Good Characterized Teachers Create Quality Generation
We still remember well that in the middle of last September, a group of students of a state senior high school fought against their peers of another state senior high in Jakarta. The news about student fight was covered by some national media for several days. Ironically, some bad guy teachers of both schools were supposed to provoke the fight that has lasted since a long time ago.
It was not the first time. Fight often occurs in our country, indeed. Not only inter-student, but also inter-village and inter-university student.
Before the case was revealed, some cases of teachers committing harshness and abusing against their students often occurred at some schools and they were covered by the media. This is very distressing, of course. When hundreds of thousands teachers in this country are fighting for their welfare, some bad guy teachers disgrace them. This issue adds to the list of negative sides of our education world.
At the beginning of his second period, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono initiated a national education curriculum theme, namely “Good Characterized Education”. Character education is one of the national education objectives. Article 1 of the Law on National Education System of 2003 said that one of national education objectives is to develop the potential of student to have intelligence, character, and good moral. The mandate of this Law is aimed at producing Indonesian people who do not only have intellectual intelligence, but also good character and moral integrity. Therefore, in the future, there will be generations who develop with noble value and religion based characters.
Character is the way of thinking and behaving followed by every individual to live and develop constructive cooperation in family, community, and national environment. Therefore, a good characterized individual is the one having good quality, integrity, and ability to be accountable for any attitude and decision he made. There should be a value he grows that reflects a superior characterization.
This policy is the Government’s positive action. All these time, the disappearance of values in our education curriculum becomes one of main problems in Indonesian education world. It makes impact on the behavior of our students who lose their integrity; it only meets cognitive aspect but not affective and moral aspects. A curriculum made is not only directed at students, but also the education organizers; they are bound by the curriculum. Therefore, teacher’s model is required not only in transferring knowledge, but also in transmitting inspiration and moral values to their students. This is the real character education.
This is the concern that has moved Lembaga Pengembangan Insani (Human Development Institution, LPI) Dompet Dhuafa to initiate Sekolah Guru Ekselensia Indonesia (Ekselensia Indonesia Teacher School, SGEI), a teacher development program focusing on the improvement of teacher quality, since two years ago. The school was established to answer problems in our education world, by producing teachers whose spiritual, social, and intellectual intelligence as well as good personality, teaching, and learning skills. Alumni of the school up to now are already more than 100 teachers. They teach at varied schools, even those at remote rural locations.
National Teachers’ Day that falls on today should become a moment to review the vision of development and national education in our country, in which character education becomes the core of the operated system. This is the right moment to refresh spirit and vision of doing services in education world in such a right way. Teacher with good quality in knowledge and character will create young generations with good quality and integrity. []
