Poor professional and moral quality threaten RI graduates
Poor professional and moral quality threaten RI graduates
JAKARTA (JP): Muhammadiyah high school students in Pasuruan,
East Java, were hunched over their papers during the state final
exams one day last May when hundreds of armed men were suddenly
upon them.
Chanting their support for embattled President Abdurrahman
"Gus Dur" Wahid, the men broke windows, turned benches and tables
upside down and smashed computers before getting away with Rp
250,000 in cash they found in an office.
The students fled in panic, some scrambling to climb the roof.
One girl fell and injured herself, but even more students were
wounded psychologically as a result of the attack.
"Some of the students have been so traumatized that they
needed psychological counseling," said Yunan Yusuf, the head of
elementary and intermediate education council for Muhammadiyah,
Indonesia's second-largest Islamic organization with around 20
million members.
Some 20 schools and other facilities belonging to Muhammadiyah
have been vandalized in recent years during various political
clashes, including the Nurul Azhar orphanage in Porong, East
Java.
On May 28, a group of Gus Dur's supporters surrounded and
threatened to demolish the Muhammadiyah Orphanage in Kraton,
Pasuruan, forcing the evacuation of 32 orphans. Included in the
group were 19 orphans from the strife-torn Ambon, Maluku, who did
not have any relatives in Java.
The students and the orphans, Yunan pointed out, were victims
of political quarrels among the elite involving Abdurrahman, his
Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) supporters and Amien Rais, the former
chairman of Muhammadiyah.
Material losses were estimated at Rp 3 billion, but the
greater loss was the students' feeling of security and safety as
while pursuing their education, Yunan said.
Yunan, however, insisted that the attacks against dozens of
Muhammadiyah's schools and other facilities could not have been
perpetrated by "real members of Nahdlatul Ulama".
The following is an excerpt of an interview between The
Jakarta Post and the professor of School of Da'wa at the State
Academy of Islamic Studies (IAIN), Syarif Hidayatullah, in
Jakarta, on the eve of a national educational congress held by
Muhammadiyah here last week.
Question: Who do you think perpetrated the attacks against
Muhammadiyah schools and institutions?
Answer: What we saw was a crowd claiming to be supporters of
Gus Dur. Not that we automatically believe this to be true. Some
friends said they (the attackers) belonged to NU, but I said,
it's impossible. It could not have been NU people. They could
have only been "fake NU people".
I know for sure that the enduring religious spirit (of NU
people) would never condone such barbaric acts.
Has there been any help to rebuild and repair the facilities?
I am not so sure, but I heard that NU has offered to help if
we provided them with a letter requesting this help. So we, who
experienced this disaster, have to ask for this help.
But, actually, we're able to help ourselves. We raised funds
from among our members, then we asked help from those who
sympathize through a fund-raising campaign. I don't know for sure
how much money we have raised, but we are managing.
What happened to the students whose schools were attacked?
Some of them had to be treated in our clinics. Some had to
undergo psychological therapy -- in cases like this, intensive
treatments are needed.
We reported the attacks to the police, but nothing has been
done so far. We could, of course, have returned the attacks in
kind but it would have been unethical and would have divided the
followers further. Instead, we have actually called on our
members not to retaliate. We just called on them to be careful,
to intensify neighborhood watches.
One thing that people should really note is that the students
affected by the attacks were not the children of Muhammadiyah
members alone -- many of them were the children of NU followers.
***
Yunan, who presided over the Muhammadiyah educational congress
last week, expressed concern over the poor results of today's
education facilities. The organization, which has established
9,500 schools, universities and other learning institutions
across the country, has established five targets to be reached in
the next five years. The "five goals" planning, he said, is part
of a 25-year plan of action for the organization.
***
What is the most urgent problem in our national education
system today?
There are at least two problems, the first being a shortage of
funding, and the second being the quality of our output. In a
recent meeting with President Abdurrahman, managers of private
schools actually campaigned for an increase in national spending
on education to 25 percent of the state budget, but there has
been no response from the President yet.
It would have been a big leap, wouldn't it, for the government
to increase the current 1.8 percent allocation from the state
budget for education to 25 percent as you requested?
That's our strategy. Maybe by asking for 25 percent, there
would be any sort of increase (laughing).
But the outcome of this shortage of funding is that many
learning activities are hampered. There are not enough
facilities, the quality of our teaching is very, very poor. This
leads to the second most urgent problem, the poor quality of our
educational "output".
(Our students or graduates) find it difficult to enter the job
market, let alone face global competition. This is a huge matter
-- we are producing so many educated people who cannot be
accommodated in the job market. This is what we believe is the
poor "professional quality" of our graduates.
Another problem is the "poor moral quality" of our graduates.
Intellectual achievements alone are not enough. There's a need to
instill in our children a deep level of conscience, an awareness
of other people's well-being, about poverty, about immorality.
This is something that we, at Muhammadiyah, think has started to
disappear from among our people.
This is demonstrated by how quickly our people become enraged
over something. When I was small, when we fought, we had a duel.
Now, you can see how easily our children become involved in
brawls.
What has led to poor moral quality?
I believe it's because we have turned into a very permissive,
loose community, with no restrictions against immorality or
criminal acts. I am blaming this on the over-emphasis on
physical, economic growth, while neglecting moral development.
Another factor that contributes to the state we're in is the
impact of the mass media, especially electronic media. Our
community is one that listens rather than reads. Only a small
percentage of our population reads the newspaper, while our post-
reformasi electronic media is so loose on what's appropriate or
not in its programming.
We have long asked that the electronic media cease airing
"interesting" shows when it's time for people to say their
prayers. In many Indonesian families, members fight over whether
to turn off the TV and pray together. Because children no longer
have clear guidelines about what's right and wrong at home, this
influences their attitude outside of the house.
Which problem should be tackled first? The limited funding, or
the poor quality of graduates?
Muhammadiyah thinks they should be done simultaneously.
We have actually embarked on the campaign of utilizing our own
funds -- this involves a very large amount of money, usually from
infaq (the money that Muslims spend on Islamic causes such as
charity), that we call a ta'awun fund. The money, collected from
both students and teachers, can be as high as Rp 2.6 billion
annually.
We have also realized how Muhammadiyah schools have become a
market for many people. Every new school year, publishers flock
to us selling their books -- we haven't made exact calculations,
but every year Muhammadiyah students spend Rp 5 billion to buy
those books. Now we want to take over this "market" and serve the
students' need for books by ourselves.
As for improving the quality of our teachers -- in the hope of
improving the students' quality -- we have started a program
where teachers are being upgraded. Those with an S1 (bachelor)
qualification are now sent for postgraduate studies. Those with
diplomas are sent to study for degrees ...
Please elaborate on the five educational goals of Muhammadiyah
learning institutions that you mentioned.
First, the improvement of the curriculum so that it gives
greater emphasis on ahlak (good conduct). Secondly, we'd like our
learning institutions to produce better graduates, for instance
those with grade point averages over seven so they are better
prepared to enter the job market and be competitive.
Our third goal is to have more full-time and fully paid
teachers as opposed to part-time teachers. The fourth goal is to
improve teachers' welfare through better remuneration.
The fifth goal is for Muhammadiyah schools to have better
learning facilities for our children. (Santi W.E. Soekanto)