Student brawls not the problem they were
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
One afternoon in 1989, Ubaidilah Rahmat, then a physics teacher at SMU 1 Budi Utomo high school in Central Jakarta, witnessed his 1986 Daihatsu Carry being turned into a heap of scrap metal, demolished by a group of high school students involved in a student brawl in his school compound.
"I was traumatized. Since then, I have aimed to prevent such disasters from happening to others," Rahmat told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
But measures aimed at ending student brawls could not be implemented until Rahmat was appointed the school's deputy headmaster in 1998.
"And we succeeded. A few years ago, student brawls involving my students took place on the streets of Jakarta almost every day. Now, my school no longer has a reputation for causing trouble," he said.
He said that the strategy involved developing the teachers' capacity to approach students on a personal level, while at the same time improving and give greater access to school facilities.
As student brawls have begun to vanish from the streets of Jakarta over the last couple of years, teachers should be given credit for their untiring efforts to change their students' violent behavior into positive attitudes.
"We have only begun to savor success recently, only for about the last two years. The number of our students who have been involved in brawls is zero. We have changed our students' image," Rahmat said, explaining that the school started to implement a strategy to reduce student brawls in 1998.
Rahmat, along with other teachers, the student union and the school committee, had agreed to widen access to the school's soccer field up until 6 p.m.
The school has also provided 80 personal computers with Internet access for the students to develop their information technology skills.
He said that these efforts had earned SMU I Budi Utomo the Best School award for high schools, granted by the Indonesian telecommunications company Telkom for encouraging students to develop their information technology skills.
"We encourage our students to occupy themselves with all kinds of school activities, hoping that they will be drained of energy when they go home and cannot even think of starting fights," said the man, who has taught in the school since 1979.
Similar efforts were organized by SMUN 46 high school in South Jakarta, which has provided 40 computers with Internet access for its students to use. In addition, SMUN 46 also monitors its students before and after classes.
Iis Aris Munazap, a history teacher responsible for student affairs at the school, said that at least five teachers regularly monitor the main routes their students usually pass before and after school.
"I keep watch over the students passing the Fatmawati-Blok A route thirty minutes before school starts and one hour after it ends," Iis said, adding that he has to go to work at 6.15 a.m. and go home at 4 p.m. each day to do the monitoring.
Iis also collaborates with four other schools that have a long record of fighting with SMUN 46 in order to prevent brawls by standing guard near the "enemy" compound.
"Our students would drop their plan to attack when they saw me standing in front of the "enemy" school," he said. (006)