ENGLISH

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.