Independent Education toward Liberated Human

pendidikan pembebasan

Stand up in the independence context doesn’t only mean “unpowered stand up,” just enough stand up, in a small meaning. Stand up has to definite as a straight stand up by ours power. (Ki Hadjar Dewantara)

            Those words were uttered by Ki Hadjar Dewantara, our education father, several decades ago. He has perspective that a truly independence is a freedom from dependence toward others. As an education fathers he sees that a pure independence can be reached by a local education with global quality. He says, “Education toward liberated human”. Liberty or independency, he defines as individual liberty and also collective liberty (nation liberty). 

An individual liberty in education context is that education should make an individual to be the real human with awareness about his or hers right and also his or her duty. In the nation context he sees that education should make the nation stand up by its feet and does not depend on other countries aid. Although we de vacto and de jure have became a free nation from colonialist, we are not pure an independent country as long as we still hang down our live to other country’ controls. The question today is that true that our education has made Indonesian people and also the nation truly independent after so many years we have uttered our proclamation. Then, how can we to be totally an independent human and country by our education?

            The answer from the question should be answer by us. We have to be able to definite our right and also our duty as the part of the nation. So many Indonesia young generations lose from the culture of Indonesia. They are mostly unstably controlled by globalization trend. Pop culture from America has entered into their mind deeper and deeper. Local wisdom produced by our culture faded from their mentality. Pragmatism point a view has made our generation turn to be hedonist. They are just only think about temporary happiness and do not care with the meaning of ideal value from the live. After that, our valuable norms and value do not have any power as a fence of every human in the nation. The conditions make a fact that crime and others bad behaviors turn identical with our generation. This is the fact that our education fails to make the country’s young generation conscious about their right and duty in the morality context.

            In other context, about quality in mastering education materials, right and duty of learners this country also not disappointed yet. As in the contribution of education toward economic index in south East Asia, Indonesia is in the third position from above, defeated from Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore even Vietnam. It is right that there are several Indonesian students who win competition in the regional until international science competitions. But, those students are only a few among students in Sabang until Merauke. In Papua we can see that quality of education is still apprehensively. Begin from the facilities until the systems are not built as the standard yet in many regions. Although the standard quality of every region is very different, UAN as national standardization coerces every region to be layers that escape from the real education of the region. Finally, even distribution of education is turn so far away from reality that we have to reach. The system is blind to see the right of every part of Indonesia to get equal education quality. More funereal, UAN is held as demand of ISO and also SBI which are kinds of hegemony western country toward education policies of developing country. The system also fails to describe that the essential value of education is to make the generations aware about their responsibility to develop this nation by their competences. Those totally shows that education until now is not an effort toward real independency.

            It is crucial to practice and implement Ki Hadjar Dewantara’s education toward liberty human. The concept is begun from the importance to placed national identity in every education sides. That does not mean that Ki Hadjar is banning western education which is more developed. As information Ki Hadjar had also studied in Holland; he known about western education. In his point a view, high quality western education has to adopted but has to be also adjusted with our local identity.

Then, western education’s value which sometime produces bad influence like pop and pragmatism culture have to be reduced using our local wisdom. In the concept, he tries to describe that the meaning of independent education is a freedom of this nation to produce education system which need supplement from western education material without any burden to be controlled or being hegemony by western country. He believes that by our independency we can produce the best education system which can solve every problems of the nation.   

            In solving morality problems, Ki Hadjar has thought which calls Pendidikan Budipekerti. As convergent-theory, a human is like a sheet of paper which has been full of written text. The text is a dark (symbols of bad behavior) and a bright text (symbol of good behavior). From the text education has to erase the dark text and make clearer the bright text. Ki Hadjar sees that we have to accept a human (student) as how he or she is. Education is not allowed to force the student as the education wants to be. Furthermore, education has to recognize characteristic of the student and makes appropriate approach in the effort make better the morality of the students. Each characteristic need its own approaches. This Pendidikan Budipekerti can make the students recognize and regard their own characteristic. The students will know their rights and duty to implement as the good as the norm and value.  

            In the education quality problems Ki Hadjar has answer using independent education. As the problems that begin from unequal education polices from each region in this nation and also unsuitable western education adoption. For the unequal education policies, Ki Hadjar using a local education system which is called Tripusat Pendidikan (three education center) that consist of Family Education as the main education center, School Education, and Society Education. He sees that education is not only in a formal institution like school. Even he believes that the main education is in the family. From his point a view he wants to show that effort toward equity may be need a long time because so much problems on it. By Tripusat Pendidikan he wants to show that we have not to be dependent with formal education. We can produce the equality in family and also in the society.

For the next problems, Ki Hadjar has deep analysis about Indonesian education course: pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial. He finds that inequality of education is always appeared in this nation. There is an attempt to keep the inequity of education access toward the social class eternity. In the present, there is assumption that inequality of education among regions in Indonesia is controlled by developed country using multinational policies like ISO and SBI to hold out developed-developing country class. That is how he was very strong to say about independency of education. The one and only to solve this problem is by bravely produce local education system that is smart to adopt developed country education materials.

            Ki Hadjar Dewantara has futuristic point a view about Indonesian education. He described as strong as he could about independent education toward liberated human decades ago. The problems of education we have to day had been answered by Him. Our job today is to implement his futuristic view, “Education toward liberated human”.