Teachers, students subject to ethical standards

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): When a teacher punishes a student in an outrageous manner, what happens?

In most cases, nothing. In certain cases, the bureaucracy says, "We have not received any report yet concerning the incident."

Thus, again nothing happens. In special cases, when there is a public outcry, the bureaucracy says, "Those terrible mistakes were not committed by our teachers, but by oknum (meaning undesirable elements within a working unit).

"There are still many excellent and dedicated teachers in our schools. The public should not be upset by mistakes conducted by a number of oknum."

When a student beats a teacher until he or she is knocked out, what happens? The educational bureaucracy immediately says, "This is an unforgivable act. The student must not only be expelled, but he must also be prosecuted."

In the mind of the public, this is a double standard. I have talked to a number of parents about this situation. Most of these parents think that the teacher who punished some students recently by ordering them to run naked around the schoolyard must be fired and prosecuted.

The teacher who poked a burning cigarette in the thigh of a student must at least be reprimanded or given a kind of administrative punishment. Applying no sanction whatsoever to teachers who administer educational punishments in a brutal manner is certainly not a good practice of educational management.

I am not defending students who physically attack their teachers. They must be punished and expelled from schools if the entire teaching staff is convinced that the school no longer has the capability to constructively guide such students.

What I absolutely reject is the policy of not applying any sanction on teachers who have employed atrocious methods in punishing students.

From an ethical point of view, ordering students to run naked is a more serious abuse than hitting a teacher. The mental damage caused by having to run naked, and watched by the entire teaching staff, is much greater and has a more lasting effect than the one caused by being hit by a student. Why, then, must the student be expelled and prosecuted, while the teacher declared innocent and protected?

I think it is appropriate to ask why a student would physically attack a teacher. In any normal Indonesian school, any normal student would have enough respect towards any normal teacher. So the idea of physically attacking a teacher would not normally enter a student's mind.

The fact that such incidents happen suggests that there is something basically wrong in the particular schools where they occur. What or who is abnormal in these cases: the school, the student, the teacher, or all of them?

It would be wise, I think, to reflect upon this question. It is only after we have figured out the set of circumstances that triggered such an incident, that we can be able to prevent a similar incident from occurring again in the future.

But pronouncing hastily that the student must be expelled and prosecuted without carefully analyzing the case would not guarantee that the event would not be repeated.

I find this situation very appalling. It clearly shows the inability of our educational managers to combine bold thinking with human feeling as a guide in making important decisions.

With this kind intellectual shortcoming we are bound to stumble upon the same mistakes again and again. What will ultimately happen to our society if justice is no longer observed in our educational institutions?

I can see only one prospect -- that is further disintegration of our social institutions.

Another disturbing phenomenon about this situation is the habitual practice of declaring a member of an institution who has made a blunder an oknum.

This seems to be the standard practice among high-ranking officials whenever something goes wrong in their working unit. Whenever pilots are caught smuggling ecstasy pills, they suddenly become oknum, and their identity an aircraft pilot is brushed away.

Whenever police are caught red-handed while extracting "protection money" from shop-owners, for instance, they are immediately declared oknum.

They are denied their identity as a police officer. And whenever teachers are caught administering an unacceptable method of punishment, they are declared oknum, and thereby their association with the teaching profession is publicly denied.

The purpose of this practice is -- and this is just my guess -- to clear government units from involvement with any wrongdoing. A government institution must keep its reputation clean. This is, of course, a very noble goal.

But is it effective as a policy? I don't think so. The stigma that is caused by illegal, unethical or unprofessional conduct by a member of a government organization while performing his or her official duties would not be washed away by declaring such an individual an oknum.

Public disapproval and condemnation would persist until the stigmatized government bureaucracy shows in a convincing manner that it can control its members and that it honors the public sense of justice and decency.

After so many unhappy incidents in our educational system, I think the public trust in our educational system has been eroded. The public is aware that there are indeed more trustworthy teachers in our schools than unreliable ones. What has made our system lose its credibility, however, is the fact that it is unable to prevent ethical misconduct among its teachers and administrators. Disavowing members of the system who offend the public sense of good professional conduct will not restore its credibility.

The public perception of a reputable system of education includes strict observance of ethical standards and even- handedness in judging violations of such standards.

As long as the public still feels that ethical misconduct by teachers is judged more leniently than similar misconduct committed by students, the public feeling that our educational system is in dire crisis will not go away.

In the public mind, teachers and other educational administrators should be subjected to more rigorous standards of ethical conduct. This is because they, being adults, are supposed to be more mature in their ethical consciousness and firmer in their observance of ethical standards.

Teachers and educational administrators who fail to meet this public expectation are bad educators who, in the opinion of Gilbert Highet (1906-1987), just "waste a great deal of effort" throughout all their activities, and "spoil many lives which might have been full of energy and happiness".

Are we doing enough justice to the young generation by keeping such elements in our system?

The writer is an observer of social and cultural affairs.