Jakarta – The People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) – the highest legislative body in the country – has responded positively to plans to reactivate Pancasila Moral Education (PMP) courses in schools.
MPR Speaker Zulkifli Hasan says that the proposal made by the Ministry of Education and Culture (Kemendikbud) is a good one and will revive the values of Pancasila as the state ideology.
“I agree. [But] the teaching methods must be adapted to the current era”, he said at the parliamentary complex in Jakarta on Tuesday November 27.
Hasan believes that students have lost the benefits of the Pancasila lessons and the Guidelines for the Internalisation and Manifestation of Pancasila (P4) which were taught during the era of former president Suharto’s New Order dictatorship.
Yet, said Zulhasan, as he is known to friends, Pancasila as an ideology must be taught well and take root in society. “Now the lessons have gone. Without it, of course students will look for something else”, said the chairperson of the Islamic based National Mandate Party (PAN).
Hasan agrees that the PMP lessons should be taught in primary, junior and senior high school and they should not have disappeared even though there was a change of government.
But, he said, Pancasila lesions can no longer be taught through doctrine as they were during the New Order era and he believes that further study is needed on this.
“With today’s young children we must accommodate the developments of this era. So there must be study, sitting down together, the right method, what should it be like. It’s about the method, the content will be the same”, he said.
The Kemendikbud plans to reintroduce PMP courses in order to strengthen the values of Pancasila which have long existed in school environments.
The PMP is a study course which has been taught in schools since 1975 and replaced the citizenship educational courses which had been part of the school curriculum in Indonesia since 1968.
The PMP courses however were again changed in 1994 to become Pancasila and Citizenship Education (PPKn) and in the reformasi era following the fall of Suharto in 1998 became PKn, losing the word Pancasila, which was seen as a product of the New Order. The PMP contains material on Pancasila as analysed in the P4.
“We will reactivate the PMP because there is much that should be revived, because Pancasila is something extraordinary for our nation, that is perhaps what we will do”, said the Director General for Teachers and Educators, Supriano, after attending a commemoration of National Teachers Day at the Kemendikbud building in Jakarta on Monday November 26. (ain)
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was MPR Sepakat Pendidikan Moral Pancasila Kembali Dihidupkan.]
