Redefining multicultural education

Redefining multicultural education

By A. Chaedar Alwasilah

BANDUNG (JP): The social unrest, conflicts with religious
overtones and political uncertainties which are blighting the
country indicate that Indonesians are still immature in running
their nation.

They are still in a "childhood" stage of nation building,
characterized by weak bureaucracy and governance, public mistrust
of the government and suspicion of the Armed Forces.

All this stems from the ignorance of former president
Soeharto's regime of the exigency of democratic and political
education in a multicultural setting in which an individual or
group has more than one set of cultural beliefs, values and
attitudes.

Given that Indonesia is a multicultural, multilingual and
multireligious society, our educational system should, to a
considerable extent, serve the well-being of our pluralistic
society.

In this context, education should be aimed at developing
citizens who are sensitive to cultural pluralism. In other words,
the benefits of educational programs must be distributed to a
wider range of individuals. The concept of benefit distribution
is elaborated as follows:

* Benefits are not confined to economic or financial gains.
Instead, they encompass social, religious and psychological
benefits.

Encouraging the teaching of minor languages and local
traditional arts, for example, provides social and cultural
benefits, as well as giving the local population pride in their
traditions. So does allowing students to perform their religious
faiths in schools.

The present curricular policy of "local content" should be
perceived as the government's attempt to accommodate the
traditions of the people.

* Around 60 percent of the population live in rural areas,
thus suggesting that education should be aimed at empowering this
majority. Educational empowerment entails providing students with
knowledge and survival skills required for functioning to their
fullest in their immediate milieu.

School children in Bali, for example, are introduced to
aspects of tourism such as local arts, acting as a tour guide,
hotel and travel management, and foreign languages.

The implementation of a decentralized educational policy has
long been overdue. Such a policy is believed to be the informed
solution to general education and vocational education problems
prevalent in Indonesia's multicultural and multilingual society.

* Multicultural education values a mutual understanding of the
cultural beliefs, values and attitudes of different ethnic groups
in a country. While in the United States, the teaching of a
foreign language such as Spanish is said to encourage cultural
pluralism, in the Indonesian context learning other ethnic
languages is not a wise recommendation.

Instead, it is much more worthwhile and practical to
incorporate the comparative religions, cultural beliefs, values
and attitudes of different ethnic groups into the curriculum of
geography and social studies.

* While the teaching of minor languages is recommended, the
teaching of the Indonesian language should be given the utmost
priority. It is through this national language that all ethnic
groups engage in interethnic communication.

Any ethnic group allowed to promote its ethnic language at the
expense of the national language is not only self-isolating, but
also dismissive of the potential social, cultural and political
benefits enjoyed by other ethnic groups.

The mastery of the Indonesian language is the surest way of
gaining access to these benefits.

* In multicultural settings, interethnic competitions in all
walks of life are natural and unavoidable.

Indonesia is already entering the ever-changing and vastly
competitive global society, and to survive global competition it
must first survive national competitions.

Interethnic competitions should be perceived as an internal
triggering mechanism that will propel the nation forward without
necessarily leading to interethnic conflicts.

In situations where competition turns to conflict,
multicultural education must play its role of nurturing and
practicing pluralistic thoughts; promoting interethnic
communication to minimize misunderstanding, suspicion, distrust
and stereotyping; and upholding justice and fairness in
competition.

* Multicultural education necessitates democratic political
education. Politics provides citizens with an awareness of their
rights and obligations, and democratic political education
strikes the balance between the two.

General elections are a medium of propagating democracy by
letting people gain what they deserve and teaching respect for
what other people gain -- exactly what the fifth principle of
Pancasila teaches, social justice for all Indonesians.

Unfortunately this principle was not understood by the past
government. The general elections during the Soeharto regime were
orchestrated to favor Golkar, the government-supported party.

As everybody recalls, the citizens were politically ridiculed
and thus became the pawns of government officials and the
military.

The government virtually uprooted and eradicated the values of
fairness, justice, legality and impartiality, which are known to
all religious teachings. The bureaucracy did not realize that
people's conscience, self-esteem and pride were hurt, resulting
in a loss of trust in the government.

The clearly-drawn characteristics of multicultural education
may facilitate educators, curriculum developers and educational
policy markers in developing programs that reflect the
multiculturalism of Indonesia.

As a rule of thumb, all educational activities should be
tailored with the following intentions: to remedy
ethnocentrism, to build mutual understanding among racial and
cultural groups and to teach an appreciation of their cultures,
to eradicate intergroup and interethnic tensions and conflicts,
and to make the curriculum relevant to the experiences and
cultural traditions of the nation.

At lower levels of schooling, for example, multicultural
themes can be promoted in the classroom through articles from
newspapers and magazines; relevant pictures, books, records and
poems; performing plays about various groups; developing
multicultural calendars; learning songs in different minor
languages; and making maps showing the origins of various groups.

More techniques can be added to the above list. The
multicultural educational model proposed above is not new to many
readers. However, it is now high time for its actualization as
Indonesians consciously, collectively and deliberately attempt to
remedy their beloved yet socially conflicted nation.

The writer is a lecturer at Bandung Teachers Training
Institute in West Java.