Redefining moral education a must

By A. Chaedar Alwasilah

BANDUNG (JP): The prolonged social and political unrest blighting the nation is believed to be the fruit of bureaucratic mismanagement in almost all sectors of governance. The acronym KKN -- that stands for collusion, corruption, and nepotism -- has suddenly surfaced everywhere and become everybody's parlance to warn, alert, remind, and even charge others, especially suspect officials.

Language theorists hold that newly coined vocabulary in a political discourse is a sound representation of temporary culture. Language reveals recurring themes and favored ways of describing and interpreting the world. Our language tends to repeat certain ways of seeing phenomena, and thereby it both constructs and confirms our values and our belief systems.

The undaunted mass media reporting KKN issues and public protesting is indeed indicative of changes in contemporary cultural patterns, which have significant ripple effects throughout society. In the last three months we have witnessed public enthusiasm for reading newspapers -- an effective mode of political education.

We are reminded of recent reports by international independent agencies that Indonesia is indeed one of the world's most corrupt and inefficient countries. In the eye of the reformists, the New Order regime was the architect of the corruption, collusion, and nepotism.

In the current state of social chaos it is easy for everyone to point fingers at others. Politicians are impostors, bureaucrats are liars, members of the Armed Forces are wicked collaborators and abductors, tycoons are hoarders, and educators have failed to make people educated and cultured.

Schools and colleges are now coming under intense pressure and are subject to strong public criticism. In the last three decades they have failed to prepare bureaucrats who are professional and demonstrate moral responsibility.

How can we heal the scars of the past when the existing educational system is still maintained and the bureaucracy which caused the damage still holds sway over our lives? The solution seems to be educational reform to prepare professional and responsible bureaucrats, so that the same failure will never be repeated. The link-and-match orientation, which was popular during Minister of Education and Culture Wardiman Djojonegoro's administration, and P4 Pancasila state ideology indoctrination have resulted in numerous grubby practices in society, the most conspicuous of which are:

First, most people, especially youths, are so fascinated by industrialism that they have felt forced to migrate to big cities, especially in Java. Urbanization has had its negative consequences: agriculture is neglected in favor of industry, which turns out to be fragile as the country has not established strong foundations for it.

The link-and-match approach to education is not only irrelevant to the present state of Indonesian society, but it also has seriously alienated the country's youth from agriculture, which should in fact be a genuine and natural career for much of the population.

This qualitative maladjustment is a consequence of transplanting an educational model from an industrialized to the Indonesian context that grotesquely misfits the actual local needs, circumstances, and resources. It is also a consequence of the political interference in the education sector.

Second, the New Order regime was notorious for its enforced one-sided interpretations of the state ideology. There was virtually no room for individual interpretation because alternative interpretations were perceived as threats to the status quo. The ruling regime in other words implicitly declared itself as the only source of wisdom and truth.

The two practices were rampant in the last regime and demonstrate a bizarre contradiction. Inherent in the concept of industrialization is the ability to think critically, act creatively, and function efficiently in all walks of life. But here is the rub; through the P4 program (government-sponsored propagation of the state ideology), the people have systematically been made uncritical, cowardly, and dependent. In short, our education has been tailored to cultivating obedience rather than creativity and independence.

As obedience has been perceived as of greater importance than creativity, this kind of obedience has led to hypocrisy and crimes among bureaucrats. Corruption, collusion, and nepotism are prevalent at all levels of the bureaucracy. The pronouncement of Sapta Prasetya KORPRI (civil servants' seven statements of allegiance) in the ceremony on the 17th of each month has been a ritual lip service in the bureaucracy. It is high time to question the relevance of this monthly ceremony, especially in university circles.

From all this we learn that moral education should be redefined so as to heal the ills of society and the bureaucracy in particular. If KKN continues at its current level, it could reach such a stage that the whole moral establishment would be in jeopardy.

Public moral education should manifest itself in all professions and layers of society, from school children to bureaucrats and professionals. Furthermore, we notice that violence, brawling, drugs, ecstasy, and alcoholism are entering our schools, where vicious teenagers can vitiate any attempt by teachers to control and educate them. This alone proves that some form of compulsory moral education is needed urgently.

The failures of education as highlighted above should remind educators of the following:

* We are alerted to the aridity of education which is purely practical and scientific. Education accordingly should strike the balance between rational and moral dimensions. National development will never succeed in a moral vacuum.

* Children should not be educated for work alone, their personal growth in society should also be cultivated.

* Moral education must not only eradicate corruption, collusion, and nepotism, but also cultivate personalities who can enjoy the fruits of our culture to the full.

* General education should establish moral reasoning for national development. Education is not simply learning to do this or that more proficiently. It is about acquiring maturity for understanding a human condition in which the facts of life are continuously illuminated by moral reasoning.

The education that the nation badly needs now is one that develops morally mature people who are autonomous, rational, altruistic and responsible for society and for themselves.

When preconditions of morality, such as freedom of the press, critical thinking and creativity, have been established, the four above traits will emerge not only as empirically observed facts but also as logically necessary consequences.

The writer is a lecturer at the Teacher Training Institute in Bandung, West Java.

Window A: In the current state of social chaos it is easy for everyone to point fingers at others. Politicians are impostors, bureaucrats are liars, members of the Armed Forces are wicked collaborators and abductors, tycoons are hoarders, and educators have failed to make people educated and cultured.

Window B: The link-and-match approach to education is not only irrelevant to the present state of Indonesian society, but it also has seriously alienated the country's youth from agriculture, which should in fact be a genuine and natural career for much of the population.