The Innate Nature We Have Forgotten

We have just celebrated Eid al-Fitr. For a month, we practised self-restraint and sharpened our empathy. We concluded that practice with mutual forgiveness, sharing joy, and reaffirming bonds of brotherhood. We call it returning to our innate nature; returning to purity, to the purest humanity. But have we truly returned to our innate nature? Or have we merely stopped at the ceremony, forgetting its essence?

Two months ago, on 29 January 2026, a 10-year-old child, a fourth-grade primary school student in Ngada Regency, East Nusa Tenggara, ended his life. He left a letter for his mother. He departed not because of violent conflict, not because of bullying, not because of a natural disaster. He left because he had no money to buy notebooks and pens costing less than Rp10,000.

Society was shocked. Various comments emerged on social media. Officials spoke out. Then came the next news: thousands of flood victims in Sumatra were still surviving in evacuation tents as Ramadan began. Then a tax official was caught by the Corruption Eradication Commission with a modus operandi of laundering trillions of rupiah. Then Kontras activist Andrie Yunus was doused with acid by rogue TNI members after recording a podcast on remilitarisation. Bad news comes one after another without end, until some of us decide to stop being angry. Not because the situation has improved, but because we have run out of capacity to care. Society experiences what Figley (1995) called compassion fatigue. There is a feeling of exhaustion from being continuously battered by bad news that does not lead to positive change.

Society gets angry briefly, then moves on. It repeats like that, and the system that produces the problems continues to run. Unnoticed, indifference eventually becomes normal. From an educational perspective, this situation can be interpreted as an ongoing learning activity. It has no syllabus, but it is presented every day to the growing generation.

UNPLANNED LESSONS

Philip W. Jackson, in his book Life in Classrooms (1968), introduced the concept of hidden curriculum. This curriculum consists of a set of rules and values not explicitly taught to students in school, but which they can observe. He showed that children do not only learn from what teachers teach in class. They also learn by observing how teachers and adults around them treat each other, how power is used, and what happens when someone makes a mistake.

Paulo Freire, through his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968), reminds us that education is never neutral. Every environment always teaches something, whether intentionally or not. Children always learn from their surroundings. The question now is what are the people around them teaching today? What are they internalising?

Children witness that those in power can act as they please without equal consequences. Children also see that rules apply differently depending on who breaks them. Children observe when someone voices criticism, but is responded to not with arguments, but with threats, even violence. Children witness empathy being shown only when cameras are recording. Children also realise that we no longer discuss the primary school student’s suicide in Ngada less than a month ago.

Ki Hadjar Dewantara urged us adults to ing ngarsa sung tuladha (be an example when in front/in power). An example that is not just a slogan, but a living example. An exemplarity seen in every decision, every attitude, every way we respond to injustice. If those in front fail to be examples, do not be surprised if those behind learn the wrong things.

If children continuously see harmful behaviour without equivalent moral consequences, they will learn to normalise it. More worryingly, children will lose empathy. Empathy requires consistent examples of goodness from the adults around them who show that care is real, not just formality or image-building.

COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY

Ensuring that our children learn about innate nature and live it is certainly a collective responsibility. Not just the task of teachers in school and parents at home, but also all members of society wherever they are, especially in the digital era with no clear boundaries.

In school, teachers capable of teaching humanity need their burdens and support re-examined. We do not lack committed teachers, but unfortunately, they are marginalised. Their burdens keep increasing. Not only teaching burdens, but they are also saddled with administrative matters unrelated to their main task as educators. Teachers’ welfare is not improved either. Teachers who should teach justice become victims of injustice themselves (Jamshaid, Akram & Baber, 2024). Their students see all that. They learn from how adults are treated, not just from how adults speak to them.

However, that responsibility cannot be entirely handed over to teachers and schools. The hidden curriculum also occurs outside school, both at home, in public spaces, and on the gadget screens that accompany children every day. In all those spaces, adults need to develop what Freire (1968) called conscientizacao (critical awareness), which arises not from lectures, but from real experiences facing injustice and choosing to respond to it with dignity. Without that awareness, we can never truly be examples.

Innate nature ultimately is not just about a clean heart after a month