Finding science teachers for Islamic schools not easy

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): As a non-scientist, my understanding of science education is probably somewhat naive and simplistic. I never used to be aware of the variety of cultural forces opposed to modern science, and that these forces could become serious obstacles to the teaching of science to the young.

I was aware only that there has long been a traditional antagonism between science and the humanities, but did not quite know how it started and evolved. I was also not aware that besides the well documented animosity between religion and science, there were also historical instances where congenial relationships between religion and science existed.

Against this background, I was rather taken aback when in a number of discussions the participants argued that the education of science teachers for Islamic schools (madrasahs) needed rethinking.

I did not understand how they came to this conclusion. To me, modern science was universal, and introducing religion into science teaching seemed irrelevant. My thinking at the time was that science education is carried out on the basis of accepted standards, and that religion and politics should not interfere. After a number of private discussions and after going through historical references concerning the relationship between religion and science, I became aware of the worries and aspirations behind such arguments.

In private discussions, a number of friends who are devout Moslem scientists -- physicists, chemists, biologists, engineers -- told me that science teachers for madrasahs should be trained in special institutions, and not in ordinary departments of mathematics and science within universities or within IKIP (Teacher Training Institute).

In their view science teachers for madrasahs should have a balanced knowledge of science and religion, and should be able to formulate "pedagogical resolutions" for a number of conflicts between science and religion. They should be able to present to their students a unified view of life and the universe based on Islam and the basic tenets of science. Only in this way can science teachers guide students towards being adults sufficiently equipped with knowledge (ilmu), zeal for good deeds (amal), and solid faith in Allah (iman).

I do not know why, but to get a picture of a real person who more or less corresponds to this ideal, Carl Sagan comes to mind. He is the director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell University, and according to Joe Nickell (Scientific American, June, 1996) harmoniously blends scientific pursuits with deep religious feeling. He is a scientist who is also an active fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation for Claims of the Paranormal (CSI-COP). He is critical and humble at the same time. He is a scientist who honestly "confessed" that there is something in him which makes him ready to believe that there is life after death. His intense love for his deceased parents makes him long to believe that their "essence", their "personalities" are still in existence somewhere.

If this is true, Sagan is indeed a very rare scientist. Scientists do not normally talk about life after death. They talk about life on other planets, or about the end of life itself, about the Big Bang. He is thus a scientist who, in accepting the limits of science, seems to believe that the unexplainable can be accepted through non-scientific means without deserting science itself.

In this regard the question that has to be answered is whether personalities like Sagan are really the result of science education carried out by science teachers versed in both science and religion. Unless the answer is yes, there is no viable basis for further discussion of special training for science teachers.

Through my search in literature I came across an article by Prof. Bassam Tibi from Georg-August University in Goettingen, Germany, who since 1988 has also been a research associate at Harvard University.

According to Prof. Tibi, what Islamic intellectuals don't want is a scientific spirit which leads to secularism, nor an "anthropocentric science and technology", but "a viable Islamic science [capable of] yielding innovative technological applications."

What they want is a techno-scientific modernity not merely borrowed from the West, but rooted in the teachings of Islam itself. He quotes Imaduldin Khalil, an Egyptian scholar, who asserts that adopting modern technology is actually "an act of repossession", since "modern science is not only the achievement of Western civilization", and "the civilization of Islam essentially contributed to establishing its underpinnings."

To sum up, this idea of having a corps of specially trained science teachers for Indonesian madrasahs is perhaps an expression of a desire to create the embryo of a modern Islamic techno-scientific culture in which prospective Islamic scientists are trained to be critical and humble at the same time, scientific and religious at the same time. It is the ideal of a religiosity which does not deny the positive achievements of modern science, and a science which is not arrogant towards religion. Admittedly this is a very lofty ideal which should be applauded and supported.

I am too much of a layman in both science and religion to be able to say how this ideal can best be achieved. This aspiration bears some resemblance to the ideas of Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Michael Faraday (1791-1867), and Robert K. Morton, an English sociologist, who in 1938 advocated the development of "an overlapping value structure or ethos behind both Puritan religious activity and scientific practice."

Is this ideal of having prospective science teachers for madrasahs trained in special institutions realistic?

I don't know. But it will be well to remember, I think, that at this stage of our development the most urgent item on our agenda is to increase and update the calibre of our science teachers across the nation. Until this is done, we won't have a respectable corps of science teachers capable of producing students who are both religious and scientific.

The writer is an observer of social and cultural affairs.