Sick society needs better orientation toward human values: Experts

Sri Wahyuni, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Education in Indonesia should be more humanistic in order to heal our sick society, experts say.

This lack of orientation has contributed a great deal to a decrease in the level of human values among Indonesians, they point out.

"We need a big push, beyond just teaching the younger generation about basic social etiquette," social psychologist Darmanto Jatman of Semarang-based Diponegoro University told The Jakarta Post recently.

Teaching etiquette, according to Jatman, was indeed important, especially given that many young Indonesians did not express condolences over the Oct. 12 Bali bombings that claimed over 190 lives, thus demonstrating their failure to show a sense of humanity.

"But that's not the whole problem. There's something wrong with our education system. It lacks that fundamental direction that is oriented toward the acquisition of basic social skills," Darmanto said.

In fact, he said, it was these skills that could help students sharpen their cultural and social sensibility.

"Unfortunately, our education system is not oriented in this way and students are not taught to be sensitive toward other people's feelings," said Darmanto, adding that a similar phenomenon was also apparent at the family level.

Citing a report on the high level of domestic violence in the country, Darmanto said that even from their early years, children witness their parents' frequent quarrels, desensitizing the children as a result.

"Children then create a self-defense mechanism by pretending not to see anything when they are exposed to violence. They become insensitive," he said.

Analysts earlier said that years of exposure to injustice, violence and bloody killings throughout the country, with, at the same time, no legal steps being taken against the perpetrators, had contributed a great deal to an erosion in the sense of social concern shown by Indonesians.

The remark initially came in response to the "public show" put on by National Police chief Gen. Da'i Bachtiar and Bali bomb suspect Amrozi who laughed, shook hands, waved and posed for photographs during their face-to-face meeting at Bali Police Headquarters last week.

Education expert and rector of Yogyakarta State University, Suyanto, agreed with Darmanto, saying that the country's education system had focused too much on intellectual and cognitive aspects, while societal values were ignored, resulting in graduates lacking in "social capital".

"In fact, according to the new paradigm in education, it's not the intellectual capital but the social capital that is significant for the glory of a nation," said Suyanto, who defines "social capital" as collective values shared by many to achieve common objectives.

Indonesians, according to Suyanto, have for some time not been taught about the values of tolerance and empathy, and how to express them well. In the past, people were even exposed to violence on purpose. Broadcasting the film, G-30-S/PKI (the Sept. 30, 1965 communist coup) annually on state TVRI television station was an example, he said.

"You may teach people about communism, but that (showing the film) was not the right way to do it. It is not education," he said, adding that movies and television soap operas that mainly adopted the three main themes of violence, adultery and power struggles, further sped up the eroding sense of humanity among Indonesians.

At the same time, he said, education was very pragmatic. NEM (assessments in the final national examination) have become the only standard of achievement. No room is given to non-NEM achievements, including singing, literary skills and story- telling, regardless of the fact that these fields of study are considered significant in the building of a student's character.

"Literary skills, for example, are important to teach students about beauty and patience. But, you see, no such skills are taught at present," Suyanto said, adding that the lessons were scrapped from the national curriculum in the 1970s.

The nation must pay a high price for the decision that was the result of the lack of the government's political will to consider education as important, he said.

"We are now trapped in a crisis, unable to get out of it, more or less because we do not have the necessary social skills," he said.

Providing an example of how important social skills were, Suyanto said that in a country whose citizens had high social skills, a traffic light failure would not lead to a traffic jam. That is because the people knew how to behave with consideration toward others, despite the absence of compulsion.

Suyanto suggested, therefore, that the present education system be totally changed to provide a balance between intellectual and social aspects.

"Our task is therefore to create human beings who are not just clever intellectually, but also smart socially, sociable, are able to listen to others, tolerant and empathic," he said.

"People are conditioned to think that mathematicians are cool, which is not necessarily the case. Bad mathematicians won't make a nation chaotic, but bad politicians will," he said.

Suyanto also reiterated that modifying the country's education system toward a social capital-oriented one would restore the people's eroding sense of humanity.

"But, it will surely take time, a very long time," he said, adding that the time needed to reeducate people who had already lost their sense of humanity would be as long as the time they had taken to become what they were at present.

"If someone is 15 years old, for example, he will need at least 15 years to recover. Therefore, those who are already 50 years or 80 years of age will not be able to recover before they die," he said.