Indonesia is a vast country that
should not tolerate dilettantish national policy formulations, let alone in the
field of education, which should always be perceived as the most important
undertaking of human investment. With its population of 240 million people
and abundant natural resources, it is a land that is badly in need of a state
of the art education strategy.
Indonesia’s education strategy
should be capable to withstand geopolitical shifts, yet, flexible enough for
policy adjustments that may be called for by changes in the course of national
development. We cannot undermine serious thoughts on such a strategy, as
Indonesia, like all other countries, faces a future of mankind that will be
marked as a risk society (Ulrich Beck) with tendencies really hard to predict.
The quintessence of education is
to guarantee the inter-generational cultural relay race that consists of the
transfer of previous “weather proven” knowledge and experiences, the critical
communication over the here and now (Jürgen Habermas) and a dialogue about the
future.
In that regard education firstly
has a conservative-conventional function: to prepare the next generations with
integer basic capabilities (Ki Hajar Dewantara) in order to survive against
nature and survive in relations with fellow humans (Sigmund Freud).
Therefore, it is our obligation
to equip the next generations with an education in liberal arts that is
historically proven; a correct mother tongue which in our case would be our
national language, mathematics and natural sciences, history and geography and,
not the least, ethics and discipline in order for individuals at large to be
civilized in an increasingly pluralistic society.
The second function is rather
progressive-nonconventional: to open opportunities for the development of
autonomous poietic capabilities (Engkoe Mohammad Sjafei) in order to cope with
a future that no one knows how it would look like. Somehow generations of each
era shall have to find their own problem solving if they want to survive (Han
Feizi, Machiavelli).
Older generations have the
obligation to pass on their best knowledge and capabilities to the coming
generations and also enlighten them with skills and training to discover, on
their own, sophisticated methods and prudence that they would think adequate to
cope with a risk society of the future, the trend of which is hard to predict.
The coming generations will
become the more like an arrow that we shoot in a battle of civilizations
whereby we cannot dictate where it should stuck. Most important, the
coming generations will certainly define on their own what they are or will be,
while we cannot convince them to retain what we now deem as our precious
identity. We should not wonder if the future generations would find out on
their own to love values what we hate, or the other way around — to hate norms
what we love. We should also open a broad poietic sphere for youngsters to be
creative by means of providing them with opportunities for artistic works
(painting, singing, writing and crafts), sports and, increasingly
recommendable, martial arts.
Those capabilities are required
for the next generations to train themselves to be skilled in independent
analysis, self-evaluation and to deal autonomously out of the box, let alone
out of our box. As the human future will be tight with technology which does
not promise anything enduring nor certainty, the coming generations should be
prepared to think and to act beyond the conventional frontiers and rely more on
their own autonomous analytical capabilities to decide what they would deem fit
to bringing them to a better life and to prevent setbacks (Flügel-Martinsen,
Jenseits von Glauben und Wissen, 2011).
Wading across life in the future
would be much like riding a bicycle in a terrain bumpy with all kinds of
challenges and obstacles, some of them could be even devastating. In such
a terrain one should not rely too much on others, as others would also have
increasing problems of their own. If one rides a bicycle, there is little
use to rely on anybody; one relies on one’s own bicycle and one’s own élan to
accomplish track by track of history. Change that metaphor into real life then
we get our most valuable reason in place of a bicycle, and get the real tough
life to deal with instead of history.
Still, once you ride the bicycle
of history, keep paddling, because if you ever stop, you will get trapped in
failure and the tragedy of life that will prevent you to stand up again,
because history is only a one way path. To avoid the tragedies of history
Indonesia really needs an able and solid government, and not one whose high
ranking officials only offer apologies for fiascoes caused by their sheer
incompetence or indecisiveness.
The next general election in
April 2014 should produce such a government, or else we would be bound for a
deeper history of ignorance, which no reasonable nation would be willing to go
into.
Budi0no Kusumohamidjojo ;
Professor
of Philosophy of Law
JAKARTA POST, 14 Mei 2013
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