Students need proper moral values, not blind faith

The House of Representatives is deliberating on the draft bill for national education, which has many contentious points, particularly those regarding religion that have created controversy. Senior educator Mochtar Buchori, also a member of the House working committee on the draft bill, talked with The Jakarta Post's Soeryo Winoto about the relevance of religious instruction at schools.

Question: Some believe that the national educational draft bill would impose certain kinds of religious instructions on students and schools. How do you see this?

Answer: Muslims (involved in the preparation of the draft) referred to religious instruction as a means (to develop students' morality). Based on their discussions, what they really meant was moral education, instead of specific religious education.

They were very persistent about making sure students received religious instruction because they are of the opinion that our education system has failed to build character among the younger generation. Continuous student brawls and an increase in drug abuse were cited. Morality was always stressed, not religiosity.

Moral education and religious instruction start from home; they cannot simply be made school subjects. When children go to school they bring their own norms from home. Some of the norms are acceptable and the others are not, so it is the school's duty to preserve acceptable norms and correct the unacceptable.

The question is, what's the context? ... Ideally, for Muslims, the context is Islamic values in Indonesia, and in general the norms relate to the context of their religious life.

But we should know what we really want to develop. Do we want to develop religious education or religious instruction? Religious instruction contains "dos and don'ts", while religious education shapes students' life style.

Further, what do we expect from moral development or religious development? Moral development is easier to understand than development in religiosity, which involves faith and taqwa (piety).

The problem is this word taqwa (inserted as a fundamental consideration in the draft bill). It's a word with specific Islamic connotations, and thus meaningful only to Muslims. Aren't there any other terms which can be used to replace it? A working committee member of the National Awakening Party (PKB) of the South Kalimantan chapter has proposed that the word be dropped from the draft bill.

Is the working committee serious enough about discussing the bill?

We will be consistent in voicing what we perceive is the best for national education. We are trying to change the wording of the contentious points and articles, or we may just drop them completely. If we fail to change that point or the contentious articles now, we will have to take up the issue during the plenary session beginning April 1. And, if we still fail to change the controversial wording, we will try to clarify them with explanatory articles.

Doesn't the draft bill reflect pluralism?

No. What pluralism? ... The government concept aims to push assimilation among the religions. I don't agree with that concept. What is happening now with Muslim students attending non-Islamic schools is evidence of bottom-up assimilation. But if Muslim students quit non-Islamic schools after the draft bill is passed into law, that will be segregation. And then the government will try to boost assimilation through its own top- down concept.

Some say that point 1a of Article 13 in the current draft, which cites students' right to religious instruction according to their faith from teachers of the same religion, has violated the vision of religious-based schools. What do you think?

It is very common for students from Muslim families to go to Christian or Catholic schools. But hardly any students from Christian or Catholic families go to Islamic-based schools. Thus the bill will affect the vision of the Christian or Catholic schools, not Muhammadiyah schools, for instance. But vision does depend on its definition.

The government has heavily influenced education so far, even from the pre-school level. Your comment?

(Such a tendency) is wrong. (Regarding) moral education and religious instruction, it is an education of values, which makes the students adhere to norms and rules.

Adherence depends on whether students know the rules, and whether they comprehend them, and how they commit and implement the values. This makes up the cycle of an education system. Correct education starts from knowing how to implement (values), and should not stop halfway.

This is the difference between school lessons, which just teach students to know the rules and norms. The goal of moral education is to guide students to make a voluntary personal commitment. Have we been successful in this? No! The existing education system is like a process of deceiving people.

Discourse on education has two sides: Intellectual and moral. We need both.

Is it possible to take out religious instruction from the curriculum, but keep something in it about character and morality, especially from the elementary level?

Yes, it is possible. We've started voicing that. But, it's still got a long way to go. We will deal with the issue in the explanatory articles (of the draft bill). If the objective of religious instruction is to build morality, the separation will be no problem, but if the goal is to develop blind faith, which could lead to fanaticism, the separation of religious instruction from the curricula would not be acceptable.