WEEKLY REVIEW 5 (Aileen Irmina Putri 19/440371/EK/22297)

Islamic School in Indonesia: Islam with a Smiling Face?

Indonesia is the country with the most Muslim population in the world, based on Pew
Research Center in 2010. Following this fact, the presence of Islamic School in Indonesia can’t
be denied. Islamic School in Indonesia with a smiling face means residing an educative
tradition inclusively, progressively, and modern. Inclusive here means by being pluralised,
progressive by having strong rationality, and modern by preparing the students to face fast
changing globalised world and giving knowledge about economy. Therefore, Islamic School
students not merely mastered on religious side but also understand about other general subjects.
The pedagogy that implemented in these Islamic School required to entail the construction of
knowledge (student not only receive it but know it conceptually), understanding it not only
memorised it, using social constructivism while study, self-directed learning not only teacher-
directed, and learning about learning (not only learning about subjects).
As what the book said in chapter six, 13 percent of 44 million students in Indonesia
enrolled in madrasahs. The other two types of Islamic School in Indonesia is pesantren and
Sekolah Islam. Pesantren is the oldest form of Islamic School in Indonesia and usually consist
of students from rural areas. Pesantren is boarding Islamic School which is teaching purely
religious subject. Ash’ari doctrine, Shafi’i madhhab, also ethical and pietistic mysticism of
Ghazali are the primary contents in the pesantren.
The second type of Islamic School in Indonesia is madrasah. Different from pesantren,
madrasah adopt government-approved madrasah curriculum which is same with other public
school. Public schools in Indonesia only offer two hours of religious studies every week, but
madrasahs offer about five or six hours every week. The percentage between general subjects
and religious subject is 70 to 30.
The last type of Islamic School in Indonesia is Sekolah Islam. Sekolah Islam usually
found in urban areas and enrolled with Muslim students from middle-class family background.
Compare with pesantren and madrasah, Sekolah Islam is the most well-equipped with modern
facilities such as air-conditioned classrooms, libraries, language labs, science labs, and
computer labs. Like madrasah, Sekolah Islam also adopt government-approved curriculum.
But the different is Sekolah Islam doesn’t use distinctive curriculum like madrasah. Islam also
provides their students with a rich variety of extracurricular activities to emphasise their non-
academic interests.
The pedagogies used in their three forms of Islamic School in Indonesia now is student-
centred pedagogies. These pedagogies is very different than the former didactic pedagogies. In
didactic pedagogies, students’ participation isn’t dominating, therefore it’s a teachers’ centric
learning. Now, the pedagogies is focused on students’ participation and giving them more
chance to emphasise their interest in non-academic such as languages and arts.
From all these forms of Islamic School in Indonesia, they aren’t rooted with
indoctrination. They allow and accept non-Muslim knowledges in order to enhance their
students’ rationality through their mission, curriculum, and pedagogy.