TEMPO.CO, Yogyakarta – Education observer and Faculty Member of the Faculty of Engineering at Gadjah Mada University (UGM), Muhammad Nur Rizal, has criticized the program of West Java Governor Dedi Mulyadi who sends problematic students to military barracks.
Rizal stated that if the program is implemented for the short term, it may have a positive impact in changing the students’ mentality. However, if the program is implemented widely across all schools and relied upon for the long term, he believes it could potentially have negative consequences.
“If the program is short-term, it might be good, like when we are sick, go to the doctor, get injected, given medication, and then recover,” said Rizal in Yogyakarta on Tuesday, May 20, 2025.
Rizal mentioned that there are many factors that lead a student to engage in behaviors that ultimately label them as problematic individuals.
According to Rizal, there are three variables that can trigger a student to become problematic, including problematic or disharmonious family backgrounds; influences from the surrounding environment filled with deviations from normal social behavior; and influences from the school environment that make the student feel uncomfortable in learning, leading to boredom and eventually seeking other ways to actualize themselves. “These triggering variables for problematic students cannot all be solved by going to the barracks,” he said.
“To change the mentality of problematic students to non-problematic ones requires education that is interconnected with the student’s environment,” said the founder of the Fun School Movement community.
He gave an example, that when a student completes the program in the military barracks for a while, but still encounters bullying trends in their social environment or finds their family in a broken home situation, then their mentality can be influenced back to the way it was before entering the barracks.
On the one hand, Rizal criticizes the sending of problematic school students to the barracks, which means opening access to a military-style learning pattern that is fundamentally different from the pattern in the education or school world.
“The military world applies a command system that demands obedience, conformity (behavioral uniformity), while the education world encourages students to be different, to have open and diverse thinking,” he said.
Rizal added, if troubled students are to regain the expected mentality, the school, family, and environment need to build a positive educational atmosphere that shapes the students’ mentality.
He exemplified that in schools, teachers must be able to facilitate an enjoyable learning atmosphere for students. Schools also need to encourage teachers to not just stuff material to students or chase curriculum completion, but to become teachers who understand the students’ needs and engage the students in a two-way learning process. “The school needs to bridge so that teachers can also transform in interacting with their students,” said Rizal.
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