Redefining Religions At School
The officially recognized religions have been incorporated into the
curiculum since indonesia was established. How should we redefine the function
of religious subject in school? Listed below are major observations of how religious
education should be viewed.
v Children from early days of schooling should be made awaer of, and
accustomed to, seeing differences of religious faiths and practice. The erlier
the awareness is estabilished, the better. Muslim in this country constitute
the majority and they, by definition, hold greater responsibility in building
the nation. It does not sugest, though, that followers of other religions do not hold such
responsibility. All the religions teach a set of derections for living together
in a society where other religions coexist.
v In school, of utmost important is the practice of religions. ‘we do
not need to prove religion to men, but to prove to them that they are religious’,
said George Tyrell. It is sensible to say that the comunal clashes and other
social ills cited above are not necessarily montivated by religious sentiments.
Instead, they are caused by fragmentary understanding of the religious
techings. No religion on earth teaches its followers to abduct and kill people,
burn houses of worship and destory public facilities.
v Relegious teachings are to be operative in life outside the school
walls where teachers do not have any direct control over student. Morality and
religious practice are exemplified by parents, public figures and people in
general. They function either as partners or rivals of religion teachers. This
being the case, religious indoctrination will be couter productive; therefore,
classroom interaction should be designed as an arena for understanding
religious implementation and clarifying conflicting social values prevalent
outside the class.
v Among education aims, is to develope creative human resources who
are physically strong and spiritually sound. The more religious they are, the
more creative they will grow. While technology creates new devices and new
rules, relegious development creates high or der realities.
v Our national history shows that nonformal education such as islamic
boarding school (pesantren) and missionaries of other religions have
been much more successful in preparing comunity leaders and propagating
religion. The nation is indeed indebted to volunteers, teachers, propagators,
informal leadres and social workers at religious institutions and
non-goverenmental organitations whose devotion, dedication and commitment have
been taken for granted by the government.
