As one of the most diverse countries in the world, Indonesia should be able to maximize its potential to create a prosperous, civilized, and justice country.
However, like it or not, Indonesia has been experiencing “turbulencies” in numerous aspects of life, ranging from the economic disparities, social status gaps, social-political conflicts, territorial conflicts, and even with the problematic educational problems. The ongoing realities lead the society into fractions.
Thus, like or dislike, if there is no proper and adequate solution to the polarized circumstances, the condition will automatically contribute to the massive, if not the entire, humanitarian disasters such as civil wars, hunger, poverty, the spreading of the disease, and lost generation issue. But, only knowing the way out is not sufficient. There should be a collective awareness and mutual understanding among the stakeholders and all parties on the origin or the root of the issues. And one of the major problems here is the misleading conception of education.
It is the reason why there is a demanding condition in doing an “overhaul” process of the educational system by implementing one for all education, namely multicultural education.
In line with the concept, we can use diversity to manage a learning model. Indonesia will become a prosperous country only if it can maintain its diversity correctly. As one of the most culturally pluralistic countries in the world, Indonesia has enormous arts and culture that can be a source of inspiration in drafting a policy concerning the content of the curriculum. (Ambarwangi, 2013:80). Inversely, improper management of the learning model, and in designing the content of the curriculum will result in negative impacts as seen nowadays.
Indonesian multicultural aspects can trigger conflicts, either vertical or horizontal, if no one cares about it. Vertical conflict emerges in societies. This conflict may arise when there is no mutual understanding and tolerance among the social class, particularly when a particular type dominates others.
Meanwhile, horizontal conflict happens as the spirit of superiority among the social groups takes place in their social interaction. A sense that claiming a specific group (insider) is the most correct, the finest, the superior, and the perfect ones while others are only complementary in these life dimensions (Mahfud, 2005: 8-9). It is believed that the pluralistic Southeast Asia community will fall into the anarchy if it fails to find the suitable pluralistic federation formula (Furnivall 1994: 9).
Numerous conflicts that involved issues related to diversity, for instance, tribe, religion, race, and inter-group, happened in Indonesia in the last few years. They took place in Ambon, Papua, Sanggau Ledo, Aceh, Sampit, Tolikara, Tanjung Balai, even until recent times.
As it is known, a well-designed concept of educational purpose that is unable to be applied in real practice has become a contradictive reality at this current time. There is an unbalanced proportion between intellectual growth and the development of the moral of the students in the educational system. The education focuses only on the cognitive side, disobeying the affective, and the motoric skills of the students. This situation leads the students to only pay attention to the results (numbers) that have to be achieved as a requirement of the minimum achievement criteria (KKM=Kriteria Ketuntasan Minimum) rather than the process.
The educational circumstances in Indonesia, which are still dominated by the unique culture rather than the multicultural system, create a setback. It can be seen from the social and cultural points of view, such as prejudice, conflicts, violence, and negation among the citizen (Maliki, 2010: 256 ).
Throughout the year 2012-2016, a lot of news dealing with civilian conflicts, or brawling took place in Lampung, East Java, and many others, so did with the students. Some of the examples are brawling among the university students, and the school students, namely SMAN 6, and SMAN 70 Jakarta, which causes one student dead. The outcomes of this fact showing the failure of education in creating the consciousness of pluralism and multiculturalism (Mahfud, 2011:186).
Respecting each other, being tolerant are the examples of some attitudes that must be taught to the Indonesian through education. It was written in the National Education System Law (UU Sisdiknas) Article 4 Verse 1 No 20 in 2003. It said that the process of education must be done democratically, equitably, and in a nondiscriminatory manner by upholding human rights, religious value, cultural value, and national diversity.
And the appropriate education that suits the law is multicultural. Indonesia, as proposed by Lyn Parker (on tirto.id 2017), needs to add more tolerance-based content in its education curricula to take care of its harmony simultaneously in the society.
Having checked the national curriculum, namely, the K-13 curriculum, unfortunately, not many multiculturalism, or diversity terms found in the English syllabus for the national curriculum, except the single word “tolerance.” From this starting point, the writer feels that there is a need to analyze the syllabus, and the topics listed in it to design a new material that is relevant, and suits the importance of multicultural education by applying an appropriate teaching model.
Relating to the learning model, one of the examples that can be used as a reference is the contextual learning model, as it helps teachers linking the materials with the students’ real situation. This concept can train students in making a connection between his/her knowledge and the implementation in their lives, either as family members or society members (Medsker, 2001 in Mudlofir, A and Rusydiah, F, 2016:90)
Moreover, using technology in education becomes something inevitable as our students now live in the digital era. New educational platforms, for instance, blogs, vlog, social media, and e-learning, can be used to maximize the potential use of technology.
It is time for us to implement a holistic-educational system, namely a multicultural-based education system in Indonesia.