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.

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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.

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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)