The problem of moral deficiency and destructive behavior of youth has become a world concern
nowadays. There is a little debate of which whether or not we come back to the conventional
method of education in which more focusing on moral and character of the students. Sojourner
(2012) asserted that it is no doubt true that even for the American educational system was
originally focused just as much (or more) on the development of students’ morality, virtue and
citizenship as it was on improving student acumen in reading, writing and arithmetic. Sojourner
(2012) continues that it is also true that by the middle of 20th century, schools deliberately chose
to back away from the traditional role as character educators. In line with this, Berkowitz and
Bier (2005) wrote that character education is not optional in the school; it is inevitable and
therefore merits intentional focus and priority status in the school.
It is totally true that moral education is not something new. Moral education or character
education is as old as the education itself. However, it has different challenges for every years
and decades. Therefore, the spirit of character education should be renewed and updated in order
to protect the students from the negative behavior as resulted from negative influences through
the media and other external sources prevalent in today’s culture. Studies from American Family
Research Council (1990) shows that children spend only 38.5 minutes a week in meaningful
conversation with their parents, while they spend 1,500 hours watching television (CEP, 1999).
With the development of information and technology, the writers assume that students will spent
more on their quality time in addition to watching TV: social media activities, such as facebook,
twitter, skype, etc.
Each year the number of juvenile delinquency is not only caused by the deviant behavior, but
due to various forms of violations of religious rules, norms of society or school rules committed
by juveniles, and as a result of juvenile delinquency would have an impact on the youth. If not
resolved immediately, a figure that will grow into a bad personality and harm others.
Given the importance of character education as abovementioned, the Government of the
Republic of Indonesia also sees the essence of character education to be rebirthed and re-
implemented in education system within the country. The Ministry of Education (MOE) of the
Republic of Indonesia is implementing its new curriculum named 2013 Curriculum. One or the
ultimate goal of this new curriculum is to improve the moral and character of the students. The
spirit of the new curriculum obviously has a positive aims, however with the immature planning
and socialization of its implementation; the new curriculum has led to some controversy.
Meanwhile, the demands of the character reforms of the education system in Indonesia, and even
in this world are pretty high; the dilemma of new curriculum implementation and the character
education mandate is raised. In addition to the immature planning of the new curriculum, the
absence of readiness of the teachers as the front-liners of the curriculum implementer is believed
as the most problem in implementing the new curriculum. This paper will discuss what character
education is and its rationale; the challenges of the implementation of the teaching of character
building in Curriculum 2013; and some possible approaches that might contribute to re-
implementing the character education in Indonesia.
II. The Notion of Character Education
CEP (2012) defines character education as “a national movement creating schools that foster
ethical, responsible and caring young people by modeling and teaching good character through
emphasis on universal values that we all share. It is the intentional, proactive effort by schools,
districts and states to instill their students’ important core ethical values such as caring, honesty,
fairness, responsibility and respect for self and others. Character education is not a “quick fix”. It
provides long-term solutions that address moral, ethical and academic issues of growing concern
to our society and key to safety of our schools” (p. 151). CEP (2012) really stressed on the long-
term process as we invested on education; which is really true, because there are a lot of people
who want to see quick changes without considering that a change need a process.
Berkowitz and Bier (2005) put some definition of character education on their paper as follows:
1. Character education is teaching children about basic human values, including honesty,
kindness, generosity, courage, freedom, equality, and respect. The goal is to raise
children to become morally responsible, self-disciplined citizens. (Association for
Supervision and Curriculum Development, in Berkowitz and Bier, 2005)
2. Character education is the deliberate effort to develop good character based on core
virtues that are good for individual and good for society. (Thomas Lickona in Berkowitz
and Bier, 2005)
3. Character education is any deliberate approach by which school personnel, often in
conjunction with parents and community members, help children and youth become
caring, principled, and responsible. (National Commission on Character Education, in
Berkowitz and Bier, 2005)
Meanwhile, The Education Ministry of Indonesia defines character education as a conscious
effort to make students understand, care about, and internalize the values and norms of the social
life, in order to create a better personality (Basic Education Directorate, 2011). Given the
abovementioned definition of character education, we can conclude that character education is a
deliberate and conscious approach to develop children character through core (and/or local)
ethical values, with the ultimate goal of the formation of students’ integrity.
III. Moral Problems
Suyatno (2010) said a number of inappropriate behavior within students is increasing rapidly for
example there are many of those who dealt drugs, promiscuity, conflict and thuggery. In line
with this, Berkowitz and Bier (2005) categorized at least three behavioral risks of the students:
drug use, sexual behavior, violence and aggression, and general misbehaviors. Moreover, those
affect negatively education, particularly students. In addition, the policy of national exam as a
standard of graduation causes dishonest behavior performed even in organized by teachers,
students and others. Besides, corruptions regarding to the education budget at the ministry or
educational institutions are reported massively in the mass media. The report by Samani &
Hariyanto (2011) provides a surprising fact through national data of inappropriate behavior
performed by students in 2010-2011. 180,000 students were truant every day for fear of bullies,
more than one third of students reported if they were not safe at school; 54% of junior high
school students and 70% of senior high school students admitted they did cheating during exams;
and 47% of senior high school students also admitted they ever did shoplifting in department
stores in recent 12 months.
Trisnawati (2012) asserted that there are a lot of problems regarding the decreasing moral of
students in Indonesia; such as sexual misbehavior, violence and aggression (brawl), drug use,
and other general misbehaviors. For sexual misbehavior, there are a lot of shocking news about
the spreading of adult contents movies by students from middle and high school, even those from
Islamic boarding schools. For students violence and aggression, in Jakarta for instance, a report
form Metro Jaya central police listed that were 128 case of students brawl in 2010, and there was
extreme increasing in the following year to 330 cases, and the brawls have killed 82 students
(Syatiri, 2012). For drug use, Rachmawati (2011), a Tempo journalist wrote on her news report
in tempo.com that from 70% of four million of drug users in Indonesia is confirmed as students.
They varied from age 7-14, even the drug use has threatened to the primary students.
Lickona (1992), an expert from Cortland University known as the Father of American Character
Education, stated that future of a nation is heading to collapse if 10 troubling trends can be found
among youth, as follows; rising youth violence; increasing dishonesty (lying, cheating, and
stealing); growing disrespect for authority; peer cruelty; a resurgence of bigotry on school
campuses, from preschool through higher education; a decline in the work ethic; sexual
precocity; a growing self-centeredness and declining civic responsibility; an increase in self-
destructive behavior; and ethical illiteracy. Based on the data and report discussed previously
(Anwar, 2010; Suyatno, 2010; Samani & Hariyanto), what Lickona said is easily found in
Indonesian students. This is the reason to say fairly the condition of education in Indonesia to be
“emergency”.
In the education realm, the broken windows theory (Plank et al, 2009) is possibly able to explain
the large affected students who behave inappropriately. It believes that students are signaled by
disorder or rule-breaking and that they, in turn, imitate the disorder. Hence, multidimensional
crisis regarding to morality that spreads massively among students indicate that the strengthening
of character education is a must to be conducted so that they as generation successor for the
future leadership of the nation could be saved from moral decay.
IV. Challenges of Character Education in Indonesia
What is the importance of character education to be explicitly stated in whole subjects of a
curriculum? Has it been covered in every type and level of school education through religious
and civic education, has not it? Even the national education goal set on Law Number 20, year
2003 on National Education System is really ideal that “ The National Education functions to
develop the capacity, character, and civilization of the nation for enhancing its intellectual
capacity, and is aimed to developing learners’ potentials so that they become persons imbued
with human values who are faithful and pious to one and only God; who posses morals and noble
character; who are healthy, knowledgeable, competent, creative, independent; and as citizens, are
democratic and responsible”. Accordingly, without necessarily to put it in explicit, this goal was
integrated in any curriculum that was ever implemented in Indonesia from curriculum 1947 to
curriculum 2006 as a hidden curriculum (Anwar, 2010).
The facts show that in the last twenty years the behavior of many people is not in line with norm
values. Those include selfishness to use any ways to fulfill personal interest including that
violate laws such as corruption and blackmail; illegal shortcut use to achieve goals; conflict and
suspicion due to diversity; unfair competition in any field of work; physical violence use in
addressing problems, and the culture of shameless and antipathy in treating others
V. Curriculum 2013
The presence of curriculum 2013 covering character education dominantly brings a hope for the
betterment of students, particularly their morality. However, several significant problems in the
curriculum 2013 still occurred (Kemendikbud, 2013). Those include socialization which are less
massive, textbooks which are not ready, instructors or trainers of teachers whose inadequate
competence, insufficient quantity and quality of training for teachers, and evaluation tools for
character which are not yet clear. Some of these constraints indicate that the curriculum 2013 has
not been ready to be implemented. These constraints will impact students negatively and reduce
the value of nobility of the curriculum to build a generation with noble character. Instead of
being a solution, the curriculum is even to be a new problem.
VI. Character Education in Curriculum 2013
The history of Indonesian education began in 1945, when Indonesia got its independence from
Japan colonization. Since 1945, Indonesia has used 12 different curriculums, which are in order
implemented in 1945, 1947, 1955, 1966, 1968, 1973, 1975, 1984, 1994, 2004, 2006, and 2013.
Character education, in this case, has specifically been characterized by the teaching of religion
and civics at formal schools since 1945 and by the presence of guidance and counseling service
since 1975. Guidance and counseling, either as a subject or a learning support service, was firstly
implemented informally without national curriculum instruction in 1958 in a high school in
Jogjakarta. In 1975, the Ministry of Education finally included the recommendation that
elementary, junior, and senior high schools must have guidance and counseling center. A year
later, it was also recommended to vocational schools. To support this program, UPI had basically
opened the Department of Guidance and Counseling in 1963 and started producing guidance and
counseling specialists in the area of education. Few years later, some other universities in
Indonesia began to offer similar programs.
Along the journey of character education in Indonesia, guidance and counseling center, together
with teachers, has played a key role in students’ character building. Guidance and counseling
center is the place where students’ code of conduct is created, and where students who violate it
are sent to. In Curriculum 1985, the task of the center was added as a place where students, in
this case high school students, are guided to think of what college degree and career they want to
pursue in the future. Therefore, in other word, the main tasks of the center are to deal with
students who have both academic and non academic problems at school, and to guide students to
specify what they want to study after they graduate from school. In the Curriculum 1994 up to
now, the task of guidance and counseling is not only done by guidance and counseling center,
but also teachers. A certain teacher, usually a classroom advisor, is given a task to supervise and
guide a certain number of students. They work collaboratively with counseling centers, in
dealing with students’ conduct as well as students’ academic and non-academic problems and
progresses.
As also mentioned previously, however, many have pointed out the phenomenon of social
demoralization and social unrest in almost all sectors of life in Indonesia. It is for these reasons
that the Ministry of Indonesia decided to renew Curriculum 2006, as the revised version of
Curriculum 2004, into Curriculum 2013, which focuses not only on students’ academic
achievement but also character building. Kemendiknas (2013) mentions four basis of the
development of Curriculum 2013: (1) future challenges in globalization, the advancement of
technology, environmental problems, the convergence of science and technology, and
knowledge-based economic development, (2) skills required to face futures involving the ability
to communicate, think critically and wisely, include morality perspective in a social problem,
become an effective citizen, and be tolerant and respectful to different opinion, and (3) emerging
social phenomenon in the society, e.g. teenager delinquency, drugs use, corruption, plagiarism,
cheating on tests, and other social unrests, and (4) public assumption that Indonesian education
has primarily concerned more on cognitive aspect, but not on character building.
The questions are then how the design and the direction of character education in Curriculum
2013 are different from those in KBK in 2004 and KTSP in 2006, and to what extent the new
design of character education in Curriculum 2013 will make a change and effectively addresses
the four issues above. In addition to functioning teachers as a counselor, maintaining the teaching
of religion and civics, and developing guidance and counseling center as the support of learning
service at school, Curriculum 2013 has made it explicit that every teacher at school is a
counselor, rather than just a teacher. In other word, they are not only expected to teach subject
matters, but also life and religious value, as in the curriculum document, the four core
competences to achieve in all subjects are divided into 4: two competences are concerned on
character building, while the two others are on cognitive aspect. However, the first two core
competences are expected to be reflected only in the classroom and not assessed, while the two
others are going to be assessed, e.g. in mid-term test, final semester test, national examination, as
arguably these competences are more measurable.
The pattern has been clear that the Ministry of Education has tried to maximize all potentials at
school to collaboratively work on the issue. However, we may also argue whether or not in the
previous curriculum, teachers did not teach life value to their students, so that it needs to be
explicitly stated in the new curriculum, and whether social problem happening in the society is
fully the responsibility (or assumed to be the product) of Indonesian education system. If it is so,
then it is likely that the design of character education in KTSP is the same as in Curriculum
2013, which we might also hypothesize that it will lead to the same direction and outcome. We
argue that what has been missing in character education in Indonesia is in between school and
home, which has opened the possibility for students to get negative influence. It therefore
becomes the focus of what we want to suggest to improve Curriculum 2013.
