Welcome to the 2nd ISGC-MALINDO 6
The 2nd International Seminar on Guidance and Counseling 2019
“REDUCING VIOLENCE AND PROMOTING PEACEFUL SOCIETIES THROUGH GUIDANCE AND COUNSELING”
K. S. Sandhu, Director Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) Singapore, when delivering preface in the book “Islam and Society in Southeast Asia”, states that in the last few years variables etnich and religion have created tremendous confusion among social bystanders. Most of them expect liberally able to obscure different ethnic and religion. Other variables like education and global communication are expected to make the society more homogeneous. However, in fact this never comes into reality.
When various conflicts and violence among ethnic, religion, and belief in many places around the world do not abate yet, the constellation of social life, economy, and culture in Indonesia is experiencing the symptom of strengthening identity politics either with ethnic cover or religion cover. This problem is sharpen by the event of September 11 which in many analysis it signs the birth of anti-islamic movement (Islamophobia) in western countries. The thesis proposed by Samuel Huntington in 1996 which describes that in the future there will be clash of civilization among western and Islamic world and it seems getting close to be real. After the incident of “World Trade Center), beside the occurance of strengthening local identity politics, in line with that, religious radicalization movement starts to bloom and the belief which gets stronger claiming the truth among various group that are in thin ice to each other. Radicalization which ends up with extreme violence frequently conducted by individual or group who feels unsatisfied towards social-economy condition happening and have strong ambition to do drastic changes in the society.
Education which has been believed as the most reliable instrument to spread the seeds of tolerance and acceptance towards diversity in fact it is not a steril institution from intolerant and violence behaviors. The study conducted by Joong and Ridler (2006) shows the fact that from the search of metanalysis, there is tendency of violence case improvement occurs at various high schools in the United States of America. In context of Indonesia itself, Child Protection Commission of Indonesia (KPAI) in its report released data of violence in education occured in Indonesia during 2011 – 2016 writes that there were 2496 cases with fluctuating graphic in each year. The violence data recorded by KPAI describes an important fact that violence occuring covers either children/students as victims or as the doers of the violence itself.
Therefore, in order to answer those various violence problem and threats towards peace in various context in that area, it seems the students in the world included Indonesia must know about one of problem key in the modern world which are war and peace, the meaning and problems of nationalism principles correlated to the unique questions about culture and the correlation among cultures. The expectation from the understanding about this problem is creating the universal literacy competence as suggested by Peter Drucker. The expected purpose from creating this competence is that the children will be positive participants in international arena who truly understand the meaning and action of empathy attitude, believe, cooperation, and understand the quality of their life since early age and understand the values of togetherness as the universal values (we are living together).
Guidance and counseling as an important part in educational system has a very significant contribution in helping the achievement of that competence. Guidance and counseling needs to conduct transformation movement and mental health revolution through preventive and extensive effort in order to assist the society and the citizens to learn in running life task at the higher level especially through the mastery of various life skills together, inter-personal communication, and personal growth.
