2,000 children read Pancasila and the constitution preamble together

As many as 2,000 junior and senior high school students in Surakarta, Central Java, read Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution preamble together on Sunday.

Event organizer Rochmad Suryadi said that the event was aimed to encourage nationalism among students.

He said that several recent surveys had shown that most Indonesian students could not memorize the state ideology Pancasila or the four-paragraph preamble to the nation’s constitution.

“That is why we hold the event to read Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution preamble. There are 2,000 students,” Rohmad said as quoted by tempointeraktif.com on Sunday.

Student Heninda Rahmawati said that she could easily recite the five pillars of Pancasila, but she said was less confident in her memorization of the content of the preamble to the constitution.

Heninda said that it was important to memorize Pancasila and the constitution’s preamble.

“However, this is not enough. We have to apply these values in our daily lives,” she said.

Education of state ideology in schools has recently been in the spotlight as radical and extremist movements have been reported by students as mistreating the concepts of pluralism and tolerance in Indonesia.