Child protection commission blames curriculum for brawls

The National Commission for the Protection of Women and Children (Komnas PA) says Indonesia's static and target-oriented education curriculum is one of the reasons for the high number of student brawls.

“Students are fed up and take it out through negative things like brawls,” Komnas PA chairman Arist Merdeka Sirait said Wednesday as quoted by tempointeraktif.com.

Arist added that children’s curriculum should include fun subjects for students to indulge in, other than the core subjects like mathematics, Indonesian and English.

As for the frightening display of violence, Arist said it was passed on to the children through what they saw around them.

“Just look at profanities uttered by a father to a public minivan driver right in front of his child. That is outrageous,” he said.

On Monday, several students of SMA 6 high school in Kebayoran Baru, South Jakarta, attacked reporters who were protesting over a previous student attack and theft on a Trans7 cameraman, after he recorded a brawl between students of SMA 6 and its neighbors SMA 70.