I

fully agree with Whitehead (1957) when he said that the essence of education is “that it be religious”. However, I do not believe that teachers and professors should have a formal background in religious studies or take courses on religious studies.

I speculate that Whitehead, after long contemplation and reflection, believed that all religions shared the basic values cherished by all human beings.

Truth, love, peace, appropriate conduct, nonviolence, accuracy, acceptance, attention, self care and benevolence — qualities loved by all.

Education is defined differently by philosophers, but they would agree that its ultimate end is an attainment of quality life for the whole of mankind. This is true and will be true for any time and place across the globe.

While the end is relatively universal, the postulates or assumptions and means to achieve the end will vary from nation to nation. Even within a nation, they change over time. For international comparison, the following illustrates such an assumption.

Shocked by the Soviet Union’s launching of the first Earth satellite Sputnik in 1957, the US deliberately redesigned its education by emphasizing science, which was identified as a particularly weak area of the curriculum. The mastery of science was the right means for advancing space technology.

It was also believed that all school subjects had their own structure of discipline. Teachers were encouraged to master and teach this structure, which was the essential subject.

Apparently, the factual problem faced by Indonesians at present is the failure in character education. Pride in the national language and culture in general is missing among the young.

Therefore, teachers are now called on to integrate character education into their subjects. The problem is: How could they restore the missing character?

It is critical that we identify the weak area of the existing school curriculum as well as the structure of character education within the Indonesian context. Character is a set of personal qualities that develop over life through the first language within the family — a fact overlooked in our education.

Local languages were used as the medium of instruction in elementary schools from grades one to six. However, in 1950 the policy stipulated that local languages were to be used as the medium of instruction from kindergarten to grade three. According to the 1975 policy, the medium of instruction in kindergarten and elementary schools should be Indonesian, while the local language was listed as a school subject.

In spite of the motto “Unity in Diversity,” our national policy has overlooked the potential capital of diversity. The fact that our country is multiethnic, multicultural, multilingual and multireligious has been overlooked for the sake of national unity.

No wonder many Indonesians, especially the young, are not proud of their cultural heritage, including ethnic languages.

Research by Sugiyono and Sasangka (2011) of the National Board for Language Development and Cultivation shows evidence of fading nationalism among Indonesians.

The respondents’ attitude toward Indonesian is lower than their attitude toward foreign languages. Surprisingly, it is also lower than their attitude toward ethnic languages.

Many people do not realize that promoting English as the medium of instruction in RSBI, i.e., project school of international standard, to a certain extent is weakening students’ pride in the national language, let alone local languages.

By design they are made to believe that Indonesian lacks the potential to be a language for science and technology.

Evidently, our education has failed to develop the character, namely to love their own cultural heritage. Our language policy has ignored the potential of the national and local languages as a medium of character building.

The Government Regulation No. 19/2005 regarding the standard of national education recognizes four competencies to be possessed by teachers, namely pedagogic competence, personal competence, professional competence and social competence.

Considering the aforementioned national problems those competencies are neither sufficient nor operational to develop holistic educators. The regulation obviously overlooks cultural competence, which is crucial for teaching intercultural literacy in multiethnic settings.

Within our national education system, LPTKs (teacher training universities) are tasked with preparing prospective teachers in the country.

Unfortunately by design their existing curriculum is not ready yet to prepare holistic educators. Most of their graduates lack the strong cultural foundation to promote multicultural education.

In general, LPTK students have to take the core courses such as Pendidikan Lingkungan, Seni, Budaya dan Teknologi, or PLSBT — namely a two-credit introduction to environment, arts, culture and technology — seminar on religious education, Indonesian language, philosophy of education, curriculum and learning and management of education. Despite cultural diversity, anthropology of education or multicultural education is not included in the core curriculum.

To serve holistic education, religious courses at LPTKs should not necessarily repeat the content taught in schools. Instead, they should promote interfaith literacy among prospective teachers, who in turn would teach their schoolchildren how to develop tolerance toward differences in religion, language, ethnicity, etc.

The shameful attack and burning of a traditional Shiite boarding school (pesantren) in Sampang, Madura, last December indicated a sheer lack of religious literacy and tolerance among the followers of Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

Religious literacy means understanding and believing in the commonalities across religions, such as peace and respect for humanity. I think this is what Whitehead suggested by his inspiring wisdom that education should be religious. Prospective teachers should be provided with the skills of teaching religious literacy.

To implement holistic education, those core subjects should be reoriented and invigorated toward holistic education by renaming them, for example, as multicultural education, seminar on interfaith dialogue, academic writing, ethnopedagogy, anthropology of education and school-based management.

Another possibility is to incorporate the objectives of the core subjects listed above into the hidden curriculum, namely by creating an environment physically and socially conducive for producing prospective holistic educators.

It is high time for LPTKs to redesign their curriculum to deal with the current problems. It is not easy for school teachers and their management to exercise holistic education. Teachers, regardless of the philosophy they adhere to, are at all times in the front line of exercising educational innovation.

The writer is a professor at the Indonesian Education University (UPI), Bandung, and a member of the Board of Higher Education.