RI's youth suffer from crisis of values
RI's youth suffer from crisis of values
JAKARTA (JP): Researchers say young Indonesians today suffer
from anomie. They do not know right from wrong.
Rusydi Syahra, a senior researcher at the National Institute
of Sciences, told a seminar on youth here yesterday that many
young people committed socially unacceptable acts -- such as
vandalism or becoming involved in brawls -- because they lacked a
sense of values.
Antara reported that the institute's recent study on high
school students in Bandung, Ujungpandang and Medan, found that
more than half of the respondents admitted to having difficulty
in defining whether their own acts were right or wrong.
"A great number of students also said they were often
depressed without understanding why they felt that way," Rusydi
said.
Young people who dropped out of school and had no orderly
daily activities experienced greater confusion. He compared this
particular group with high school students who had relatively
better social and economic lives, and found that 40 percent to 50
percent of the latter group experienced anomie.
"The percentage of urban youth, such as those in Jakarta, who
experience anomie is even higher (than those who live outside of
cities) because of the various urban conditions which lead to
problems," he said.
Anomie in societies or individuals is a condition of
instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values or
from a lack of purpose or ideals.
The term was introduced by the French sociologist Emile
Durkheim in his study of suicide. He believed that one type of
suicide resulted from the breakdown of social standards that
people need to regulate their behavior.
When a social system is in a state of anomie, common values
and common meanings are no longer understood or accepted, while
new values and meanings have not been developed.
Such a society produces, in many of its members, a sense of
futility, a lack of purpose, and emotional emptiness and despair.
Striving for certain goals is considered useless, because there
is no accepted definition of what is desirable.
Rusydi pointed out how Indonesian youths are exposed to a
clash of values, leading to confusion as to which set of values
to adhere to.
When a family, school or peer environment failed to instill
strong values in a child, while the mass media exposed him or her
to foreign "unacceptable" values, the child would certainly
become confused, he pointed out.
"They become people who do not have a clear purpose in life,"
Rusydi said. (swe)