Schools go beyond romance to teach value of love

Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

For most Indonesian teenagers, celebrating Valentine's Day is one of the main events of the year, with private parties or simple dinners among friends or partners being their main choices to mark the day.

However, in the past couple of years, some schools have decided to entertain their students' idea to have a Valentine's Day celebration at school and lend more meaning to the day than just as a romantic day for those in love.

Trying to introduce the idea that Valentine's Day did not always mean a romantic relationship between a boy and a girl, some schools host events that focus more on love and affection in general, or those that celebrate peer friendship.

"We are hosting an annual Valentine's Day ball with a main goal for the students to mix together and celebrate being friends with each other," a student council coordinator at a national plus senior high school in South Jakarta, who requested that the school's name be withheld, told The Jakarta Post.

She said students were not required to come in pairs for the ball, because this would hamper the aim of holding the event, to help students get to know each other better.

The student council is responsible for organizing the annual event and to determine a specific theme each year. The students come dressed according to the theme and the party lasts until 11 p.m.

Another reason for holding the party at school is because it is easier to keep an eye on the student's activities.

"They could drink alcohol or take drugs if they celebrated outside school, but with this event, we can supervise them," the student council coordinator said.

The school also plans to place a huge collection bowl at the entrance to the school hall where the ball will be held, so students could donate money for Aceh and North Sumatra.

An extracurricular activities club at state high school SMA 68 in Jakarta is also planning a similar event. The Protestant student group has hosted a kind of party each year for Valentine's Day.

"We do not need to come as a couple to join the party, because we are focusing more on the Protestant students so that they can get to know each other," a first-year student at the school, Genesius Kristianto, told the Post.

Other students at the school prefer to celebrate personally with their girlfriends or boyfriends, or to not celebrate at all.

Genesius said the school tradition was to hold a music event called Karasel every February.

"But I don't know whether it was intentionally made to be every February to coincide with Valentine's Day or not," he said.

For most Indonesian students, Valentine's Day used to be a personal and private occasion to spend time with friends, with no school bodies, committees or teachers involved in the celebration.

Recalling their high school memories, students of graduating classes in the 1990s -- mostly from private schools in the capital -- said they always had a huge ball for Valentine's Day in five-star hotels. Some schools even hired major bands to play during the party.

As these dances were always scheduled over the weekend, regardless of when Feb. 14 fell, some female students wore pink ribbons or anything pink during the week -- something that usually angered their principal.

"I remember when the whole class was sent out into the hall because our principal was angry about the pink ribbons we wore. We were told to take them off," said Cecilia Marini, an alumnus of Santa Ursula Catholic girls' high school.

She said when she was a student, a group of students always organized parties outside school because they were prohibited from celebrating the day as a commemoration of romantic love at school.

"We were given flyers that explained the history of Valentine's Day, that it was about Santo Valentino dedicated his life to help the poor, and not about romantic love. No pink accessories were allowed around Feb. 14," Cecilia recalled.

One day, however, then principal Sr. Francesco Marianti OSU came up with an idea to make the day more meaningful as a day of showing love for the local community.

The students were asked to bring in staple foods, used textbooks and clothes they had outgrown on Feb. 14. They would then spend the whole day making parcels of these goods and distributing the gifts to the needy in the surrounding community.

The students were thus taught that love was also something to give to their community and those in need, and that love did not merely exist as the kind of love found between men and women.

"I still recall her explanation when we were told about the activity, that love is for everybody -- for our parents, friends and people around us. I think it was a good tradition, so we could balance the money we spent for parties and for charity," Cecilia said.

Unfortunately, the tradition ended in 1995 with Francesco Marianti's resignation as principal.

Even so, an entire generation of students benefited from the activity, and will perhaps carry their principal's torch in sharing their experience with friends, colleagues and their own children.