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A CLOSER LOOK AT CHARACTER EDUCATION IN INDONESIA: WHAT EVERY EDUCATOR SHOULD KNOW

FINAL PAPER

submitted as the final assignment for Pedagogy and Educational Reform Subject Prof. Dr. Dede Rosyada, MA Dr. Suparto Sunoko, M.Ed, Ph.D

By: Arnis Silvia, S.Pd 2111014000017

MASTER PROGRAM OF ENGLISH EDUCATION FACULTY OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION UIN SYARIF HIDAYATULLAH JAKARTA 2012

A CLOSER LOOK AT CHARACTER EDUCATION IN INDONESIA: WHAT EVERY EDUCATOR SHOULD KNOW Arnis Silvia Master Program of English Education UIN Jakarta Abstract The commemoration of National Education Day May 2, 2010 has featured a new theme of Indonesian education called Character Education promoted by the Minister of Education, Muhammad Nuh. Since then, character education has been interpreted in various way ranging from establishing a separated subject to integrating character education in all subjects at schools. This paper is aiming at looking closer into character education in Indonesia by narrating the history of character education, the urgency, the master plan, the comparison to other countries program, the challenges as well as the opportunities that could be considered by the education practitioners, teachers, and educators in all around Indonesia who are committed to raise better character on students. Keyword: character education, moral, curriculum, challenge, opportunity

Introduction Character Education shifted into a major concern of Ministry of National Education (MoNE) since 2010 which is included into School Based Curriculum (KTSP). Bringing the theme of Character Education to Improve the Nations Civilization, Character Education (CE) is considered as the basis of the vision of national building to create a society with good deeds, moral, ethics, culture, and good civilization based on the philosophy of the Five Pillars (Pancasila)1. Furthermore, CE is also mentioned in the objectives of national education, which is The National Education functions to develop the capability, character, and civilization of the nation for enhancing its intellectual capacity, and is aimed at developing learnerspotentials so that they become persons imbued with human values who are faithful and pious to one and only God; who possess morals and noble character; who are healthy, knowledgeable, competent, creative, independent; and as citizens, are democratic and responsible.2 To conduct this idea, MoNE Indonesia compiles a guideline for CE in Indonesia in its 2010-2014 program which is called Action Plan of National Character Education 20103 and
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The Long Term National Building Plan : RJPN (Rencana Pembangunan Jangka Panjang) 2000-2015 Act of the Republic of Indonesia No.20 Year 2003 Article 3 on National Education System 3 Read more on Buku Induk Pembangunan Karakter 2010

later on a guidance of CE 20114. Basically, CE is a whole-nation movement which involve all family, schools, government, civil society, legislatives, mass media, business, and industry. In this case, educational unit plays important role as the initial component that later would affect and synergize with the other aformentioned components. A year after its declaration, character education in Indonesia is todays being developed and taken into account to be as practicable and applicable as possible.

What is Character? Before considering the character education in practice, it would be better to ground the definition of character as the basis of theory. Berkowitz5 (2002:47) defined character as an individuals set of psychological characteristics that affect that persons ability and inclination to function morally. It is what leads a person to do the right thing or not to do the right thing. Further, he proposed socalled Moral Anatomy comprising psychological components which constitute a moral person. There are seven parts to the moral anatomy: moral behavior, moral values, moral personality, moral emotion, moral reasoning, moral identity, and foundational characteristics. Along with this, Matera6 (2001:201) ascertains character as understanding, caring about, and acting upon core ethical values such as respect, responsibility, honesty, fairness, and caring. Berkowitz (.ibid) also features the sources of character for children namely family, school, and community. Family is the predominant influence on the childs character formation as the child was affected by the parental affection, consistency of parenting, response to childrens cues and signals, modelling, expression of values, respect for child, and open discussion to the child. School has a later influence to the children as school affects childs selfconcept (including self-esteem), social skills (peer-social skill), values, moral reasoning maturity, prosocial inclinatinations and behavior, knowledge about morality, values, and so on. Then, community (society) also influence the childrens character through the media exposure, neighborhood characteristics, and cultural values. Children who live in religious surrounding such as pesantren or madrasah would have different character than those who live near the

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Pedoman Pelaksanaan Pendidikan Karakter, Puskurbuk, Januari 2011 Berkowitz, M.W. 2002. The Science of Character Education in Damon, W. (ed.). 2002. Bringing in a New Era in Character Education. Standford: Hoover Institution Press. pp.64-74 6 Matera 2001 in Gray, T. 2010. Character Education in Schools. ESSAI: Vol.7, Article 21 pp.56.

dump area. Those who were exposed to violence programs on TV might produce a violence endeavor than those who just watched entertaining cartoons.

Why Character? : The Urgency of Character Education Character education, in some countries, has been integrated from the lowest unit of education to the highest. The integration of character in the curriculum was done by the use of textbook, moral-based story books, character-based classroom rules (agreement), and students activities which oriented to community service. The Monk Study in Texas, educational reform by Den Xioaping in China are two examples for character education applied in developed countries.7 However, in Indonesia, this program was just renounced in 2010 as one of the programs of MoNE of Indonesia. The notion to repromote character education was basically evolved from a view that cognitive intelligence is not enough without good character. A mathematician without good character might turn himself as a corruptor. A scientist without good character could make a technology that will destroy the nature. A musician without good character might forgot the richness of Indonesian traditional musics. A leader without good character would bring the nation into an era of destruction. Some educators believe that todays students (generation) tend to leave their grassroot culture and values then moved to hold values and characters brought by the media and technology. Most of Indonesian youth, especially those who live in urban area, are about losing the sense of caring, honesty, and respect, either to their peers, teachers, parents, or to the elders. It becomes a rare opportunity for a student to say excuse me when they pass their teachers sitting. It becomes a general truth that students like to throw rubbish at any improper place, to cheat during the exam, to lie to the teachers for saying they are sick, to have someone else do their homework, to do copy-paste for the assignments the teachers asked, and else. Furthermore, some on-the-spot incidents also indicates the character declines of the nation. Students jouvenile, free-sex among students, students cheating during National Exam, corruptors among legislators, inter-ethnic violence, violence under the name of religions are some of the cases which eventually ring an alarm that todays education hasnt succeeded yet
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Chrisiana, W. 2005. Upaya Penerapan Pendidikan Karakter Bagi Mahasiswa: Studi Kasus di Jurusan Teknik Industri Uk Petra. Jurnal Teknik Industri Vol.7, No.1, Juni 2005: 83-90

to create a better character generation, a more tolerant society, or even hasnt created noble and honest legislators. By looking at these facts, a character education program should be revitalized.

Principles of Character Education In the earlier program of character education in Washington, Lickona, Schaps & Lewis8 (2007) construct Eleven Principles of Effective Character Education as the essential elements of character education. These principles serve as criteria that schools and groups can use to plan a character education and to evaluate the available character education programs, books, and curriculum resource. Notably outlined, these principles are:
1. character education promotes core ethical values and supportive performance values as

the foundation of good character,


2. "character" is defined comprehensively to include thinking, feeling, and behavior, 3. character education uses a comprehensive, intentional, and proactive approach to

character development, 4. the school is a caring community,


5. students have opportunities for moral action,

6. the curriculum should be meaningful and challenging that respects all learners, develops their character, and helps them to succeed,
7. the program develops students' self motivation,

8. the program engages the school staff as a learning and moral community that shares responsibility for character education and attempts to adhere to the same core values that guide the education of students, 9. the program should foster shared moral leadership and long range support of the character education initiative,
10. family and community members should be engaged as partners in the character-

building effort, 11. the program assesses the character of the school, the school staffs functioning as character educators, and the extent to which students manifest good character.

Lickona, T., Schaps, E., and Lewis, C. 2007. CEPs Eleven Principles of Effective Character Education. Washington: Character Education Partnership.

Albeit these principles were formulated for character education program in Washington, but they are also designed to be applicable for any countries within various culture. These principles imply that character education is a whole educational approach involving all elements from family members through the policy makers. It also requires the educators to manifest the desired characters to themselves first before teaching the students those characters. In a smaller scope, the teaching and learning process in the classroom should be designed as such that the students will have the opportunity to be exposed to moral reasoning, character building, and toleration. In line with this, the MoNE of Indonesia decided 18 values originated from Pancasila, religions, culture and the objectives of national education which are prioritized as the objectives of CE in 2010-2014, they are: 1) religiousness, 2) honesty, 3) toleration, 4) discipline, 5) hard work, 6) creativity, 7) independence, 8) democratic, 9) curiousness, 10) nationalism, 11) patriotism, 12) achivement oriented, 13) communicative and friendly, 14) peacefulness, 15) keen of reading, 16) enviromentally savvy, 17) social care, and 18) responsibility. 9 Religiousness as the first values might be the most distinguished feature that was promoted by Indonesia character education program compared to the other countries. Logically speaking, religion is a rich source of moral and character teaching as well as a great school The Master Plan of Character Education MoNE has proposed three approaches in the character education program which is called The Policy Strategy of Character Education (Strategi Kebijakan Pendidikan Karakter10) consisting of top down stream, bottom up stream, and program revitalization stream. Top down stream relates to the goverment or policy markers actions, such as: socialization, regulation improvement, capacity building, implementation and cooperation, monitoring and evaluation. Bottom-up stream moves from the initiation of unit of education to the policy makers by giving technical support. And the program revitalization stream correlates with the reactivation of the current curricular or extra curricular activities which has already contained character education. These three approaches are applied through the classroom teaching and learning activities, school culture, co-curricular activities and extracurricular activities.

Puskurbuk. 2011. Pedoman Pelaksanaan Pendidikan Karakter page.3 Puskurbuk. 2011. Pedoman Pelaksanaan Pendidikan Karakter page.5-12

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In the teaching and learning process in the classroom, there are some strategies that can be undertaken, such as: 1) problem-based learning, 2) cooperative learning, 3) project-based learning, 4) service learning, and 5) task-based learning. These strategies are purposed to build the students open-mindedness, toleration, team-work, curiousity, and responsibility. The second approach, school culture could be applied by some routines (flag ceremony, praying before and after studying, greeting the teacher before and after class, praying, and such.); spontaneous activities (charity); role-modelling (discipline, being on time, trustworthiness, honest, and hardworking manifested by teachers and staffs); and conditioning (providing clean toilet, trash bins in every classroom, quote posters. To support these two approaches, co curricular and extracurricular activities such as: scouting, Rohis (Islamic extracurricular activity), Teenager Red Cross, basket ball, badminton, and or OSIS (student organization) and also community-family support should also be conducted.

Contemporary Approaches in Character Education Approaches in character education are rooted from the theories and methods of two scholars, Jean Piaget (1896-1980) with his Cognitive Developmental Approach and Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) with her Cultural Socialization Approach. Simply, Piaget takes an angle of psychology while Durkheim takes an angle of Sociology. Piagets approach sees students as the moral philosopher who actively construct ways of thinking about right and wrong. Further, he argues that teachers or educators could promote the development of mature moral reasoning by putting the students as the knowledge inquirer, by emphasizing the participation of the students in moral thought and action through discussions, roleplay, collaborative peer interaction, and a democratice classroom and school culture. Opposite from the Durkheims approach, the interaction in this approach is a way to fuel the cognitive development. Piaget (1932) in Snarey and Samuelsen (2008:56)11 pinpoints two types of moral reasoning, namely heterenomous morality and autonomous morality. Heteronomous morality sees fairness as the obedience of the authority of rules, and putting punishment as the effort to make things right. On the other hand, autonomous morality sees fairness as mutual agreement upon cooperation and reciproal exchange. Consequently, moral development is the transition from heteronomous morality to autonomous morality.
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Snarey, J. and Samuelson P. 2008. Moral Education in the Cognitive Developmental Tradition: Lawrence Kohlbergs Revolutionary Ideas in Larry P. Nucci & Darcia Narvez. 2008. Handbook of Moral and Character Education. NY: Routledge.

At the other side, Durkheims Cultural Socialization Approach sees education for moral character is mainly about social solidarity, group conformity, and mutual support. Thus, social norms that applied in the larger society should also work for the classroom norms. She identifies three elements of morality as the goals for moral character education: 1) spirit of discipline, 2) attachment to social groups and the spirit of altruism, 3) autonomy or selfdetermination. In contrast to Piagets approach, Durkheims pedagogical approach sees a school as an extension of the needs of society. Character education is accomplished by 1) modelling, 2) enlisting students to practice social conduct, 3) exposing students to moral aspirations, authorities, and mature behavior in literature, history, and culture. Bridging these two approaches, Kohlberg with his view of Developmental-Socialization Approach integrates Piagets cognitive development paradigm and Durkheims cultural socialization paradigm and revised moral development and education, into the involvement of collective socialization of moral content and the developmental promotion of moral reasoning. Kohlberg opened the educatorseyes to the fact that peoples moral thinking changes as they grow old, and the changes continue to follow predictable stages of development as they grow older. It implies that educators should pay equal and even attention to the every single students moral reasoning development. Further, educators should consider what types of characters to be taught in certain students grade (age). Summing up the three aformentioned approaches, character education should be involving both cognitive and social development of the students. Providing the students with challenging moral case study to solve, asking their opinions toward a certain dilemma are the examples of activities which involved cognitive development. Community service, a field trip study are to develop the social development. Additionally, character education should also give the space for the students for their cognitive and social development. Klann12 (2007: 97) draws several students acitivities which involve developmental socialization approach briefly as following.
1. Participants each share with the group the biggest ethical challenges they have faced to

date and how they handled them.


2. Participants describe the biggest ethical challenges they face in their current positions.
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Gene Klann. 2007. Building Character: Strengthening the Heart of Good Leadership. San Fransisco: John Wiley & Sons.

3. The group discusses the current organizations culture and value system and how well it

promotes ethical conduct.


4. The group discusses what, if anything, inhibits ethical conduct. 5. Participants share opinions about what could be done to ensure greater ethical conduct

within the organizational culture.

Challenges and Opportunities of Character Education in Indonesia Indonesia, with its uniqueness of grassroot cultures and values which are not possessed by other countries, indeed face a different challenge than what was encountered by other countries in terms of developing character education. The numerous tribes, clans, local languages, local wisdoms, values, geographical location, socio economic class, and educational level, could be the either sources of the richness of character building or the challenge for the MonE to formulate the basic core characters that should be applied at schools all around Indonesian archipelago. Comprising this factors, CE in Indonesia encounters some of these possible challenges. First, the teacher competence. Teachers play the pivotal role in building the values and characters in the classroom and school culture. They are the ones who integrate the character values into the daily instructional design they do in the classroom. They would lead or scaffold the students understanding from simply a science (of mathematics, of social, or natural) into a morally valued sciences. The big question is, were the teachers of any subjects were equipped with pedagogical skills and knowledge as well as the established good characters in themselves before they teach character to the students? And the answer is simply not yet. Ryan and Bohlin (1998) in Arthur13 (2003:122) suggest seven competences that should be taught in teacher education to enable teachers to develop as character educators. In short, each teacher should: 1) model good character even if they are not themselves a paragon of virtue, and seek to improve their own character; 2) see the development of their pupils characters as a professional responsibility;

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Arthur, J. 2003. Education with Character: The Moral Economy of Schooling. NY: RoutledgeFalmer. pp.22

3) be able to engage their pupils in moral discussions about what is right and whatt is wrong in life; 4) be able to articulate their own position on moral matters without being authoritarian in approach; 5) be able to assist pupils to emphatize with the experiences of others; 6) create positive moral ethos in their classroom; 7) provide activities in and out school to help their pupils become moral actors. To achieve these criteria, teachers should be given a kind of special training in character education, classified by the subject they teach, the grade of classes, and the school type they are working for. From one school, some teacher representatives could be sent for the training or workshop for certain period (2-3 weeks), including the technique of lesson planning, transitioning, giving responds, attitudes, role modelling, assigning project, and designing community service the students could do. When returning to their school, these teachers do a sharing seminar to their peers (according to the subject they are teaching). Second, the rapid growth of technology of information. As the two-eyes-knife, internet also brings some negative effects on the character development on the students. The values of physical togetherness, helping each other, responsibility, and toleration which are contained in traditional games are now being replaced by game online. Values of respect and caring as what was expressed by visiting each others house back then, was replaced by the chatting on Yahoo Messenger or Facebook. Students of high schools are now enjoying sending Blackberry Messenger more than communicating verbally with the teachers, school staffs, or even their classmates. Without being realized, this issue of technology encourages them to become ignorance and hinder them for having desired characters. On the other hand, actually, these technology issue could also be a media of a true action which could contribute to their community. Some online communities that are transforming into real (offline) actions could be considered as the opportunity for these online students. Some examples these communities are: Indonesia Menanam14 (a movement of go green living initiated by students in Bandung), Blood for Life15 (blood donor), Bantuan

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indonesiamenanam.com bloodforlife.wordpress.com

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Bencana Merapi (charity for Merapi eruption victims), Rumah Baca16 (collecting second books and donating it to the schools in the remote areas), and many more. Besides, to revitalized the good values in the traditional games, schools could also conduct a kind of competition at the celebration of Indonesian Independence Day. Third, lack of community support, especially in urban area. There is still a paradigm among the society that character education is a classroom activities and thus it is the teachers responsibility. Most of the students live in uindeal surroundings which contribute them bad words (taboo words), negative attitudes (rudeness, disrespect, intollerant), and negative values (selfish, indifferent). Besides, mass media especially television is today giving more harm than good to the students, modelling bad attitudes (smoking, bullying, being materialistic and discriminative). These make the character education in school become a hard work as it would become nothing when the community influence is bigger than what was taught in class. Whenever possible, school and community could meet together to work hand-in-hand to create a better community supporting better characters to the students. However, when this situation can not be created, the surroundings could be used as the moral laboratory for the students where they will observe, identify, analyze, and then formulate the solutions for betterness. Dealing with the television, the policy makers should be very attentive in giving the broadcasting rights by limiting the time of broadcasting, applying censorship towards unaccepted behavior (early warning in each scene), and reputting the label PG (parental guide) for the programs suggested for the students age. Fourth, multiethnics and multireligions. A school with multietnics and multireligions should be extra attentive in adapting character education at schools, as to some extent, the conditioning of school culture might unintentionally lead to discrimination toward the minority group. For schools with majority of Muslim, for instance, should also consider the school habit, routines, and rules which applicable for minority group, such as Hindu or Budha. The same thing should also considered by Christian schools, that should also provide opportunity and comfortable facilities for its Muslim students to conduct prayers at school. Last but not least, the commitment of all components. The Ministry of Education is challenged to realize the noble purpose of character education by making policies for local schools, teacher training and development, material development (textbooks), and assessment. School principals are challenged to create a school culture supporting for character
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rumahbaca.wordpress.com

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development. Teachers are challenged to be more explorative and creative in delivering the subjects, varying the teaching approach, and having the good characters as the students will follow them. Parents are challenged to be attentive, caring, and approving their childrens positive attitudes and leading the negative ones into the better attitudes without judging or blaming. And, for sure, students are challenged as well, to be more than just learners who are intelligence in cognitive, but also emotional, social and enviromental. To summarize, the challenges of character education in Indonesia comprise the teacher competence, the rapid change of information technology, the lack of community support, and the commitment of all components of education. Indeed, there are always opportunities behind those challenges that can be taken.

Where to Go from Here? Character education as a program, is based on a noble objectives and principles, rooted from Indonesian grassroot values originated from Pancasila, religious values, and cultural valies. However, this basis should be planned, applied, and assessed carefully as it requires a big expense of national expenditure as well as the efforts of all unit of education. Taking example from what was done by CEP (Character Education Partnership) in Washington, government through MoNE of Indonesia would better to construct the visible and applicable project plan, followed by series of workshop and training, providing the supporting materials, holding certain programs of character education on urban schools, and conducting relevant assessments for the program.

References

Act of the Republic of Indonesia No.20 Year 2003 about National Education System. Arthur, J. 2003. Education with Character: The Moral Economy of Schooling. NY: RoutledgeFalmer.

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Berkowitz, M.W. 2002. The Science of Character Education in Damon, W. (ed.). 2002. Bringing in a New Era in Character Education. Standford: Hoover Institution Press. ------. 2010. Buku Induk Pembangunan Karakter 2010. Jakarta: Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan Nasional. ------. 2010. Rencana Strategis Kementerian Pendidikan Nasional 2010-2014. Jakarta: Kemendiknas. Gene Klann. 2007. Building Character: Strengthening the Heart of Good Leadership. San Fransisco: John Wiley & Sons. Matera 2001 in Gray, T. 2010. Character Education in Schools. ESSAI: Vol.7, Article 21. Chrisiana, W. 2005. Upaya Penerapan Pendidikan Karakter Bagi Mahasiswa: Studi Kasus di Jurusan Teknik Industri Uk Petra. Jurnal Teknik Industri Vol.7, No.1, Juni 2005: 83-90 Lickona, T., Schaps, E., and Lewis, C. 2007. CEPs Eleven Principles of Effective Character Education. Washington: Character Education Partnership. Pusat Kurikulum dan Perbukuan. 2011. Pedoman Pelaksanaan Pendidikan Karakter 2011. Jakarta: Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan Nasional. Sharron L. McElmeel. 2002. Character Education: A Book Guide for Teachers, Librarians, and Parents. Greenwood Village, Colorado: Libraries Unlimited. Snarey, J. and Samuelson P. 2008. Moral Education in the Cognitive Developmental Tradition: Lawrence Kohlbergs Revolutionary Ideas in Larry P. Nucci & Darcia Narvez. 2008. Handbook of Moral and Character Education. NY: Routledge.

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