8
The President Post
March 12, 2010
8
www.thepresidentpost.com
Education
Minister Nuh Urges Politicians Not to Spoil Education with Political Ambitions Minister of Education Prof Dr Muhammad Nuh has called on politicians to stop riding on education as a vehicle to realize their personal ambitions. By Alci Tamesa
I
n an unprecedented move to cleanse the sector of education from political greed, Minister of Education Prof Dr Muhammad Nuh has called on politicians to stop riding on education as a vehicle to realize their personal ambitions. “Whoever it is, whether he or she is a presidential candidate, a gubernatorial candidate, a candidate for regent or mayor, the person in question must not use education as a commodity to attract voters,” the minister said during a visit to the daily Fajar in Makassar, South Sulawesi. “Even members of the central government should not do that,” said the minister, who is a former rector of Sepuluh November Surabaya University of Technology (ITS). Education observers say that it is common in Indonesia for politicians to attract parents and student voters by giving them sweet promises of free education, provision of new jobs, better living standards and others, but after being elected to their intended positions, they forget their words. Photo: www.cuplik.com
“Whoever it is, whether he or she is a presidential candidate, a gubernatorial candidate, a candidate for regent or mayor, the person in question must not use education as a commodity to attract voters.” Prof. Dr. Muhammad Nuh Minister of Education
In 2009, there were 524 elections from national to provincial and regency levels. In the run-up to each of these elections, politicians promised to exempt students from school fees in order to win votes from parents and young voters. For many years now the Indonesian society has been led to believe that good education means free education; that a good gov-
ernment is one which provides free education and a bad one is one which cannot do so. In the run-up to the formation of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s second cabinet in October last year, national television stations were full of free education ads. Such situation creates the impression that the government’s success in the sector of education is measured by the extent of its free education services. Minister Nuh flatly rejects such a notion as nonsense, because one cannot have high quality education when everything is free of charge.
of joint research units, and even mutual recognition of their curricula, all of which facilitate transfer of credits from one university to another. So an emphasis on free education—though this was originally meant to support children from poor families—is a wrong approach to building a nation’s human resource potential. In fact, the government provides a huge number of scholarships every year, either by itself or through cooperation with foreign governments and international organizations. It is true that the government needs some kind of education
emphatically during his visit to the office of the South Sulawesibased newspaper. Turning to the free-education policy of his predecessors, Prof Nuh said free education could be good to some extent, which is to help the poor. But, if at the end of the day it is used as a political commodity to attract voters from poor segments of society, that is a blunder which will eventually backfire, he added. During his term as Minister of Education, he will never promote free education but will implement policies that enable the rich to subsidize the poor. So students from rich families
During his term as Minister of Education, he will never promote free education but will implement policies that enable the rich to subsidize the poor. To have high quality education one needs high quality teachers, adequate technology, and good teaching-learning process. All these require investment, including bringing in professors from abroad, building expensive facilities, or establishing cooperation with world-class universities. In recent years many Indonesian high schools and universities have established cooperation with foreign institutions through dual degree program, exchange of teachers and students, setting up
politics, the minister said, but that means the formulation of the right policies on education. “But it must not be turned into a commodity for sale,” he said. “Please do not treat education like goods on sale in the market. Whoever you are, whether a presidential candidate or someone running for office on provincial, mayoralty, or regency level, you must avoid touching this sector. “Let education proceed according to its own logic and academic tradition. Do not touch it,” the normally soft-spoken Nuh said
should rightly pay school fees in order for those from poor families to attend schooling free of charge. “But if everything is free of charge, there will be negative implications,” he said. For instance, in the context of free education, teachers would feel that they are not obliged to teach seriously because students don’t pay them anything. “Such schools will be closed down somehow because people will think that anything that is free often means cheap or poor in quality so it must be shunned,”
he said. The Government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has allocated Rp9.2 trillion in special funds called DAK to help schools renovate facilities and build libraries, science laboratories and others. The fund is transferred directly from Jakarta to local governments and it is the local governments that will determine which schools should get how much and for what purposes. His office will “only provide guidance” on the usage of the fund, but realization of the plan is done by the local governments and the recipient schools, the minister said. With the China-ASEAN Free Trade arrangement now in place, Indonesian schools will witness even tougher competition at home where their graduates are challenged by those from universities abroad. This is because of the fact that under the regional agreement, governments can no longer erect barriers against the free flow of expertise and jobseekers. This in turn means that free education is a fallacy that must be avoided. The right way to enable students from poor families to have good education is not to give them free education but to increase their parents’ earnings. Therefore, analysts say, the Government’s education policy must go hand in hand with efforts to improve the welfare of lower segments of society.
Indonesia to Revitalize Moral Education In a long-awaited move to rectify the orientation of education, the Indonesian Government says it will now revitalize moral education besides expanding the curriculum content at all levels. By Alci Tamesa
E
ver since 1928 when the national anthem Indonesia Raya (Great Indonesia) was first introduced, its composer Wage Rudolf Soepratman wrote the lyrics on the need to first “build the soul” before building the body of the nation. But since then Indonesian education has been directed toward physical development only, omitting in the process the need for moral and spiritual development. This is the reason why Indonesian prisons are full of scholars— people, who are smart cognitively but have no integrity or lack moral dignity. This is also the reason why we have an abundant of scholars across the country, but at the same time those involved in white-collar crimes are also university graduates known to be academically smart. What went wrong? Minister of Education Prof Dr Muhammad Nuh has the right answer— a tragic lack of moral and spiritual education at almost all levels in society. The higher the level of education, the more such topics as religion and ethics are deemed as unnecessary and irrelevant. At several universities, some students get a semester on religious and moral education, but in most schools the subjects are scrapped from the curriculum. “Education can no longer be carried out through such a system,” says the minister. “Education must arouse within students noble human values of dignity, and this must be done through schools. It must become a tradition at schools.”
“Let us start a new movement,” Prof Nuh declares. “It is a movement to arouse a collective awareness in society toward the need of having good moral education, comprising character building, ethics, cultural values, noble ideals and dignity. We want President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to launch this movement,” he said
of its toilets and bathrooms, how to deal with garbage, all of that is part of a school’s daily practices, he says. Character cannot just be taught as a lesson, the minister notes, he said, “it must be shaped by the teacher as the role model for his or her classes.” “Parents must also become role models for their children at home. So role-modeling is the key word.”
“It is a movement to arouse a collective awareness in society toward the need of having good moral education, comprising character building, ethics, cultural values, noble ideals and dignity. We want President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to launch this movement.”
Throwing his weight behind the minister, Director General for Primary and Secondary Education Suyanto says that though such values are abstract and cannot be taught as a hard lesson, their impacts can be felt directly by the way students communicate among themselves as well as with their teachers. For instance, a teacher who tends to his or her students affectionately while teaching and educating them will prevent students to display bad behaviors. The opposite is also true, as teachers who do not care or who pay little attention to students will see students getting naughtier and wilder due to a lack of direction and patronage. But character building is not an overnight task. Teachers alone cannot impart good personality on students because students get along with them only during school hours whereas the rest of the day the students mingle with their families.
This is why holistic educators say that education is not just a matter of sharpening learners’ minds but is a comprehensive area of responsibility involving parents, teachers, and even community leaders.
So, family education is another important area that must be straightened out. Parents who abandon their natural role as educators will see their children’s failures getting worse.
Education analysts say that a tragic lack of good role models in society is to blame for Indonesia’s difficulty in producing wellrounded graduates with integrity and balanced personality.
Prof. Dr. Muhammad Nuh Minister of Education
The minister says that a school culture begins with its usual practices, which will shape a tradition that in turn forms culture and civilization. How teachers communicate with students, how they arrange classrooms, how schools take care
“
Photo: President University
Character building is not an overnight task. Teachers alone cannot impart good personality on students because students get along with them only during school hours whereas the rest of the day the students mingle with their families.