called demands "to start from zero" in improving the country, she spoke of lack of historical awareness and understanding of the hard work of the founding fathers.
Edi pointed to the irony of history repeating itself in the criticism of Soeharto, which she said was similar to when the late first president Sukarno was unseated from power.
To improve understanding of history Edi, an archeologist and former dancer, challenged students to constantly raise questions, while admitting there was a lack of interest due to the rote learning that dominates history teaching.
Meanwhile Director General of History and Traditional Values Anhar Gonggong also acknowledged that history has been used to benefit those in power, and urged an end to the practice.
"Since Indonesian independence, history has been manipulated for the sake of the ruling party. Sukarno did it through the Board of History Studies and Soeharto also effected it through the Pancasila propagation board (BP-7)," Anhar said.
This engineered history created distortion and resulted in the nation's poor historical and cultural consciousness, he said.
The directorate, he said, is doing its part in preparing a guide book touching on controversial historical events, and would also help teachers in making history lessons much more interesting.
"We have prepared this with the Indonesian History Society (MSI)," he said.
In another part of the briefing Edi said her office was preparing for the Asian Composers League and Art Summit III.
This year the office has hosted several international events despite financial difficulties. Among them was the month-long Art Summit Indonesia II from September to October and the conference of the International Association of Historians of Asia in August. (edt)