REVITALIZATION OF CHARACTER BUILDING PROGRAMS IN INDONESIAN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTION : LESSON LEARNT FROM BRAWIJAYA UNIVERSITY PERSPECTIVES

Character building programs have been re-introduced recently in Indonesia owing to escalating misconducts and moral abuses in many aspects of life such as being less-tolerance for minority, corruption, academic cheating etc. There seems a continous paradoxal condition happening across the country in the last two decades between the philosophical foundation of Indonesian state namely “Pancasila” and its implementation in the daily life. Pancasila stems from two Sanskrit words, “Panca” means five and “Sila” means principles. Those five principles should embody as characters of Indonesians, that is (1) belief in the one and only God; (2) Just and civilized humanity; (3) The unity of Indonesia; (4) democracy guided by inner wisdom in the unanimity arising out of deliberations amongst representatives; and (5) Social justice for all of the people of Indonesia. In the last decade since the era of reformation in 1998, Pancasila has been ignored and no longer tought as a compulsary subject in the school curriculum as used to be during the new order regime. The reason underlying this ignorance is the fact that in spite of massive socialization of Pancasila in the past, there was paucity of best practises derived from implementation of Pancasila. Instead, Pancasila was used as a political vehicle to supress the opposition party or groups during the ruling years of the new order regime. It therefore is not surprising that the fall of new order regime in 1998 fuels the certain political groups to nullify the importance of Pancasila without thoroughly evaluated the cause root of such failure.At present, after 14 years of reformation era there has been a national awakening condition that revisiting the urgent need to implement Pancasila in our daily life through the programs of character building either at school or society. In this context, higher education institution are regarded as the strategic targets to revitalize the meaning and implementation of Pancasila through character education programs that emphasize the role of local wisdom to enrich the values of Pancasila as the philosophical foundation of Indonesian characters. This paper describes the recent programs of character education as a part of character building under the auspices of Directorate General of Higher Education (DGHE), Ministry of Education and Culture, The Republic of Indonesia by inviting some public and private universities to share their best practices of character education programs. One of them is the experience of Brawijaya University to implement character education programs from both success and failure sides of such implementation.