Imposition of Campus prerequisities

As some of the 2008 class in my Faculty is taking this course as one of the many prerequisities of Graduation in my campus, i thought i'd write about them before i go to sleep today.. haha

Look, i know that there are some values and/or habbits that a Campus would like to impose for their students to imprint. I agree that in many ways these values are important. However what i don't agree is the idea of imposing it as a prerequisite of graduation,

In mine, there's numerous of these hullabaloos. One of them's a "Basic Course on Islamic Leaderhsip" --this tcourse takes like 10 days!!!!-- one word comes to my mind as i write this; gullible. I didnt attend the one they had in my year, so about a month ago i followed a session of this course, just so that in the incident that one day i wanna graduate, this silly little thing doesnt become a thorn hurting my graduation.

The copurse is simply days full of classes where the Campus tries to imprint (my version of the word is "to indoctrinate") students in the values of leadership, and cross refference it with Islamic values. I'm what most people like to call a "liberal Moslem" so forgive me if what i think hurts you and your views on your faith (i just think faith is a vertical relation with God, and what you do must not be because of your horizontal affiliations with other HUMANS). But i think this course is just weird, it's just classes, most of them delivered in a boring yawny way, and at the end of the day i don't think even 20% of the students who took the course understood why they had to sit and listen and try not to fall asleep (hahaha) since 7 in the moprning till 10 at night. What monstrosity is this?

One of the facilitators filling in proudly declared that this course is not only the one of its kind in Indonesia; but also the world!!!! It took me hours after trying to figure out why the nice gentlemen was so proud; this i cannot comprehend till this very day. I just think it creates unnecessary suffering i cant believe any Human Rights commission doesn't tackle the campus for doing so for years!

Students (most of them) sees this course not as an value added thing, but just another obstacle that they need to pass, just a milestone. WHile i think what the campus is trying to deliver is important, yet they packaged it wrongly. Education ultimately fails when people who takes education is for granted; that when you ask them why they took this, its either "i had to" or "i dont know"

I'm not against the concept or thought altogether, i just don't agree with the execution per se. Students in tertiery education should already have an idea of what they're gonna do with their lives, so why the need to indoctrinate? a jerk who goes to this course will stay as a jerk. period. So if they feel the need, they're gonna come to the course without obligatory approaches. (okay, to be honest i dont believe anyone would come by free will if they still do it they way they do it currently -so fix the system!)

Thats where most education in Indonesia fails. It's goals are full of grandeur, but when it comes to implementation; there's little to be proud of, they forgot to put a relativity line with whats most important; the characteristics of their pupils. Education only works if people comprehend, and people comprehend if they have willingness, and willingness you get if they know why they need to learn it, and not simply because of threats.

Education is not gonna work by force, it needs understanding. Period.