Islamic schools and globalization

Islamic schools and globalization

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): How can the madrasah, as Moslem religious
schools, function properly if allowed only two hours a week for
religious instruction?

And what does it mean if one says that the madrasah must
prepare their pupils to meet the challenges of the globalized
future? Does this mean that madrasah must transform themselves
into educational institutions teaching primarily science and
technology, and negate their basic identity as institutions for
religious education?

These two basic problems were expressed in a meeting of kiai
and ustadz, educators working in the private sector madrasah
system.

It was a small gathering which lasted for three days during
which the participants intensively discussed problems they
considered to be affecting the basic identity of their
institutions as religious schools.

I was invited to this meeting as an "inside outsider", a
qualifier which embarrassed me, and put me in an awkward
position. These religious educators assumed that I have
sufficient knowledge about madrasah, whereas in reality I know
very little about it.

It is important to note in this regard that the Indonesian
educational system has three subsystems: the traditional pondok
pesantren (the traditional Koranic school) subsystem, the
madrasah (the modernized Islamic school) subsystem, and the
sekolah umum (the general school or non-religious school)
subsystem.

The first two subsystems operate under the auspices of the
Ministry of Religious Affairs, while the sekolah umum subsystem
operates under the guidance and supervision of the Ministry of
Education and Culture.

The serious flaw of this complex system has been that those
who are working within the sekolah umum subsystem tend to look
upon themselves as the only occupants of the national education
system, whereas those working within the pondok pesantren and the
madrasah subsystems tend to forget that they are parts of the
national education system.

Madrasah people have a very strong sense of their basic
identity. They feel themselves to be guardians of Islamic
religious education. They are very much aware that their schools
are religious schools, not general education schools.

They feel that their primary obligation is to instill
religious consciousness and a religious way of life in their
students. The teaching of "worldly knowledge is considered
secondary to the teaching of God's revelations concerning the
purpose of life".

It is against this background that the decision made by the
government to reduce the number of hours for religious
instruction from 15 to two hours a week is felt as a severe blow.
It is as if they are being robbed of their basic identity. In
this meeting I was asked to discuss why and how educational
institutions should prepare their students for life in the
globalized era.

Since my knowledge about the madrasah system is minimal, I
tried to discuss the problem from another angle, that is from the
viewpoint of our national system of education, which at the
moment is being challenged by new realities in global life.

As I understand it, these new realities consist of three kinds
of changes, that is changes in economic life, changes in
political life, and changes in social life.

I used standard materials I found in my readings to explain
that in economic life the basic trend is for developing economies
to move from an agricultural economy into an industrial economy
and later on to an information economy to achieve significant
economic growth in the 21st century.

In political life, the basic trend is that every country has
to work systematically towards political maturity, and to achieve
national competence in democratic governance in order to attain a
sustained economic growth.

No sustained economic growth is possible without political
maturity of national scale.

In social life, the basic trend is that every nation has to
learn two things, that is first to control the excesses of the
new lifestyles brought about by changes in this globalized era,
and second to harness social powers generated by new types of
social alliances (NGO's, environmentalists, professional
associations, human rights watch groups and others), and to use
them for the benefit of national and global developments.

To survive in these forthcoming trends of global life -- so I
went forth, relating as best as I can all the wisdom I have
learned from my recent readings -- it is an imperative for every
developing nation to generate a new kind of manpower, a new kind
of political culture, and a new kind of social life capable of
blending new kinds of social alliances with older types of social
affiliations.

It is the task of every national system of education to help
the young generation acquire the various kinds of knowledge,
competency, and value systems which will make them become a
generation within the nation capable of exhibiting the
characteristics of a trained workforce, capable of developing new
political systems and cultures, and capable also of building a
new social life which is at once the continuation and the
replacement of the old social life.

Since madrasah constitute a part of the Indonesian national
system of education, they also have the responsibility of
preparing their students for life within the forthcoming
globalized era. Failure to do so will handicap future madrasah
graduates in their competition for jobs with graduates coming
from the non-religious school subsystem.

It can also cause their graduates to be rendered less capable
or even incapable of participation in the building of a new
political system and culture. And it certainly will make their
future graduates feel disoriented, frustrated, and unproductive
in the new social environment.

The problem is thus how to do this unavoidable imperative
without sacrificing their basic identity as institutions for
religious education. In my ignorance about the intricacies of
madrasah education, I offered some questions as points of
reference.

First, is religious education really incompatible with
education for the understanding of physical, social, and cultural
environments? Isn't there a saying somewhere in Islam which
asserts that the words of God (the Koran) cannot possibly
contradict the work of God (the universe) ?

The next question I posed was whether religious education is
identical to religious instruction. Whether the extent to which
religious education is carried out is determined solely by the
number of hours per week allotted to religious instruction.

Is there really no relationship whatsoever between religious
education and science education?

I realized that I did not answer their question. I was aware
that I was just expressing my views about how religious education
can still be carried out in this seemingly dilemmatic situation.
While admitting that this is a very difficult question, I offered
my view that there seems to be an urgent need to review the
system of preparing teachers for religious education to find a
partial answer to this problem.

At the end of the meeting, a young ustadz came to me and said,
I understand your reasoning, and I can see the direction you are
suggesting. But I am afraid that too many of us within madrasah
will not be able to understand you. You are too much of a
modernist.

I felt sad, alienated and relieved at the same time.

The writer is an observer of sociocultural affairs.