Hafid Abbas, Jakarta | Sat, 05/21/2011 8:00 AM | Opinion
On April 19 at the Bogor Palace, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said that radicalism, terrorism and sectarian conflicts were three problems disrupting our national security.
This condition may have been triggered by a number of organizations and individuals who defied law enforcement. For that reason, security forces must act decisively and professionally in combating terrorism and several cases of violence in the name of religion that have occurred recently in Indonesia.
The President's concern is not without any reason. Indonesia has been undergoing many traumatizing events in the form of terror attacks.
One year after the 9/11 tragedy, Indonesia was shocked by the Bali bombings on Sept. 12, 2002. Since then, violence has endlessly hit the country, the most recent being the suicide bombing at the Cirebon Police mosque last April.
Although the acts of terrorism could be classified as large-scale and sophisticated, the police can quickly discover and arrest the perpetrators. Even those perpetrators have already been prosecuted and some of them sentenced to death.
The question then arises as to why radicalism and terrorism persists even though the police have always uncovered the cases and caught the perpetrators.
A security approach is likely successful in the short run, but in the long run, radicalism may arise again because the root of the problem remains untouched. The root of radicalism is abstract and embedded in the mind of a person.
Borrowing Gandhi's view, in this world there are two types of violence: physical violence such as terrorism and war, and soft violence such as defamation and provocation. Relations between the two, Gandhi says, are like fire and gasoline. In order to stop physical violence such as terrorism, people have to first remove radicalism and fundamentalism from their minds.
To create peace and tolerance in the mind of children is not an easy task. It requires a good education which can stimulate a favorable environment for children to gain knowledge, a positive attitude and rational behavior to address their social reality peacefully. Education must therefore broaden the horizon of children to acquire a sense of universal peace, internalize the value of tolerance and enable them to view things from different perspectives of truth.
To arrive at such circumstances, the process of education must meet a certain quality standard to stimulate students' minds to act and behave in a peaceful and tolerant manner to plurality and differences. Students need enough exercises to harmonize what they think, what they say and what they do to experience the universal beauty of peace.
However, on the other hand, that expectation is not without obstacles. Currently, approximately 88.8 percent of schools in Indonesia, ranging from elementary to high school have not passed the minimum service quality standard (Kompas, March 23, 2011).
The situation is probably even much worse at religious schools or madrasah.
Katarina Tomasevski (2002), the UN Special Rapporteur on education in Indonesia, exposed that only about 3 percent of students in Indonesia could enjoy an international standard or high quality of education. These schools are generally dominated by students of Chinese descent. On the other hand, this ethnic group is a source of social envy because they control the largest chunk of the economic pie.
Jealousy and discrimination triggered by discrimination, poverty and unemployment often cumulatively appear to be great power on the grounds of jihad against law enforcement agencies and other religious followers or ethnic groups who are part of the upper socio-economic class.
The existing radicalism is not a simple process. It has been likely triggered to the past dichotomy of education policy. Public schools under the National Education Ministry and private religious school under the Religious Affairs Ministry, despite their use of the same national curriculum, are extremely different in the way each treats resource distribution.
Madrasah under the religious ministry in the past appeared to be the last receiving hand of national budget allocation on education. The discrimination policy is presented by the ADB publication, "Financing of Education in Indonesia" (1999). For example, the unit cost for upper secondary school students under the religious ministry, Madrasah Aliyah (MA), is Rp 185,000 (US$21.76), about Rp 4,000 from the state budget and Rp 181,000 from parents. The unit cost of public senior high schools under the education ministry reached Rp 418,000, about Rp 333,000 from the state budget and Rp 85,000 from parents.
Similar discrepancies also appear in textbook distribution, teacher availability and infrastructure. Ironically, 60 percent of schoolchildren at madrasah are girls, who are among the most disadvantaged socio-economic strata, while those in public schools are from middle and upper classes.
As a result, almost all madrasah are continuously marginalized, as the poor subsidizes the rich in the way the lion's share of government subsidy goes to public schools. So, what can we expect from such circumstances if not just adding to potential social tension and vulnerability in the future.
The polarization gap between the education and religious ministries in dealing with national education has shown great lessons learned. The gap between the two has gradually improved and the past discrimination has changed gradually after the enactment of the 2003 National Education System Law, which allows all children in madrasah to be treated equally as those in public schools under the education ministry.
However, this transformation process seems to have problems due to many overlapping structural bureaucracies at the two ministries and other relevant agencies both at central and district levels. Madrasah transformation moves very slowly.
Bureaucracy reform at the two ministries appears to be greatly demanded with strong vision and decisive policy, including the need to merge all issues, concerns and problems of madrasah into one single management under the National Education Ministry.
The writer is a professor at the State University of Jakarta and former director general of human rights protection.
No comments:
Post a Comment