Students need proper moral values, not blind faith

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.