Jejak Perjalanan ke Amrik (1)
Satu hal yang aku usahakan agar selalu mengisi ruang perasaanku adalah ucapan syukur alhamdulillah atas karuni Allah Swt yang telah membukakan kesempatan seluas-luasnya kepadaku untuk mencoba suatu yang baru. Walaupun setiap perjalanan hidup akan selalu dihadapkan pada hal-hal yang baru, tapi keberangkatan ke Amrik tanggal 3 September lalu telah menjadi sejarah perjalananku yang paling jauh selama ini. Aku yakin Allah Swt akan menambah penjelajahan ruang yang lebih luas lagi bagi setiap hamba-Nya yang memiliki keinginan, semangat berjuang, dan pengorbanan.
Tulisan ini sebenarnya bukan esai formal. Aku hanya ingin menceriterakan beberapa pengalaman yang pernah dilampaui dalam fase kehidupan yang aku alami, khususnya berangkatan ke Amrik. Sejak aku mengusulkan proposal riset ke Aminef tahun 2005, keinginanku untuk dapat berangkat ke Amrik begitu kuat. Maklum 13 tahun yang lalu aku sempat mengusulkan untuk ikut program S2 ke McGill di Canada, tapi informasi yang terbatas ketika itu membuat aku tersandung oleh kegagalan. Aku akhirnya memilih kuliah di dalam negeri dengan harapan suatu waktu dapat berkunjung ke luar negeri selepas kuliah selesai. Aku akhirnya dapat menyelesaikan S3 di Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia (UPI) tahun 2001.
Abangku, Prof Dr. Dedi Supriadi (almarhum) sempat memberikan keyakinan pada diriku. “Setelah kamu Doktor, kamu dapat ambil riset di Amerika,” kata dia menyakinkan diri saya. Ketika itu, aku tak begitu yakin sebab perkataan itu diucapkan ketika aku sedang disibukan oleh tugas-tugas paper S3 yang sangat buaanyak. Setelah ia wafat tahun 2004, apa yang pernah ia katakan ternyata menjadi kenyataan. Aku secara spontan menulis proposal saat aku sedang disibukan menulis sebuah buku, lalu proposal itu dikirimkan ke Aminef di Jakarta. Empat orang profesor telah memberikan referensi bagi usulan tersebut. Mereka adalah Prof. Dr. Juhaya S. Praja, Prof. Dr. Chaedar Alwasilah, Prof. Dr. Rachmat Syafi’i, dan Prof. Dr. Dadang Kahmad.
Satu hal yang memberikan keyakinan, ketika proposal yang aku tulis disampaikan kepada para ahli itu, Prof. Juhaya bilang bahwa proposal tersebut bagus, begitu juga komentar Prof. Chaedar. Saat itu aku sempat pula kirimkan proposal ke rekan saya Pak Agus Tato yang punya pengalaman bahasa Inggris lebih baik. Dia pun memberikan komentar sama dengan dua profesor tadi. Ini cukup memberikan keyakinan, tapi aku tetap ingin melihat hasilnya apakah bagus juga menurut penilai di Aminef/Fulbright. Pada pertengahan Oktober, hasil penilaian sementara diumumkan oleh Aminef dan aku masuk pada orang yang akan diwawancara untuk tahap ke dua bersama Prof. Cristiana Victoria Marta dan Prof. Ronnie S. Natawijaya dari Unpad, Dr. Susilo Ma'ruf dari Umu, Prof. Sudiro Soedarso dari Undip. Sehari kemudian hasil wancara itu diumumkan aku bersama rekan-rekan tadi dinyatakan lulus.
Sekitar 8 bulan aku punya waktu untuk menyiapkan keberangkatan ke Amrik. Tapi herannya setelah aku dinyatakan lulus pekerjaanku semakin numpuk. Aku dipercaya memegang direktur Madrasah Development Center (MDC) Jawa Barat oleh Kepala Kanwil Depag Propinsi Jawa Barat. Selang dua bulan berikutnya, aku diminta Direktur Mapenda Drs. Firdaus, M.Pd untuk membantu beberapa pekerjaan Depag Pusat khususnya berkenaan dengan peningkatan mutu madrasah. Saat itu aku ditugaskan oleh Sekretaris Direktorat untuk menjadi Konsultan BOS di Depdiknas bersama Dr. Mamat Selamet Burhanuddin sebagai wakil dari Depag Pusat. Selain itu tugas mengajar di Pascasarjana UIN dan UPI cukup padat. Akhirnya waktu yang seharusnya digunakan untuk persiapkan keberangkatan lebih banyak digunakan untuk mengerjakan pekerjaan lain sebagai konsultan, ketua MDC Jabar, dan dosen Pasca.
Tanggal 3 September akhirnya tiba. Aku siap-siap berangkat untuk perjalanan jauh. Sebelumnya sudah aku siapkan segalanya untuk keluarga yang akan ditinggalkan selama 6 bulan. Aku memang tidak membawa keluarga ke Amrik karena anak-anak sedang sekolah di Indonesia dan pertimbangan masa berkunjung ke Amrik yang sebentar. Untungnya, my-elbra Pak Muhibbin Syah, M.Ed ikut menghibur keluargaku yang akan ditinggalkan untuk sementara waktu.
Bu Ratna Manurung dan Pak Piet Hendrarjo telah mengatur segalanya untuk keberangkatan aku pada tanggal itu. Tiket sudah disiapkan, paspor, dan visa sudah ditangan, dan beberapa petunjuk agar tidak mengalami kesulitan dalam penyesuaian diri dengan budaya Amrik sudah diberikan oleh Aminef. Semuanya sudah ok dan aku akhirnya terbang dari Cengkareng menuju Changi di singapura. Aku bermalam di Changi Village hotel untuk menunggu keberangkatan ke Amrik pada jam 6 pagi. Agar tidak kesiangan, aku pasang alarm di HP dan akhirnya aku bangun di pagi buta jam 3.30 dini hari.
Perjalanan ke airport diantar oleh bus yang disediakan oleh hotel tersebut. Aku kemudian terbang menggunakan pesawat United Airlines (UA) menuju Narita Tokyo. Penerbangan ditempuh kira-kira 8 jam. Singgah sebentar dari Narita aku meneruskan perjalanan ke San Francisco, suatu negara bagian di west coast daratan Amrik. Sore hari aku tiba di sana dan tak lama kemudian aku harus melanjutkan perjalanan ke New York City dengan menggunakan pesawat berbeda, yang khusus untuk domestic flight. Semua perjalanan itu ditempuh sekitar 24 jam atau sehari semalam. Badanku pegal-pegal karena kebanyakan duduk di kursi pesawat.
Suatu yang luar biasa terjadi ketika aku menginjakan kaki di JFK airport. Aku dijemput oleh Pak Jaja dan Mas Tom yang sengaja menunggu beberapa saat sebelum kedatanganku. Bagaikan pejabat, aku diantar oleh Pak Jaja dan dikawal oleh mobil Mas Tom dari belakang. Mobil pun meluncur ke rumahnya Pak Rurun Karma yang siap untuk menampung saya pada awal-awal kedatangan. Semuanya serba mudah. Dan Allah telah menetapkan segalanya untuk saya yang baru pertama kali berkunjung ke Amrik. Akupun sangat berterima kasih kepada Prof. Dr. Juhaya yang telah mengontak warga Indonesia, khususnya Pak Suratman di New York untuk menitipkan saya.
Mungkin karena dihubungkan oleh Prof. Juhaya yang pernah ikut membina mesjid di New York City, pamor akupun menjadi terangkat. Aku akhirnya didaulat untuk memberikan ceramah dan menjadi imam mesjid al-Hikmah tatkala bulan Ramdhan. Pada acara Thanksgiving Dinner yang dirayakan di rumahanya Pak Singgih Nata (Joe Ragan), akupun diminta untuk memimpin do’a. Ya, itulah nasib dosen UIN, dimanapun harus mampu menjadi penasihat spiritual, he…he…
Selama tinggal di New York City, aku memperoleh banyak pengalaman baru dalam kehidupanku. Masyarakt New York memang sangat plural. Pada setiap titik kota ada orang dari berbagai asal negara yang berbeda. Ada kulit hitam, putih, merah, kuning, dan sawo matang. Cara berpakaian dan tingkahnya pun bermacam-macam. Itulah yang penyebabkan aku pernah berkata Kepada Prof. Marion Boultbee, direktur International Student Center Columbia University, bahwa "USA is The Real World where people from all over the world are in here”. Dia kemudian menyahuti “Yes, it is” sambil mangut-mangut. Mungkin dia heran melihat aku yang sangat antusias terhadap diversitas bangsa Amrik.
Sejak hari pertama sampai di New York City aku sudah melakukan perjalanan ke Columbia University yang jaraknya cukup jauh dari tempat tinggal di Fresh Meadows. Tapi aku yakin semuanya akan lancar karena di New York semua petunjuk untuk perjalannya sangat jelas dan rinci. Lagian susunan jalan di New York mudah dicari berdasarkan urutan nomornya. Subway dan bus pun menyediakan map untuk panduan perjalanan orang-orang yang baru pertama kali datang ke NYC. Karena itu, saat aku buat appointment dengan fasilitatorku, Prof. Louis Abdelatif Cristillo, aku datang tepat waktu dan sendirian.
Seminggu aku tinggal New York City, aku sudah dibawa jalan-jalan ke Pensylvania untuk berkunjung ke rekan Pak Rurun Karma. Di sana kami tidur semalam dan rame-rame bakar steak di rumahnya Pak Soni. Sore hari kami memancing ikan di kali, dekat rumahnya Pak Soni. Wow, ayiiiik sekali. Aku ngak nyangka di Amrik ini bisa mancing. Ikannya gede-gede lagi.
Akupun menyempatkan ngundang rekan-rekan yang sedang kuliah di New York untuk datang kekontrakan selepas lebaran puasa yang lalu. Di belakang rumahnya Pak Rurun Karma aku membakar steak dan ikan bersama rekan-rekan. Memang di sini serba mudah apapun yang diinginkan dapat segera dilakukan. Di belakang rumah itu sudah siap buat barbecue, kursi, meja, tempat pembakaran, tenda, dll sudah tersedia. Aku undang waktu itu sekitar 15 orang tapi yang hadir hanya Mbak Tati Durriyah, Mas Iwan Syahril, Mas Tito, Mbak Monic, Mas Tom, Teh Dresti, dll plus rekan-rekan Pak Rurun Karna dan Bu Wati.
Kegiatan lain selama di New York lumayan sibuk. Pada weekdays aku gunakan untuk melakukan riset di dua sekolah Islam (Al-Noor School dan Al-Ihsan Academy) dengan cara melakukan observasi ke kelas, lab, perpustakaan dan beberapa kegiatan sekolah. Akupun melakukan wawancara dengan sejumlah guru dan menyebarkan kuesioner kepada siswa di sekolah tersebut.
Saat aku datang pertama kali di salah satu dari dua sekolah tersebut, aku sempat kaget karena lama sekali tidak direspon. Eh tahunya di sekolah tersebut ada tatatertib, jika tamu datang tanpa appoinment ia tidak akan diterima. Waktu itu aku memang tidak buat appoinment karena niatnya hanya menyerahkan surat permohonan saja. Tapi ternyata untuk sekedar menyerahkan surat saja harus buat appoinment. Akhirnya aku menunggu lama sekali, tapi semua itu aku nikmati sambil mengenal lebih dekat sekolah tersebut.
Setelah 2 minggu kemudian semuanya menjadi cair. Sekolah yang aku kunjungi sangat welcome untuk dijadikan pusat risetku. Bahkan di dua sekolah itu, aku pernah didaulat untuk menjelaskan tentang Indonesia kepada siswa-siswa ketika mereka belajar social studies. Ternyata asyik juga melakukan riset di sekolah Islam di Amrik. Peraturannya cukup disiplin tapi pribadinya sangat lembut. Aku banyak temukan sesuatu yang baru dari sekolah tersebut yang nanti akan aku tulis dalam research findings.
Selain dari sekolah aku banyak belajar juga dari Iman Syamsi Ali yang kini menjabat direktur Jamica Muslim Center dan presiden Indonesian Muslim Community. Ia seringkali membawa saya pada acara-acara penting terutama sekaitan dengan mutual understanding antar agama di Amerika Serikat. Ia memang seorang cendekia muda yang sangat cerdas dan memiliki jaringan luas di New York City. Suatu ketika aku sempat dibawa untuk mengikuti Multifaith Dialog di sebuah Gereja di Jamica. Saya menilai dia sangat cerdas dalam menjelaskan Islam dihadapan hadirin yang datang dari berbagai latar belakang agama yang berbeda.
Ditengah kesibukan melakukan riset akupun menyempatkan untuk menulis artikel untuk dimuat di koran Pikiran Rakyat. Lumayan juga, sampai arsip Blog ini ditulis aku sudah buat 7 tulisan dalam beragam tema. Pak Wakhudin, M.Pd, salah seorang redaktur koran tersebut banyak sekali membantu untuk proses publikasi tersebut. Karena itu saya sangat menghargai bantuannya.
Cukup sekian dulu ya...., salam buat sahabat-sahabat semua. Aku akan pulang ke Indonesia pada tanggal 03 Maret 2007. Insya Allah.
NY, November, 24 2006
Friday, November 24, 2006
Values in Islamic Education
NY, November, 23 2006
By Rohmat Mulyana
Islamic education includes many areas of life in which students are able to experience and keep in touch with inner as well as outer aspects of life. The broadness of Islamic education is concerned with the religion of Islam itself that come to earth with blessings for the universe (rahmatan lil alaimin). Many values of life are taught in Islam such as peace, justice, freedom, moderation, tolerance, balance, consultation, equity etc as universal values. Meanwhile, Islam also has particular values that relate to how Muslim community builds specific areas of culture differed from others.
Both universal and particular values are able to be main content of Islamic education that is potentially transformed to all over generation. But there is the most important value of all the so-called faith (iman) as a core value of Islamic teachings. This is a fundamental value grounded over other values and acclaimed to be reflected in social conduct of Muslim. Iman is religious belief that is essentially related with the inner realm and metal state of person. Strengthening iman can imply on broadening perspective of outer world of Muslim.
Islamic education has appeared as long as Islam comes to the earth. Since the prophet of Muhammad (peace be upon him) at the first time taught Islam to his followers around Makkah and Medina, the process of Islamic education has been introduced to community who willingly followed Muhammad teachings. By teaching the first principle of belief in God, Islamic education puts strongly concern with tawhid (the Oneness of God) before inculcating other consciousnesses, like charity, truth, justice, tolerance, respecting others, etc.
What occurred in the life time of Muhammad (peace be upon him), of course, has any different cases from those happened in today life. At the first coming of Islam, people lived in more simple social system rather than what has been experiencing by people today. After more than 1,400 years Islam spread out all over the world, many aspects of life and value orientation come to challenge the Islamic education. Social life is changing and the world population gradually shifts every time. Islamic education, in turn, is claimed to have more flexible adaptation in its novel situation. This adaptation does not concern with belief system of Muslim community, but it is much more related to dynamic of social life in which curriculum and learning process of Islamic education must be creatively adjusted.
For this reason, Islamic education probably appears in colorful and diverse curriculum and its teaching learning process adapted to in accordance with current shifting of surrounding circumstance. In pluralistic society, for example, all efforts of Islamic education are strongly encouraged to create integrated curriculum by which social values like tolerance, cooperation, brotherhood, respect to others, or love differences are promoted in all teaching learning process. Through such approach, it is expected that Islamic education will be able to make Muslim children have better social adjustment and skillful problem solver.
Another important thing is contemporary science and technology. It also can be another challenge or even opportunity for the development of Islamic education in multicultural world. In sophisticated life of modern world, Islamic education could not remain in its traditionalism since innovations is becoming massive invention gradually created by humankind in the world. Every learning innovation technology should be deployed for creating well-equipped Islamic education, or even ideally, the seeds of innovation, or at least the spirit of it, are beard from Islamic institution. It is important, therefore, to actualize of the spirit of Islam in terms of invention of science and technology bought into more meaningful learning process.
The demands above then claim a breakthrough for Islamic education curriculum. The scope of curriculum needs to be expanded on wide range area of contemporary needs. Islamic studies must be integrated with another important aspect in the relief of teaching learning process as well as in large area of educational settings. To make a better Islamic school, therefore, the content of curriculum must perform integrated subject matter rather than separated one. Learning Qur'an, Hadith, Islamic etiquette, and history of Islam are important, but in the same time, learning mathematics, natural science, geography, history, etc are important to learn in better quality of learning.
All efforts of Islamic education must include the following three purposes. Firstly, the aim of Islamic education is to inculcate tawhid. This term refers to the bedrock of Islam that must be properties of someone who claim himself or herself a Muslim. Tawhid is the inner religious belief of Islam that everything what Moslem do must be addressed to achieve submission to God. Believe in God is the most essential religious value that must be introduced to students since early age.
Secondly, the aim of Islamic education is to make Moslem students have good relation with their social environment. Islam remarked that making harmonious relation in social life is one of the important aspects of Moslem civil society. Respecting differences, like race, color, religion, gender, etc is one of universal values in Islam. As cited in the ayah 13 of Surah al-Hujurat God say: “O mankind! We created you from a single (pair of a) male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, so that you may know each other. Verily the most honored of you in the sight of Allah is (one who is) the most righteous of you.” Here the Holy Qur’an mentions two points which can create a deep sense of unity among the diverse races and religion-cultural groups of the world, the unity of the Creator which leads us to the essential equality of humankind, and the common origin of the entire human race in the primordial pair of Adam and Eve, which can lead us to the idea of universal brotherhood.
Thirdly, the aim of Islamic education is to make a good relation with the nature. Like remarked in Islam, human being is created by God for being vicegerent of world (khalifah fil ard). This concept then imply to the importance of living in harmony with the nature. Islamic education guidelines must perform the importance of harmonious relation between humankind and the nature. For the need of such relation, therefore, Islamic education should promote environmental education in every level of education.
All aims of Islamic education can not be separated each other. Belief in God, good social relationship, and harmonious interaction with the nature are like a chain of three essential life principles. A beautiful interaction of human being with circumstance, socially or naturally, will be meaningless if it is not supported by spiritual consciousness to God Almighty. According to Islam, therefore, what makes human efforts being more rich and valuable is its inner dynamic spiritual motivation through which the efforts can always be grounded from and attached to the theistic values. Thereby, modern life, which often potentially separates the relation between creature and Creator, will exactly be a new challenge for Islamic education in preparing young Muslim generations who have high religious consciousness.***
By Rohmat Mulyana
Islamic education includes many areas of life in which students are able to experience and keep in touch with inner as well as outer aspects of life. The broadness of Islamic education is concerned with the religion of Islam itself that come to earth with blessings for the universe (rahmatan lil alaimin). Many values of life are taught in Islam such as peace, justice, freedom, moderation, tolerance, balance, consultation, equity etc as universal values. Meanwhile, Islam also has particular values that relate to how Muslim community builds specific areas of culture differed from others.
Both universal and particular values are able to be main content of Islamic education that is potentially transformed to all over generation. But there is the most important value of all the so-called faith (iman) as a core value of Islamic teachings. This is a fundamental value grounded over other values and acclaimed to be reflected in social conduct of Muslim. Iman is religious belief that is essentially related with the inner realm and metal state of person. Strengthening iman can imply on broadening perspective of outer world of Muslim.
Islamic education has appeared as long as Islam comes to the earth. Since the prophet of Muhammad (peace be upon him) at the first time taught Islam to his followers around Makkah and Medina, the process of Islamic education has been introduced to community who willingly followed Muhammad teachings. By teaching the first principle of belief in God, Islamic education puts strongly concern with tawhid (the Oneness of God) before inculcating other consciousnesses, like charity, truth, justice, tolerance, respecting others, etc.
What occurred in the life time of Muhammad (peace be upon him), of course, has any different cases from those happened in today life. At the first coming of Islam, people lived in more simple social system rather than what has been experiencing by people today. After more than 1,400 years Islam spread out all over the world, many aspects of life and value orientation come to challenge the Islamic education. Social life is changing and the world population gradually shifts every time. Islamic education, in turn, is claimed to have more flexible adaptation in its novel situation. This adaptation does not concern with belief system of Muslim community, but it is much more related to dynamic of social life in which curriculum and learning process of Islamic education must be creatively adjusted.
For this reason, Islamic education probably appears in colorful and diverse curriculum and its teaching learning process adapted to in accordance with current shifting of surrounding circumstance. In pluralistic society, for example, all efforts of Islamic education are strongly encouraged to create integrated curriculum by which social values like tolerance, cooperation, brotherhood, respect to others, or love differences are promoted in all teaching learning process. Through such approach, it is expected that Islamic education will be able to make Muslim children have better social adjustment and skillful problem solver.
Another important thing is contemporary science and technology. It also can be another challenge or even opportunity for the development of Islamic education in multicultural world. In sophisticated life of modern world, Islamic education could not remain in its traditionalism since innovations is becoming massive invention gradually created by humankind in the world. Every learning innovation technology should be deployed for creating well-equipped Islamic education, or even ideally, the seeds of innovation, or at least the spirit of it, are beard from Islamic institution. It is important, therefore, to actualize of the spirit of Islam in terms of invention of science and technology bought into more meaningful learning process.
The demands above then claim a breakthrough for Islamic education curriculum. The scope of curriculum needs to be expanded on wide range area of contemporary needs. Islamic studies must be integrated with another important aspect in the relief of teaching learning process as well as in large area of educational settings. To make a better Islamic school, therefore, the content of curriculum must perform integrated subject matter rather than separated one. Learning Qur'an, Hadith, Islamic etiquette, and history of Islam are important, but in the same time, learning mathematics, natural science, geography, history, etc are important to learn in better quality of learning.
All efforts of Islamic education must include the following three purposes. Firstly, the aim of Islamic education is to inculcate tawhid. This term refers to the bedrock of Islam that must be properties of someone who claim himself or herself a Muslim. Tawhid is the inner religious belief of Islam that everything what Moslem do must be addressed to achieve submission to God. Believe in God is the most essential religious value that must be introduced to students since early age.
Secondly, the aim of Islamic education is to make Moslem students have good relation with their social environment. Islam remarked that making harmonious relation in social life is one of the important aspects of Moslem civil society. Respecting differences, like race, color, religion, gender, etc is one of universal values in Islam. As cited in the ayah 13 of Surah al-Hujurat God say: “O mankind! We created you from a single (pair of a) male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, so that you may know each other. Verily the most honored of you in the sight of Allah is (one who is) the most righteous of you.” Here the Holy Qur’an mentions two points which can create a deep sense of unity among the diverse races and religion-cultural groups of the world, the unity of the Creator which leads us to the essential equality of humankind, and the common origin of the entire human race in the primordial pair of Adam and Eve, which can lead us to the idea of universal brotherhood.
Thirdly, the aim of Islamic education is to make a good relation with the nature. Like remarked in Islam, human being is created by God for being vicegerent of world (khalifah fil ard). This concept then imply to the importance of living in harmony with the nature. Islamic education guidelines must perform the importance of harmonious relation between humankind and the nature. For the need of such relation, therefore, Islamic education should promote environmental education in every level of education.
All aims of Islamic education can not be separated each other. Belief in God, good social relationship, and harmonious interaction with the nature are like a chain of three essential life principles. A beautiful interaction of human being with circumstance, socially or naturally, will be meaningless if it is not supported by spiritual consciousness to God Almighty. According to Islam, therefore, what makes human efforts being more rich and valuable is its inner dynamic spiritual motivation through which the efforts can always be grounded from and attached to the theistic values. Thereby, modern life, which often potentially separates the relation between creature and Creator, will exactly be a new challenge for Islamic education in preparing young Muslim generations who have high religious consciousness.***
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Mencermati Kemandirian Madrasah Swasta
Republika, 25 Desember 2005
Oleh ROHMAT MULYANA
Tak banyak masyarakat kota yang mengenal dekat madrasah, apalagi madrasah yang dimaksud adalah madrasah swasta. Masyarakat kota lebih akrab dengan sekolah umum negeri yang notabene relatif unggul dalam kualitas. Salah satu sebab kurang akrabnya masyarakat kota terhadap madrasah adalah karena madrasah swasta banyak tersebar di pinggir kota dan pedesaan.
Pada umumnya madrasah swasta dibangun atas kesadaran masyarakat dengan semboyan “dari masyarakat dan untuk masyarakat”. Ikatan emosional masyarakat lebih kuat ketimbang pilihan rasional. Pertimbangannya sederhana, yaitu ikut menyuburkan pendidikan agama, sambil menitipkan anaknya agar menjadi anak yang shaleh.
Alasan lain adalah kemampuan ekonomi. Orang tua siswa pedesaan memilih madrasah swasta dengan pertimbangan biaya dan jarak yang terjangkau. Pertimbangan biaya sekolah yang murah merupakan pilihan tepat terutama dalam kondisi ekonomi yang kurang sehingga madrasan menjadi pilihan mereka.
Sebagai lembaga pendidikan formal yang lahir dari kekuatan akar rumput (grassroot), madrasah swasta muncul dalam berbagai bentuk dan corak orientasinya. Ada madrasah swasta yang didirikan oleh yayasan, ada pula yang bersifat pribadi. Induk organisasinya pun beragam. Karena perbedaan manajemen dan ideologi, acapkali pembinaan madrasah swasta menjadi lebih rumit daripada pembinaan madrasah negeri.
Perspektif Sejarah
Kemandirian madrasah swasta sebenarnya beralas sumbu pada kekuatan rasa memiliki (sense of belonging) masyarakat yang tumbuh dari generasi ke generasi. Rasa kepemilikan itu terkait erat dengan semangat religiusitas masyarakat dalam memelihara dan mengembangkan nilai-nilai keagamaan. Semangat itu berlangsung sejak lama dan melekat.
Secara historis, kemandirian madrasah swasta telah teruji. Sistem pendidikan madrasah, yang diduga sebagai perpaduan sistem pendidikan ala Timur-Tengah dengan ala Barat, telah mengkristal sejak abad ke-19. Pada zaman penjajahan Belanda, madrasah swasta secara konsisten mengembangkan sistem pendidikan Islam, walaupun sering diintimidasi oleh penjajah.
Masyarakat Islam terdorong untuk mendirikan madrasah dengan alasan pemerintah Belanda saat itu bersikap diskriminatif terhadap anak-anak Muslim. Nasib serupa dialami ketika jaman Jepang. Dalam kondisi demikian, madrasah nyaris selalu berada dalam tekanan. Tekanan itu dapat bersifat politis, kultural maupun ekonomis. Secara ekonomis, misalnya, penjajah tidak memberikan subsidi biaya untuk keperluan pendidikan, karena khawatir akan lahir semangat heroik umat Islam, yang pada gilirannya dapat membahayakan kelangsungan kekuasaannya.
Namun, atas partisipasi masyarakat saat itu telah membuat madrasah swasta tetap bertahan.
Pada tahun 70-an, keberadaan madrasah kembali terusik oleh adanya Keputusan Presiden No. 34 tahun 1972, dan diperkuat oleh Intruksi Presiden No.15 tahun 1974 yang berpotensi “mengasingkan” madrasah dari sistem pendidikan nasional. Masyarakat muslim saat itu, memberikan reaksi keras terhadap kebijakan pemerintah yang dinilai diskriminatif.
Menanggapi kegaduhan itu, pemerintah mengeluarkan SKB Tiga Menteri, yang memberikan peluang lebih luas bagi akses madrasah. Dengan SKB tersebut peluang anak santri untuk memasuki pekerjaan pada sektor-sektor modern semakin terbuka.
Pada dasarnya, perjalanan sejarah madrasah swasta menggambarkan prototipe pendidikan Islam sebelum ada kebijakan formalisasi (menegerikan) madrasah. Namun, dalam rentang perkembangannya, ternyata banyak madrasah swasta yang “jalan di tempat”, karena kelemahan SDM dan kekurangan sarana pendukung.
Unggul Kuantitas
Secara makro, data kuantitatif mengenai besaran biaya, luas lahan, jumlah siswa dan jumlah guru mencerminkan bahwa madrasah swasta lebih mandiri daripada madrasah negeri. Secara finansial, kemandirian madrasah swasta terbukti dari besarnya biaya yang diserap dari masyarakat.
Tahun 2000-2001, kontribusi masyarakat untuk tingkat MIS sebesar 56,8 persen, MTsS 87,6 persen, dan MAS 67,7 persen Persentase tersebut jauh melebihi kontribusi masyarakat untuk MIN, MTsN, MAN atau untuk SDN, SMPN, SMUN. Besarnya kontribusi masyarakat mencerminkan bahwa madrasah swasta mampu mengatasi minusnya bantuan dari pemerintah.
Sejak peralihan kekuasaan dari orde baru ke orde reformasi, keberpihakan pemerintah mulai tampak. Menguatnya perhatian pemerintah terutama setelah cendikiawan muslim memperoleh tempat di kabinet. Mereka kemudian ikut berperan dalam pengambilan kebijakan pendidikan. Sayangnya apa yang diperoleh madrasah saat ini masih jauh dari harapan yang sebenarnya, sehingga hal itu belum mengubah nasib madrasah swasta.
Keunggulan kuantitas madrasah swasta dapat dicermati juga dari jumlah siswanya. Dari 10 orang siswa yang sekolah di madrasah, 8 orang di antaranya menuntut ilmu di madrasah swasta. Ini memang terkait dengan jumlah madrasah negeri yang sedikit. Penting untuk dicatat bahwa kebanyakan siswa yang sekolah di madrasah swasta berasal dari keluarga kurang mampu.
Membangun Kualitas
Mutu madrasah swasta secara umum masih sangat rendah. Rendahnya mutu madrasah swasta setidaknya dapat dilihat dari Nilai Ebtanas Murni (NEM). Ketika SMU “The Best Ten” (yang umumnya sekolah swasta non-Muslim) di Jakarta memperoleh kisaran NEM antara 50,1 s.d 55,1, Madrasah Aliyah Swasta berada pada kisaran NEM kurang dari 27,6.
Rentang yang demikian jauh itu menunjukkan bahwa secara umum madrasah swasta tertinggal jauh dari sekolah swasta yang non-muslim. Melihat itu, sajak Taufiq Ismail yang berjudul “Aku Malu Jadi Anak Indonesia”, tampaknya relevan dengan kondisi aktual pendidikan Islam selama ini.
Apa yang perlu dilakukan dalam meningkatkan mutu madrasah swasta? Sekurang-kurangnya ada tiga hal. Pertama, perlu penyebaran informasi tentang madrasah yang lebih menyentuh aspek-aspek terdalam dari relung kehidupan madrasah swasta.Informasi-informasi yang bersifat kasuistik mengenai keunggulan madrasah swasta “elit” perlu ditampilkan ke publik untuk didesiminasikan ke madrasah lainnya. Maksudnya untuk memberikan gambaran tentang strategi dalam membangun madrasah yang berkualitas.
Kedua, adanya pelibatan yang lebih intensif dalam peningkatan profesionalisme guru dan kepala madrasah swasta dalam berbagai program pendidikan dan pelatihan yang dibiayai pemerintah. Pemerataan kesempatan itu sebaiknya didasarkan pada rasio perbandingan antara guru yang ada di madrasah negeri dengan swasta.
Ketiga, upaya pengawasan yang berkelanjutan dan berkesinambungan terhadap perkembangan madrasah swasta. Pengawasan ini memiliki peran penting terhadap upaya memberikan masukan kepada pihak madrasah dalam meningkatkan mutu dan kinerjanya. Langkah ini sekaligus untuk menghimpun informasi yang lebih akurat sebagai bahan pengambilan kebijakan oleh pihak pemerintah.
Masih banyak cara yang dapat dilakukan untuk mengangkat kualitas dan kemandirian madrasah swasta. Hal terpenting dalam membangun madrasah swasta adalah perlunya penetapan prioritas pendidikan yang lebih jelas. ***
Penulis adalah dosen UIN Bandung, Direktur Madrasah Development Center (MDC) Jawa Barat
Oleh ROHMAT MULYANA
Tak banyak masyarakat kota yang mengenal dekat madrasah, apalagi madrasah yang dimaksud adalah madrasah swasta. Masyarakat kota lebih akrab dengan sekolah umum negeri yang notabene relatif unggul dalam kualitas. Salah satu sebab kurang akrabnya masyarakat kota terhadap madrasah adalah karena madrasah swasta banyak tersebar di pinggir kota dan pedesaan.
Pada umumnya madrasah swasta dibangun atas kesadaran masyarakat dengan semboyan “dari masyarakat dan untuk masyarakat”. Ikatan emosional masyarakat lebih kuat ketimbang pilihan rasional. Pertimbangannya sederhana, yaitu ikut menyuburkan pendidikan agama, sambil menitipkan anaknya agar menjadi anak yang shaleh.
Alasan lain adalah kemampuan ekonomi. Orang tua siswa pedesaan memilih madrasah swasta dengan pertimbangan biaya dan jarak yang terjangkau. Pertimbangan biaya sekolah yang murah merupakan pilihan tepat terutama dalam kondisi ekonomi yang kurang sehingga madrasan menjadi pilihan mereka.
Sebagai lembaga pendidikan formal yang lahir dari kekuatan akar rumput (grassroot), madrasah swasta muncul dalam berbagai bentuk dan corak orientasinya. Ada madrasah swasta yang didirikan oleh yayasan, ada pula yang bersifat pribadi. Induk organisasinya pun beragam. Karena perbedaan manajemen dan ideologi, acapkali pembinaan madrasah swasta menjadi lebih rumit daripada pembinaan madrasah negeri.
Perspektif Sejarah
Kemandirian madrasah swasta sebenarnya beralas sumbu pada kekuatan rasa memiliki (sense of belonging) masyarakat yang tumbuh dari generasi ke generasi. Rasa kepemilikan itu terkait erat dengan semangat religiusitas masyarakat dalam memelihara dan mengembangkan nilai-nilai keagamaan. Semangat itu berlangsung sejak lama dan melekat.
Secara historis, kemandirian madrasah swasta telah teruji. Sistem pendidikan madrasah, yang diduga sebagai perpaduan sistem pendidikan ala Timur-Tengah dengan ala Barat, telah mengkristal sejak abad ke-19. Pada zaman penjajahan Belanda, madrasah swasta secara konsisten mengembangkan sistem pendidikan Islam, walaupun sering diintimidasi oleh penjajah.
Masyarakat Islam terdorong untuk mendirikan madrasah dengan alasan pemerintah Belanda saat itu bersikap diskriminatif terhadap anak-anak Muslim. Nasib serupa dialami ketika jaman Jepang. Dalam kondisi demikian, madrasah nyaris selalu berada dalam tekanan. Tekanan itu dapat bersifat politis, kultural maupun ekonomis. Secara ekonomis, misalnya, penjajah tidak memberikan subsidi biaya untuk keperluan pendidikan, karena khawatir akan lahir semangat heroik umat Islam, yang pada gilirannya dapat membahayakan kelangsungan kekuasaannya.
Namun, atas partisipasi masyarakat saat itu telah membuat madrasah swasta tetap bertahan.
Pada tahun 70-an, keberadaan madrasah kembali terusik oleh adanya Keputusan Presiden No. 34 tahun 1972, dan diperkuat oleh Intruksi Presiden No.15 tahun 1974 yang berpotensi “mengasingkan” madrasah dari sistem pendidikan nasional. Masyarakat muslim saat itu, memberikan reaksi keras terhadap kebijakan pemerintah yang dinilai diskriminatif.
Menanggapi kegaduhan itu, pemerintah mengeluarkan SKB Tiga Menteri, yang memberikan peluang lebih luas bagi akses madrasah. Dengan SKB tersebut peluang anak santri untuk memasuki pekerjaan pada sektor-sektor modern semakin terbuka.
Pada dasarnya, perjalanan sejarah madrasah swasta menggambarkan prototipe pendidikan Islam sebelum ada kebijakan formalisasi (menegerikan) madrasah. Namun, dalam rentang perkembangannya, ternyata banyak madrasah swasta yang “jalan di tempat”, karena kelemahan SDM dan kekurangan sarana pendukung.
Unggul Kuantitas
Secara makro, data kuantitatif mengenai besaran biaya, luas lahan, jumlah siswa dan jumlah guru mencerminkan bahwa madrasah swasta lebih mandiri daripada madrasah negeri. Secara finansial, kemandirian madrasah swasta terbukti dari besarnya biaya yang diserap dari masyarakat.
Tahun 2000-2001, kontribusi masyarakat untuk tingkat MIS sebesar 56,8 persen, MTsS 87,6 persen, dan MAS 67,7 persen Persentase tersebut jauh melebihi kontribusi masyarakat untuk MIN, MTsN, MAN atau untuk SDN, SMPN, SMUN. Besarnya kontribusi masyarakat mencerminkan bahwa madrasah swasta mampu mengatasi minusnya bantuan dari pemerintah.
Sejak peralihan kekuasaan dari orde baru ke orde reformasi, keberpihakan pemerintah mulai tampak. Menguatnya perhatian pemerintah terutama setelah cendikiawan muslim memperoleh tempat di kabinet. Mereka kemudian ikut berperan dalam pengambilan kebijakan pendidikan. Sayangnya apa yang diperoleh madrasah saat ini masih jauh dari harapan yang sebenarnya, sehingga hal itu belum mengubah nasib madrasah swasta.
Keunggulan kuantitas madrasah swasta dapat dicermati juga dari jumlah siswanya. Dari 10 orang siswa yang sekolah di madrasah, 8 orang di antaranya menuntut ilmu di madrasah swasta. Ini memang terkait dengan jumlah madrasah negeri yang sedikit. Penting untuk dicatat bahwa kebanyakan siswa yang sekolah di madrasah swasta berasal dari keluarga kurang mampu.
Membangun Kualitas
Mutu madrasah swasta secara umum masih sangat rendah. Rendahnya mutu madrasah swasta setidaknya dapat dilihat dari Nilai Ebtanas Murni (NEM). Ketika SMU “The Best Ten” (yang umumnya sekolah swasta non-Muslim) di Jakarta memperoleh kisaran NEM antara 50,1 s.d 55,1, Madrasah Aliyah Swasta berada pada kisaran NEM kurang dari 27,6.
Rentang yang demikian jauh itu menunjukkan bahwa secara umum madrasah swasta tertinggal jauh dari sekolah swasta yang non-muslim. Melihat itu, sajak Taufiq Ismail yang berjudul “Aku Malu Jadi Anak Indonesia”, tampaknya relevan dengan kondisi aktual pendidikan Islam selama ini.
Apa yang perlu dilakukan dalam meningkatkan mutu madrasah swasta? Sekurang-kurangnya ada tiga hal. Pertama, perlu penyebaran informasi tentang madrasah yang lebih menyentuh aspek-aspek terdalam dari relung kehidupan madrasah swasta.Informasi-informasi yang bersifat kasuistik mengenai keunggulan madrasah swasta “elit” perlu ditampilkan ke publik untuk didesiminasikan ke madrasah lainnya. Maksudnya untuk memberikan gambaran tentang strategi dalam membangun madrasah yang berkualitas.
Kedua, adanya pelibatan yang lebih intensif dalam peningkatan profesionalisme guru dan kepala madrasah swasta dalam berbagai program pendidikan dan pelatihan yang dibiayai pemerintah. Pemerataan kesempatan itu sebaiknya didasarkan pada rasio perbandingan antara guru yang ada di madrasah negeri dengan swasta.
Ketiga, upaya pengawasan yang berkelanjutan dan berkesinambungan terhadap perkembangan madrasah swasta. Pengawasan ini memiliki peran penting terhadap upaya memberikan masukan kepada pihak madrasah dalam meningkatkan mutu dan kinerjanya. Langkah ini sekaligus untuk menghimpun informasi yang lebih akurat sebagai bahan pengambilan kebijakan oleh pihak pemerintah.
Masih banyak cara yang dapat dilakukan untuk mengangkat kualitas dan kemandirian madrasah swasta. Hal terpenting dalam membangun madrasah swasta adalah perlunya penetapan prioritas pendidikan yang lebih jelas. ***
Penulis adalah dosen UIN Bandung, Direktur Madrasah Development Center (MDC) Jawa Barat
Issue Pendidikan Antar-Agama
Oleh Rohmat Mulyana
Seminar internasional pertama tentang pendidikan antar-agama (interfaith education) yang diselenggarakan UIN Jakarta secara resmi ditutup Presiden RI di Istana Negara tanggal 4 Februari 2005 lalu. Konferensi yang berlangsung tiga hari ini terbilang cukup prestisius. Mayoritas pembicara kunci (keynote speakers) datang dari sejumlah negara dengan beragam latar belakang keyakinan agama seperti Islam, Kristen, Budha, Hindu, Kong Hu Cu, dan Taoisme.
Selama enam bulan persiapan yang dimotori Dekan Fakultas Tarbiyah UIN Jakarta ini berhasil mendatangkan sejumlah tokoh intelektual dan pemuka agama kaliber internasional dari enam jenis agama yang tersebar di seluruh dunia. Saat itu, penyajian diskursus Islam tampak cukup terwakili oleh hadirnya K.H. Abdurrahman Wahid, Prof. Azyumardi Azra, Prof. Salman Harun (Indonesia), Prof. Nawaz Khan (Pakistan), dan Nurah Ammat’ullah, Ph.D (USA).
Begitu juga agama lain. Agama Kristen diwakili oleh Sister Barrones Cox dan Prof. John Mark (Inggris), Prof. John May (Australia), Sister Joan Kirby (USA). Agama Budha diwakili oleh Master Chin Kung dan Maosen Zhong, Ph.D (Australia), Venerable Xue Cheng (China) Prof. Toh Swee Hin (Australia), Prof. Mulyadi Wahyono (Indonesia). Agama Tao diwakili oleh Master Lee Zhiwang (Singapura). Agama Hindu oleh Somvir Ph.D (India) dan Agama Kong Hu Cu oleh Dr. Candra Setiawan (Indonesia). Selain itu, masih ada sederetan nama lain dari kalangan intelektual muda yang tidak sempat disebutkan di sini.
Dalam pidato penutupan seminar, Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono menyambut baik prakarsa seminar pertama ini. Seminar yang mengangkat topik “Pendidikan antar-agama bagi perdamaian dan kerukunan” ini menjadi tonggak sejarah -- awal pendidikan antar-agama diangkat sebagai isu global di Indonesia.
Tulisan ini tidak bermaksud mengetengahkan hasil seminar, melainkan lebih mencerminkan pemikiran reflektif penulis atas sejumlah pandangan yang berkembang dalam forum seminar. Isu yang diangkat menyangkut semangat, prinsip dan tantangan yang dihadapi pendidikan antar-agama dimasa mendatang.
Semangat Toleransi
Dalam masyarakat pluralistik, agama acapkali menjadi salah satu ciri penting keragaman. Sebab itu, keberadaan pendidikan antar-agama dalam konteks masyarakat multi-religi tidak diragukan lagi. Bahkan pada negara yang memiliki tingkat kohesivitas dan homogenitas keyakinan sekalipun, pemahaman lintas agama tetap diperlukan.
Dialog antar-penganut agama perlu diselenggarakan agar pandangan inklusif, sikap kooperatif dan terbuka terhadap perbedaan menjadi sebuah gerakan masal. Dialog tentu bukan untuk mereduksi akar keyakinan seseorang, melainkan suatu upaya untuk saling memahami (mutual understanding) dan saling menghargai (mutual respecting) antar-umat beragama, yang dalam terminologi Islam disebut tasamuh.
Sikap saling memahami dan menghargai diajarkan dalam setiap agama. Islam dengan jelas menempatkan toleransi sebagai ajaran penting yang diwakili idiom al-irham (QS. 4:1) dan at-ta’aruf (QS. 49:13) yang berarti silaturahmi dan saling mengenal. Demikian pula lafadz ‘amalunaa ‘amalukum dapat ditafsirkan sebagai asas penghargaan terhadap wilayah keunikan setiap agama. Sejarah berbicara bahwa Rasulullah telah menanamkan sikap tasamuh pada masyarakat Makkah dan Madinah untuk hidup berdampingan dengan kaum Yahudi dan Nasrani.
Dalam agama lain, sikap saling menghormati juga menjadi titik inti ajaran interaksi kehidupan beragama. Ajaran Budha, misalnya, menekankan pentingnya Sepuluh Perilaku Baik (The Ten Good Conducts) sebagai prinsip dasar hubungan antara manusia dalam masyarakat. Agama Hindu mengajarkan Empat Prinsip (The Four Principles), yaitu tanpa kekerasan, kejujuran, keadilan, dan perdamaian sebagai dasar untuk peletakan sikap toleransi. Misi Tao mengajarkan Sepuluh Kebijakan (The Nine Virtues) sebagai prinsip dasar penanaman penghargaan terhadap yang lain. Agama Kong Hu Cu menekankan pentingnya Ren yang mengajarkan prinsip-prinsip hubungan kemanusiaan (humanity) sebagai perluasan nilai-nilai etika. Dan, ajaran tentang Tuhan Yesus Kristus dalam agama Kristen dengan jelas bertujuan untuk menebar cinta kasih antar-sesama manusia. Semua itu bagaikan untaian mutiara dengan kilapan cahaya sama (semangat toleransi), meski ditemukan dari dasar laut yang berbeda (aneka warna bahasa).
Agama seolah tengah menguji kita untuk menemukan sisi persamaan di balik fenomena keragaman yang terkadang dibangun diatas fondasi ekslusivitas dan pandangan sempit.
Semangat toleransi dalam setiap agama bagaikan zona milik bersama, walaupun zona tersebut oleh pemiliknya sesekali terlupakan. Jika sikap eksklusif itu tumbuh subur diantara umat beragama, syakwasangka akan lahir dan agama akan menjadi sumber konflik atau (setidaknya) dianggap sebagai pemicu (trigger) gejolak sosial.
Prinsip Pendidikan Antar-Agama
Semangat toleransi dalam setiap agama sekaligus menegaskan kepada kita bahwa pendidikan antar-agama memiliki peran strategis. Kesalahpahaman terhadap perbedaan agama tiada lain bersumber dari ketidaktahuan. Betapa mudah seorang anak merasa terganggu oleh keunikan tampilan tradisi agama lain yang ia sendiri tidak berupaya untuk mengenalnya. Betapa mudah pula orang menduga bahwa letupan dan agitasi sosial berakar dari perbedaan agama. Karena itu, perluasan pengetahuan tentang pernik-pernik agama lain menjadi teramat penting manakala kita menghendaki adanya kerukunan antar-umat beragama.
Prinsip dasar yang perlu dipahami dalam pendidikan antar-agama adalah menemukan benang emas persamaan sebagai titik singgung dan menempatkan perbedaan sebagai keragaman yang harus dipertahankan. Agama yang satu tidak dapat memonopoli agama lain. Keunikan menjadi sebuah anugrah yang terlalu absurd untuk dapat dikoptasi oleh individu atau kelompok. Di sebarang sana ada rentetan sejarah orang bijak, fakta budaya dan peradaban, relung keyakinan, dan ritualitas keagamaan yang tumbuh dalam dimensi ruang dan waktu tertentu. Hakikatnya adalah tak mungkin kebenaran, kebaikan dan kebijakan saling mengkoptasi satu dengan lainnya.
Pendidikan antar-agama juga tidak berpretensi untuk mencelupkan perbedaan-perbedaan ke dalam kuali pelebur agar menjadi seragam. Pendidikan antar-agama yang berbasis nilai toleransi justru menawarkan gagasan “integrasi dan asimilasi pluralistik” tanpa harus mereduksi keunikan-keunikan yang ada dalam setiap agama. Pribahasa “jika tak kenal maka tak sayang” sesungguhnya sebuah idiom yang dapat mewakili semangat pendidikan antar-agama untuk menciptakan kerukunan antar-umat beragama. Soumvir, seorang intelektual muda India menyatakan bahwa seseorang dikatakan benar-benar religius jika ia teruji dalam masyarakat, bukan dalam keterasingan hutan belantara.
Dua pertanyaan kritis yang menyentuh substansi pendidikan antar-agama juga sempat dilontarkan Toh-Swee-Hin, seorang direktur Multi-Faith Center, Griffith University, Australia. Dalam makalah yang berjudul Inter-Faith Dialogue in the Waving of the Culture and Peace; Challanges for Educators, Hin melontarkan dua pertanyaan penting yang harus dijawab oleh ahli pendidikan, guru, orangtua, dan masyarakat. Bagaimanakah kita dapat memperkenalkan kepedulian kritis tentang akar penyebab semua bentuk konflik dan kekerasaan pada kehidupan pribadi, hubungan antar-pribadi, keluarga, masyarakat dan dunia? Bagaimanakah kita dapat menanamkan nilai dan sikap secara simultan agar anak mampu berpikir kritis bagi dirinya, keluarga, masyarakat, bahkan dunia?
Dua pertanyaan di atas sesungguhnya menyentuh wilayah epistemologi pendidikan antar-agama khususnya tentang perolehan dan pelekatan nilai yang bersumber dari sejumlah kasus kehidupan. Dalam konsep pendidikan nilai, pertanyaan Hin mengungkapkan perlunya belajar nilai berbasis kasus (case-based value learning) sebagai strategi pencerahan nilai agama yang universal maupun partikular.
Prinsip lain yang tak kalah pentingnya adalah bahwa pendidikan antar-agama harus dilakukan secara integral dengan sejumlah pendekatan yang beragam. Sejumlah perangkat ilmu dapat dijadikan pisau analisis saat keunikan peristiwa, ajaran, sistem keyakinan, dan artefak suatu agama ditelaah anak. Seorang guru, misalnya, harus melihat wilayah-wilayah kritis perbedaan agama secara utuh dalam perspektif sosiologi, antropologi, psikologi, teologi, etika, filsafat, moral dan ilmu pendukung lainnya. Dengan demikian, anak akan terbimbing pada pemahaman perbedaan sebagai keunikan yang harus disyukuri.
Tantangan yang Dihadapi
Kini pendidikan antar-agama tampaknya akan menjadi sebuah kemestian yang sulit dihindari. Fakta bahwa masyarakat Indonesia yang muti ras, suku, budaya dan agama menjadi alasan kuat mengapa pengetahuan lintas-agama dan budaya perlu dikembangkan. Tetapi, cita-cita untuk menyelenggarakan pendidikan antar-agama secara nasional tampaknya masih akan menghadapi sejumlah tantangan, antara lain:
Pertama, pada wilayah akar rumput (grass root), perluasan pengetahuan antar- agama acapkali dikhawatirkan banyak pihak. Belajar sejarah agama lain, misalnya, seolah membuka peluang bagi anak untuk tergoda oleh keyakinan lain. Sikap skeptis dan pesimistis dalam komunitas ini pada gilirannya menjadi tantangan terberat dalam implementasi pendidikan antar-agama. Karena itu, hal terpenting yang perlu dilakukan adalah membuat masyarakat beragama melek informasi dan lebih terbiasa dengan gagasan dan cita-cita pendidikan antar-agama.
Kedua, persoalan yang cukup krusial terkait dengan penyiapan sumberdaya pendidik yang berwawasan luas. Belajar kesamaan dan perbedaan agama memerlukan pendekatan multi-disiplin dan melek teknologi. Tidak cukup bagi seorang guru menjelaskan akar persoalan sebuah konflik umat beragama tanpa mengetahui secara pasti relung keyakinan para penganutnya. Dengan kata lain ia harus mendalami teologi beberapa agama dan melengkapi pengetahuannya melalui teknologi informasi.
Ketiga, pendidikan sebagai ilmu tindakan tentu memerlukan uraian rinci mengenai cara pendidikan antar-agama itu dipraktikan. Wilayah ini justru menjadi tugas terberat dalam implementasi. Secara konseptual, seorang ahli pendidikan dapat merumuskan paradigma umum pendidikan antar-agama dengan cerdas, tetapi pada riak terendah pendidikan terdapat keunikan yang akan menguji kebenaran konseptual di lapangan. Ini artinya, masih ada kebutuhan lain dalam upaya penyelenggarakan pendidikan antar-agama, yakni penyiapan silabus, materi, media, dan evaluasi pembelajaran.
Keempat, persoalan internal pendidikan agama masih sering dilakukan secara dogmatis dan imperatif. Hal ini berpotensi untuk terjadinya tarik ulur kebutuhan dalam pendidikan antar-agama. Tatanan kognitif anak yang dibagun melalui hafalan yang berlebihan dapat mengurangi tingkat kekritisan yang sebenarnya diperlukan dalam analisis lintas-agama. Begitu juga, pembentukan perilaku beragama secara imperatif pada satu sisi dapat mengakibatkan sikap eksklusif yang kontra-produktif dengan prinsip pendidikan antar-agama. Sebab itu, kewajiban setiap penganut agama adalah mengurai pengetahuan, pemahaman dan pengamalan agama sebagai prasyarat penting bagi terselenggaranya pendidikan antar-agama.
Dalam diskursus pendidikan formal, empat tantangan tersebut menjadi tugas berat Lembaga Pendidikan Tenaga Kependidikan (LPTK). Penyiapan guru pendidikan antar-agama tidak sesederhana merekruit guru agama. Kini tampak mengemuka pentingnya sebuah sistem pendidikan calon guru agama di perguruan tinggi yang menjamin lahirnya generasi pendidik berwawasan luas dan profesional. Jika saja pada setiap komunitas beragama mampu menghasilkan species guru ini, maka “juru damai” antar-agama akan lahir di setiap lingkup pendidikan dan komunitas keyakinan beragama.
Rohmat Mulyana, dosen UIN SGD Bandung, peserta Seminar Interfaih Education.
Seminar internasional pertama tentang pendidikan antar-agama (interfaith education) yang diselenggarakan UIN Jakarta secara resmi ditutup Presiden RI di Istana Negara tanggal 4 Februari 2005 lalu. Konferensi yang berlangsung tiga hari ini terbilang cukup prestisius. Mayoritas pembicara kunci (keynote speakers) datang dari sejumlah negara dengan beragam latar belakang keyakinan agama seperti Islam, Kristen, Budha, Hindu, Kong Hu Cu, dan Taoisme.
Selama enam bulan persiapan yang dimotori Dekan Fakultas Tarbiyah UIN Jakarta ini berhasil mendatangkan sejumlah tokoh intelektual dan pemuka agama kaliber internasional dari enam jenis agama yang tersebar di seluruh dunia. Saat itu, penyajian diskursus Islam tampak cukup terwakili oleh hadirnya K.H. Abdurrahman Wahid, Prof. Azyumardi Azra, Prof. Salman Harun (Indonesia), Prof. Nawaz Khan (Pakistan), dan Nurah Ammat’ullah, Ph.D (USA).
Begitu juga agama lain. Agama Kristen diwakili oleh Sister Barrones Cox dan Prof. John Mark (Inggris), Prof. John May (Australia), Sister Joan Kirby (USA). Agama Budha diwakili oleh Master Chin Kung dan Maosen Zhong, Ph.D (Australia), Venerable Xue Cheng (China) Prof. Toh Swee Hin (Australia), Prof. Mulyadi Wahyono (Indonesia). Agama Tao diwakili oleh Master Lee Zhiwang (Singapura). Agama Hindu oleh Somvir Ph.D (India) dan Agama Kong Hu Cu oleh Dr. Candra Setiawan (Indonesia). Selain itu, masih ada sederetan nama lain dari kalangan intelektual muda yang tidak sempat disebutkan di sini.
Dalam pidato penutupan seminar, Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono menyambut baik prakarsa seminar pertama ini. Seminar yang mengangkat topik “Pendidikan antar-agama bagi perdamaian dan kerukunan” ini menjadi tonggak sejarah -- awal pendidikan antar-agama diangkat sebagai isu global di Indonesia.
Tulisan ini tidak bermaksud mengetengahkan hasil seminar, melainkan lebih mencerminkan pemikiran reflektif penulis atas sejumlah pandangan yang berkembang dalam forum seminar. Isu yang diangkat menyangkut semangat, prinsip dan tantangan yang dihadapi pendidikan antar-agama dimasa mendatang.
Semangat Toleransi
Dalam masyarakat pluralistik, agama acapkali menjadi salah satu ciri penting keragaman. Sebab itu, keberadaan pendidikan antar-agama dalam konteks masyarakat multi-religi tidak diragukan lagi. Bahkan pada negara yang memiliki tingkat kohesivitas dan homogenitas keyakinan sekalipun, pemahaman lintas agama tetap diperlukan.
Dialog antar-penganut agama perlu diselenggarakan agar pandangan inklusif, sikap kooperatif dan terbuka terhadap perbedaan menjadi sebuah gerakan masal. Dialog tentu bukan untuk mereduksi akar keyakinan seseorang, melainkan suatu upaya untuk saling memahami (mutual understanding) dan saling menghargai (mutual respecting) antar-umat beragama, yang dalam terminologi Islam disebut tasamuh.
Sikap saling memahami dan menghargai diajarkan dalam setiap agama. Islam dengan jelas menempatkan toleransi sebagai ajaran penting yang diwakili idiom al-irham (QS. 4:1) dan at-ta’aruf (QS. 49:13) yang berarti silaturahmi dan saling mengenal. Demikian pula lafadz ‘amalunaa ‘amalukum dapat ditafsirkan sebagai asas penghargaan terhadap wilayah keunikan setiap agama. Sejarah berbicara bahwa Rasulullah telah menanamkan sikap tasamuh pada masyarakat Makkah dan Madinah untuk hidup berdampingan dengan kaum Yahudi dan Nasrani.
Dalam agama lain, sikap saling menghormati juga menjadi titik inti ajaran interaksi kehidupan beragama. Ajaran Budha, misalnya, menekankan pentingnya Sepuluh Perilaku Baik (The Ten Good Conducts) sebagai prinsip dasar hubungan antara manusia dalam masyarakat. Agama Hindu mengajarkan Empat Prinsip (The Four Principles), yaitu tanpa kekerasan, kejujuran, keadilan, dan perdamaian sebagai dasar untuk peletakan sikap toleransi. Misi Tao mengajarkan Sepuluh Kebijakan (The Nine Virtues) sebagai prinsip dasar penanaman penghargaan terhadap yang lain. Agama Kong Hu Cu menekankan pentingnya Ren yang mengajarkan prinsip-prinsip hubungan kemanusiaan (humanity) sebagai perluasan nilai-nilai etika. Dan, ajaran tentang Tuhan Yesus Kristus dalam agama Kristen dengan jelas bertujuan untuk menebar cinta kasih antar-sesama manusia. Semua itu bagaikan untaian mutiara dengan kilapan cahaya sama (semangat toleransi), meski ditemukan dari dasar laut yang berbeda (aneka warna bahasa).
Agama seolah tengah menguji kita untuk menemukan sisi persamaan di balik fenomena keragaman yang terkadang dibangun diatas fondasi ekslusivitas dan pandangan sempit.
Semangat toleransi dalam setiap agama bagaikan zona milik bersama, walaupun zona tersebut oleh pemiliknya sesekali terlupakan. Jika sikap eksklusif itu tumbuh subur diantara umat beragama, syakwasangka akan lahir dan agama akan menjadi sumber konflik atau (setidaknya) dianggap sebagai pemicu (trigger) gejolak sosial.
Prinsip Pendidikan Antar-Agama
Semangat toleransi dalam setiap agama sekaligus menegaskan kepada kita bahwa pendidikan antar-agama memiliki peran strategis. Kesalahpahaman terhadap perbedaan agama tiada lain bersumber dari ketidaktahuan. Betapa mudah seorang anak merasa terganggu oleh keunikan tampilan tradisi agama lain yang ia sendiri tidak berupaya untuk mengenalnya. Betapa mudah pula orang menduga bahwa letupan dan agitasi sosial berakar dari perbedaan agama. Karena itu, perluasan pengetahuan tentang pernik-pernik agama lain menjadi teramat penting manakala kita menghendaki adanya kerukunan antar-umat beragama.
Prinsip dasar yang perlu dipahami dalam pendidikan antar-agama adalah menemukan benang emas persamaan sebagai titik singgung dan menempatkan perbedaan sebagai keragaman yang harus dipertahankan. Agama yang satu tidak dapat memonopoli agama lain. Keunikan menjadi sebuah anugrah yang terlalu absurd untuk dapat dikoptasi oleh individu atau kelompok. Di sebarang sana ada rentetan sejarah orang bijak, fakta budaya dan peradaban, relung keyakinan, dan ritualitas keagamaan yang tumbuh dalam dimensi ruang dan waktu tertentu. Hakikatnya adalah tak mungkin kebenaran, kebaikan dan kebijakan saling mengkoptasi satu dengan lainnya.
Pendidikan antar-agama juga tidak berpretensi untuk mencelupkan perbedaan-perbedaan ke dalam kuali pelebur agar menjadi seragam. Pendidikan antar-agama yang berbasis nilai toleransi justru menawarkan gagasan “integrasi dan asimilasi pluralistik” tanpa harus mereduksi keunikan-keunikan yang ada dalam setiap agama. Pribahasa “jika tak kenal maka tak sayang” sesungguhnya sebuah idiom yang dapat mewakili semangat pendidikan antar-agama untuk menciptakan kerukunan antar-umat beragama. Soumvir, seorang intelektual muda India menyatakan bahwa seseorang dikatakan benar-benar religius jika ia teruji dalam masyarakat, bukan dalam keterasingan hutan belantara.
Dua pertanyaan kritis yang menyentuh substansi pendidikan antar-agama juga sempat dilontarkan Toh-Swee-Hin, seorang direktur Multi-Faith Center, Griffith University, Australia. Dalam makalah yang berjudul Inter-Faith Dialogue in the Waving of the Culture and Peace; Challanges for Educators, Hin melontarkan dua pertanyaan penting yang harus dijawab oleh ahli pendidikan, guru, orangtua, dan masyarakat. Bagaimanakah kita dapat memperkenalkan kepedulian kritis tentang akar penyebab semua bentuk konflik dan kekerasaan pada kehidupan pribadi, hubungan antar-pribadi, keluarga, masyarakat dan dunia? Bagaimanakah kita dapat menanamkan nilai dan sikap secara simultan agar anak mampu berpikir kritis bagi dirinya, keluarga, masyarakat, bahkan dunia?
Dua pertanyaan di atas sesungguhnya menyentuh wilayah epistemologi pendidikan antar-agama khususnya tentang perolehan dan pelekatan nilai yang bersumber dari sejumlah kasus kehidupan. Dalam konsep pendidikan nilai, pertanyaan Hin mengungkapkan perlunya belajar nilai berbasis kasus (case-based value learning) sebagai strategi pencerahan nilai agama yang universal maupun partikular.
Prinsip lain yang tak kalah pentingnya adalah bahwa pendidikan antar-agama harus dilakukan secara integral dengan sejumlah pendekatan yang beragam. Sejumlah perangkat ilmu dapat dijadikan pisau analisis saat keunikan peristiwa, ajaran, sistem keyakinan, dan artefak suatu agama ditelaah anak. Seorang guru, misalnya, harus melihat wilayah-wilayah kritis perbedaan agama secara utuh dalam perspektif sosiologi, antropologi, psikologi, teologi, etika, filsafat, moral dan ilmu pendukung lainnya. Dengan demikian, anak akan terbimbing pada pemahaman perbedaan sebagai keunikan yang harus disyukuri.
Tantangan yang Dihadapi
Kini pendidikan antar-agama tampaknya akan menjadi sebuah kemestian yang sulit dihindari. Fakta bahwa masyarakat Indonesia yang muti ras, suku, budaya dan agama menjadi alasan kuat mengapa pengetahuan lintas-agama dan budaya perlu dikembangkan. Tetapi, cita-cita untuk menyelenggarakan pendidikan antar-agama secara nasional tampaknya masih akan menghadapi sejumlah tantangan, antara lain:
Pertama, pada wilayah akar rumput (grass root), perluasan pengetahuan antar- agama acapkali dikhawatirkan banyak pihak. Belajar sejarah agama lain, misalnya, seolah membuka peluang bagi anak untuk tergoda oleh keyakinan lain. Sikap skeptis dan pesimistis dalam komunitas ini pada gilirannya menjadi tantangan terberat dalam implementasi pendidikan antar-agama. Karena itu, hal terpenting yang perlu dilakukan adalah membuat masyarakat beragama melek informasi dan lebih terbiasa dengan gagasan dan cita-cita pendidikan antar-agama.
Kedua, persoalan yang cukup krusial terkait dengan penyiapan sumberdaya pendidik yang berwawasan luas. Belajar kesamaan dan perbedaan agama memerlukan pendekatan multi-disiplin dan melek teknologi. Tidak cukup bagi seorang guru menjelaskan akar persoalan sebuah konflik umat beragama tanpa mengetahui secara pasti relung keyakinan para penganutnya. Dengan kata lain ia harus mendalami teologi beberapa agama dan melengkapi pengetahuannya melalui teknologi informasi.
Ketiga, pendidikan sebagai ilmu tindakan tentu memerlukan uraian rinci mengenai cara pendidikan antar-agama itu dipraktikan. Wilayah ini justru menjadi tugas terberat dalam implementasi. Secara konseptual, seorang ahli pendidikan dapat merumuskan paradigma umum pendidikan antar-agama dengan cerdas, tetapi pada riak terendah pendidikan terdapat keunikan yang akan menguji kebenaran konseptual di lapangan. Ini artinya, masih ada kebutuhan lain dalam upaya penyelenggarakan pendidikan antar-agama, yakni penyiapan silabus, materi, media, dan evaluasi pembelajaran.
Keempat, persoalan internal pendidikan agama masih sering dilakukan secara dogmatis dan imperatif. Hal ini berpotensi untuk terjadinya tarik ulur kebutuhan dalam pendidikan antar-agama. Tatanan kognitif anak yang dibagun melalui hafalan yang berlebihan dapat mengurangi tingkat kekritisan yang sebenarnya diperlukan dalam analisis lintas-agama. Begitu juga, pembentukan perilaku beragama secara imperatif pada satu sisi dapat mengakibatkan sikap eksklusif yang kontra-produktif dengan prinsip pendidikan antar-agama. Sebab itu, kewajiban setiap penganut agama adalah mengurai pengetahuan, pemahaman dan pengamalan agama sebagai prasyarat penting bagi terselenggaranya pendidikan antar-agama.
Dalam diskursus pendidikan formal, empat tantangan tersebut menjadi tugas berat Lembaga Pendidikan Tenaga Kependidikan (LPTK). Penyiapan guru pendidikan antar-agama tidak sesederhana merekruit guru agama. Kini tampak mengemuka pentingnya sebuah sistem pendidikan calon guru agama di perguruan tinggi yang menjamin lahirnya generasi pendidik berwawasan luas dan profesional. Jika saja pada setiap komunitas beragama mampu menghasilkan species guru ini, maka “juru damai” antar-agama akan lahir di setiap lingkup pendidikan dan komunitas keyakinan beragama.
Rohmat Mulyana, dosen UIN SGD Bandung, peserta Seminar Interfaih Education.
Dissertation Highlight
Psychological, Social, and Spiritual Dimensions of Teachers' Personality
By Rohmat Mulyana
Background of Problem. Educational aim is directed to develop complete human personality. In the context of national education, a complete man means the man whose characteristic is faithful and devoted to the One God, and it is accompanied by other personality characteristics. But in fact, the efforts of formal education in developing students' personality have not yet yielded results as expected.
On a macro policy scale, one of the factors of lack of success of education is mainly caused by less attention of educational policies to empower our indigenous potentialities, including religious aspects. Educational policies are often much influenced by a la Western philosophies and theories that those are very humanistic, but they are lack of religious-ethics and tend to anthropocentric landscape. On a micro policy scale, the less success of education in developing complete students' personality has been possibly caused by the weakness of teachers' personality. Teachers, as educational actors, hold a strategic role and take responsible for developing students' personality. The quality of teachers' personality can all at once reflects their students' personal quality.
Based on the issues above, it is interesting to study the teacher personality profile in terms of psychological, social, and spiritual dimensions. The study in the three dimensions is purposed to formulate a total personality of teacher analyzed on its relation to biographical backgrounds and to teaching strategies.
Research Problems. This research is focused on the main problem formulated in the following questions: (1) What are the stronger aspects of teachers' personality? (2) What are the biographical backgrounds, which function as the important correlate of the stronger aspects of teachers' personality? (3) How high do the personality aspects influence on the teachers' ability in developing teaching strategy? (4) What are logical interpretations, which can be formulated from the empirical analysis that contributes further to a model of total personality dynamic and to a model of General Education for teachers?
Research Findings
First, the research findings show that the teachers, psychologically, have the need for order as the highest aspect, they, socially, have healthy interpersonal relations, and they, spiritually, have strong transcendental relation. They, however, are very weak in the aspect of need for autonomy and the critical thinking skill.
Second, the biographical backgrounds, which function as correlate of stronger aspects, are boarding school background, age, gender, and subject matter discipline.
Third, based on the ability of the teachers in developing teaching strategy, it is clear that they teach tend to the content-centered rather than to the student-centered. It means that they teach on a teaching process in which the class is organized upon their authority. Meanwhile, their positions in teaching strategy generally occupy the strategy I (in which the students do not really want to learn but they will respond to the strong direction and control created by teacher). By considering the influence of the personality aspects on the possibility of teaching strategy shifts to the more meaningful one, this research finds seven important aspects that contribute to improvement for teacher professionalism. The seven aspects are namely: need for achievement, the need for autonomy, critical thinking skill, need for order, social relation, transcendental relation, and religious intellectualism.
Fourth, from inter-correlation analysis among all complete personality aspects, it is resulted that the transcendental relation places a central position of all aspects, whereas the level of the relation is still in confirmative level (feel the presence of God on whatever they sense) and in responsive level (believe that God always answer their wants and their complaints).
Discussion. The hierarchical order of the aspects that places transcendental relation on the central and the highest position confirms that theistic values can be taken account as the first and the foremost motivator of acts. It, in turn, emphasizes again the importance of religious moral values in the context of teacher education and training. These values are necessary to educate through a supported setting and to integrate with other scientific values. Likewise, the teacher education and training should be able to improve the weak aspects like need for achievement, need for autonomy, and critical thinking skill. It also should function all the high aspects such as need for order, social relation, transcendental relation, and religious intellectualism.
Based on the thought above, it is important to develop a model of General Education in in-service training. The model is to focus on: (1) creating much Islamic nuance in a training setting; (2) developing moral and emotional education; (3) developing various models of good and correct behaviors; (4) developing mathematical reasoning skills; (5) developing inter-disciplinary insights; (6) improving problem solving abilities; and (7) practicing some democratic approaches in teaching.
Implications. Those research findings imply on philosophical, psychological, and social ideas, and on practical efforts in education. On the first three implications, the findings, in which transcendental relation is placed as the central of all aspects, means that the theistic values must be added into the content of philosophy, psychology, and social theories constructed by humanists. Practically, the finding implication means that the Islamic moral values must be functioned fully into all educational efforts, particularly, the efforts done by general subject matter teachers (IPS, IPA, Bahasa). More specific, the findings imply on response to a part of spiritual quotient (SQ) ideas proposed by Zohar & Marshall (2000) on which they cite "SQ has no necessary connection to religion". In this case, the implication means that the idea is rejected.
Recommendations. The proposed recommendations of this research are concerned with two issues. First, it is necessary to change educational paradigm to a new one in which spiritual values are placed as a center of education or training for teacher/prospective teacher. This recommendation, of course, will involve macro scale policies in education. If the first recommendation is hard to carry out, the second one can be taken for alternative. The second recommendation proposes that teaching theistic values, moral/emotion, mathematics reasoning, inter-disciplinary insight, critical thinking, and problem solving can be inserted into available curriculums or into training materials. This second way looks more realistic!
By Rohmat Mulyana
Background of Problem. Educational aim is directed to develop complete human personality. In the context of national education, a complete man means the man whose characteristic is faithful and devoted to the One God, and it is accompanied by other personality characteristics. But in fact, the efforts of formal education in developing students' personality have not yet yielded results as expected.
On a macro policy scale, one of the factors of lack of success of education is mainly caused by less attention of educational policies to empower our indigenous potentialities, including religious aspects. Educational policies are often much influenced by a la Western philosophies and theories that those are very humanistic, but they are lack of religious-ethics and tend to anthropocentric landscape. On a micro policy scale, the less success of education in developing complete students' personality has been possibly caused by the weakness of teachers' personality. Teachers, as educational actors, hold a strategic role and take responsible for developing students' personality. The quality of teachers' personality can all at once reflects their students' personal quality.
Based on the issues above, it is interesting to study the teacher personality profile in terms of psychological, social, and spiritual dimensions. The study in the three dimensions is purposed to formulate a total personality of teacher analyzed on its relation to biographical backgrounds and to teaching strategies.
Research Problems. This research is focused on the main problem formulated in the following questions: (1) What are the stronger aspects of teachers' personality? (2) What are the biographical backgrounds, which function as the important correlate of the stronger aspects of teachers' personality? (3) How high do the personality aspects influence on the teachers' ability in developing teaching strategy? (4) What are logical interpretations, which can be formulated from the empirical analysis that contributes further to a model of total personality dynamic and to a model of General Education for teachers?
Research Findings
First, the research findings show that the teachers, psychologically, have the need for order as the highest aspect, they, socially, have healthy interpersonal relations, and they, spiritually, have strong transcendental relation. They, however, are very weak in the aspect of need for autonomy and the critical thinking skill.
Second, the biographical backgrounds, which function as correlate of stronger aspects, are boarding school background, age, gender, and subject matter discipline.
Third, based on the ability of the teachers in developing teaching strategy, it is clear that they teach tend to the content-centered rather than to the student-centered. It means that they teach on a teaching process in which the class is organized upon their authority. Meanwhile, their positions in teaching strategy generally occupy the strategy I (in which the students do not really want to learn but they will respond to the strong direction and control created by teacher). By considering the influence of the personality aspects on the possibility of teaching strategy shifts to the more meaningful one, this research finds seven important aspects that contribute to improvement for teacher professionalism. The seven aspects are namely: need for achievement, the need for autonomy, critical thinking skill, need for order, social relation, transcendental relation, and religious intellectualism.
Fourth, from inter-correlation analysis among all complete personality aspects, it is resulted that the transcendental relation places a central position of all aspects, whereas the level of the relation is still in confirmative level (feel the presence of God on whatever they sense) and in responsive level (believe that God always answer their wants and their complaints).
Discussion. The hierarchical order of the aspects that places transcendental relation on the central and the highest position confirms that theistic values can be taken account as the first and the foremost motivator of acts. It, in turn, emphasizes again the importance of religious moral values in the context of teacher education and training. These values are necessary to educate through a supported setting and to integrate with other scientific values. Likewise, the teacher education and training should be able to improve the weak aspects like need for achievement, need for autonomy, and critical thinking skill. It also should function all the high aspects such as need for order, social relation, transcendental relation, and religious intellectualism.
Based on the thought above, it is important to develop a model of General Education in in-service training. The model is to focus on: (1) creating much Islamic nuance in a training setting; (2) developing moral and emotional education; (3) developing various models of good and correct behaviors; (4) developing mathematical reasoning skills; (5) developing inter-disciplinary insights; (6) improving problem solving abilities; and (7) practicing some democratic approaches in teaching.
Implications. Those research findings imply on philosophical, psychological, and social ideas, and on practical efforts in education. On the first three implications, the findings, in which transcendental relation is placed as the central of all aspects, means that the theistic values must be added into the content of philosophy, psychology, and social theories constructed by humanists. Practically, the finding implication means that the Islamic moral values must be functioned fully into all educational efforts, particularly, the efforts done by general subject matter teachers (IPS, IPA, Bahasa). More specific, the findings imply on response to a part of spiritual quotient (SQ) ideas proposed by Zohar & Marshall (2000) on which they cite "SQ has no necessary connection to religion". In this case, the implication means that the idea is rejected.
Recommendations. The proposed recommendations of this research are concerned with two issues. First, it is necessary to change educational paradigm to a new one in which spiritual values are placed as a center of education or training for teacher/prospective teacher. This recommendation, of course, will involve macro scale policies in education. If the first recommendation is hard to carry out, the second one can be taken for alternative. The second recommendation proposes that teaching theistic values, moral/emotion, mathematics reasoning, inter-disciplinary insight, critical thinking, and problem solving can be inserted into available curriculums or into training materials. This second way looks more realistic!
Case-Based Value Learning for Religious Education
By Rohmat Mulyana
Abstract
A Challenging issue for teaching religion at public schools and madrasas in Indonesia concerns with the way teachers introduce students to relative values. Teaching religion as a subject matter, therefore, should extent the horizon of student’s views to rich different areas of life, ensure the sphere of religious studies as knowledge of reality, and promote deep comprehension toward any social and multicultural issues. Technically, inductive thinking and descriptive value judgment needs to be developed in such a teaching. This paper tries to elaborate some challenging issues for teaching religion in Indonesia and to present a basic construct of case-based value learning that consists of five steps namely: narration of case, identification of value, literacy of norm, affixation of consciousness, and internalization of value. This construct offers a narrative and descriptive approach for meaningful affective development through teaching religion.
1. Introduction
Indonesia is a country where many people live with their uniqueness of race, ethnic, culture, and religion. Various life styles are commonly performed in different regions of the country. People in every region can perform their own language, custom, ritual, artifact, and belief in accordance with their properties. All the diversities are ensured by legal constitution and supported by the so-called national motto “unity in diversity”.
In such diversity, education as a sub-system of culture cannot be developed through single perspective of certain community. One community cannot cope and monopolize others, even though the community constitutes a major race, ethnic, culture or religion. Related to this, the most important issue is not laid down on superiority of one citizen to others, but on how to create a multicultural understanding and mutual respect among them. People should understand the right of citizen by which the differences of way of life take them for granted. And, they also must know that natural distinctiveness is not only because they are socially constructed by human beings but also naturally created by God.
Using this view, the national education in Indonesia developed a basic principle for religious education that touches parts of universal as well as particular values. Universal values promote learners within broad-mindedness principle and mutual understanding among religion believers to enhance peace and harmony among religious communities. Teaching those values are often performed in classroom activity by both religion and civics teachers. Particular values reflect the existence of religious education conducted through a single subject matter of religion in each community of belief like Islamic Education, Christianity Education, and Buddhism Education. The policy of teaching-learning process of religion has been taken for very long time. Since students attend Kindergarten, some basic religious teachings are introduced to them. Hence, they are formally taught religion when they study at elementary school, secondary school, and university.
Should a student of a public school learns religion about 90 minutes a week, he will have studied his religion in classroom formally for at least 864 hours by the time he finishes his senior secondary school. In addition, he also gets some religious teaching and training from several extracurricular activities conducted by school. Meanwhile, madrasah, as Islamic educational institution, introduces Islamic teaching more than public school does. There are five Islamic subjects which are separately taught in madrasah i.e. Islamic Theology, the Koran Interpretation and Prophet Traditions, Islamic Jurisprudence, The History of Islamic Culture, Islamic Ethic, and Arabic Language. Each subject matter is conveyed for 90 minutes classroom meeting in a week. So, it can be said that a student of madrasah learns about Islamic teaching in classroom for 4.320 hours in a year.
What is the effect of this learning duration? There is a tendency that student of madrasah is more knowledgeable on religion than that of public school. As a result, there are more students from madrasah who succeed to follow higher education in Islamic university than those who are from public education. Does it mean that students of madrasah are getting more pious than students of public school? In some case, the differences of their commitment on Islamic conduct are not easy to compare. The piousness seems to be deeper than intellectual dissonance in which its direct connection to behavior needs to be proved through empirical evidence.
It is the case that some people say that madrasah is more successful to guide students to be pious. They have such notion because they see some phenomena of misbehavior that seldom appears among the students of madrasah rather than among the students of public school. It may be correct since they never ask further questions such as: Have the students of madrasah been more broad-minded to look the differences of culture and religion of others? Can they deploy their attitude of tolerance to religious diversity? Have they applied Islamic teaching as a means of problem solving for contextual issue? The answer of these questions, I think, may not be as simple as we think, for example, by explaining the characteristic of knowledgeable learners in their religion. The cohesiveness and homogeneity of madrasah climate as particular religious community can be a potential aspect to influence students for being more exclusive, narrow-minded or normative learning oriented. Here, the role of teachers in creating more conducive classroom interaction and good school climate that makes students elaborate universal values of interfaith understanding and the relative values of social context places as a significant aspect of value transformation.
Unlike madrasahs, public schools promote religion diversity. The public schools students study many different subjects in heterogeneous religion believers that enable them to be more accustomed to keeping in touch with other religion believers. Some Indonesian educationists, therefore, assume that students of public schools can be more open-minded in respecting different religions. Such assumption is virtually easy to understand since the aspect of social interaction involves mutual admiration among different believers. But, we actually still have a crucial question to ask: How good their students do understand Islamic teaching and think it critically and conduct it in reality? This question is important to explain the causes of juvenile delinquency frequently performed by some public school students. For this reason, a deep and contextual comprehension on Islamic teaching needs to be improved and teachers should extent the two hours teaching on religion effectively by deploying more effective teaching techniques.
Regarding these problems, the teaching-learning process of the religion of Islam as a subject matter in schools and madrasahs needs a breakthrough. In a very specific approach, a breakthrough for learning Islam concerns with modification of classroom interaction such as modifying imperative to descriptive, normative to creative, deductive to inductive, and memorization to comprehension. Related to this, classroom interaction should be made as such to enable students to broaden their ability of understanding real life issues and to engage them in making value judgment. It is, of course, a challenging effort for teachers who often use traditional and monotone techniques such as memorization in teaching Islamic doctrine. The future of the religion of Islam classroom ought to promote a novel learning situation and a meaningful interaction rather than a mere memorization of sacred text. Besides, it is likely that the understanding of religion can be attained through pointing some examples of either positive or negative conduct done by people around us. In line with this, Zohar and Marshal (2000) believe that wrestling the problem of good and evil, problems of life and death can be a way to get full possession of spiritual intelligence.
This essay presents a discussion of how to create model of Islamic teaching that ensure students of senior secondary school to understand behavioral dilemma occurred in social life. Using the topic Case-based value learning; a challenging issue in religious education in Indonesia, this essay tries to present three sides of explanation that concern with: First, the need of descriptive teaching on value in Islamic education subject matter. Second, the possible response and the challenge to the idea of case-based value learning in Islamic education. Third, the construct development of case-based value learning with thorough explanation for each stage.
2. The Need for Descriptive Teaching
One of the weaknesses of teaching religion in senior secondary school in Indonesia is the poorness of systematic exploration to find the meaning. Learning religion was isolated by the wall of classroom, restricted by memorization, and jailed by imperative notion of how religion inheritance be taken for granted. Even the latter problem is not always incorrect, the process of learning religion is claimed to be more capable to balance the effort of tenet exploration and the process of translating it into real life situation.
In a metaphor discourse written by Langgulung (1983), the balance of two sides is understood as a need of equilibrium between “under tip of iceberg” and “upper tip of iceberg”. Under tip of iceberg symbolizes the principles of religion that can be understood by reason such as the thought of human nature according to Islamic philosophy view, the Islamic education theories deeply rooted from Koran and Moslem Prophet Tradition, and some fundamental thoughts on Islamic teaching. According to him, the exploration on this area has significantly appeared and never ended in a procession of innovation (tajdid) on Islamic discourse. Meanwhile, the upper tip of iceberg symbolizes the need of how to enhance religious consciousness through practical and systematic efforts that has not yet been optimally empowered by Moslem community. Islamic education, therefore, is important to ensure that the sphere of religious studies is not cut off from knowledge in contemporary life and not compartmentalized from studies of the humanities and the natural and social discipline. For this reason, the balance exploration on both sides becomes an important issue in creating dynamic classroom interaction.
Lack of balance in Islamic education has also stimulated a European thinker. Thomas (2003), in his essay entitled Excellence in Islamic Education appreciates the charity of Islamic education concept as effort to build a total man, yet in other side he also fairly recognizes that the process of learning tends to sheer rote-learning, repetition, and memorization divorced from understanding and meaning. Such phenomena, according to him, need some improvements for future prospective Islamic education. It is necessary that the process of teaching religion at the present time result in an active interaction through critical thinking, collaborative learning, inquiry learning and reflexion of personal experience.
What was written by both experts actually can be thought of as auto-criticism to the stereotype of nowadays Islamic education that tends to practice monotone strategy with minimum students motivation. Obviously, value is a key term that should be explored explicitly in both general and specific meaning through teaching the religion of Islam. Possessing value is important part of learning. In this regard, the process of teaching the religion of Islam must promote the process of identification, judgment, choice, reflexion, and habituation for religious noble values experienced in social life. A functional Islamic teaching always reflects a high concern toward the important of promoting practical religious moral and value. Conversely, the non-functional Islamic teaching will only create a classroom climate as memorization place devoid of meaning of current social issues.
Some experts of moral and value education offered their work in detail framework for teaching value. A number of moral dilemma stories for improving skill on moral judgment (Kohlberg & Gilligan, 1971; Piaget, 1932) and the techniques of value clarification (Kniker 1997; Rokeach, 1973; Simon, 1972) have been developed with thorough explanation for practical usage. The stories and the techniques virtually provide rich inner construct that value of Islamic teachings can be incorporated in it. For creative and broad-minded teachers of Islamic education, the inner construct of moral and value learning will be precious alternative to enrich their classroom interaction and to create a novel insight of learning religion. The process of Islamic teaching by constructing both positive and negative story of a social event and relating it to the stage of one’s religious consciousness is believed to have been effective in making students feel good impact of Islamic teaching on his life style.
This case-based value learning on Islamic education is important to introduce to teachers and students of public and Islamic senior secondary school because of the following reasons:
Firstly, in today classroom interaction, such a value learning has not been yet implemented seriously in Islamic Education. Most of Islamic education books were written in very normative explanation and in the form of definitive paragraph. Teaching the religion of Islam, in turn, has technically no significant difference from teaching other subject matters (physics, biology, chemistry, economics, geography, etc). Most of the teaching processes of the religion of Islam do not give much knowledge and skills necessary for engaging in meaningful and contextual activities in this life. Bagir (2003), in his essay, claimed that religious education in Indonesia failed because of its weaknesses in improving student’s religiousness.
Secondly, the effort of redesigning national education curriculum has led to the importance of attitude and value toward student’s competence. But, in Competence-Based Curriculum (CBC) – a new educational curriculum in Indonesia – the development of affective domain has not been yet described in a clear explanation and in a practical use for Islamic education. Some explanations of affective development are still in general view of competence that can be ambiguity in understanding the aspect and tend to put the work on teaching the religion of Islam in too broad perspective for teachers. Hence, a specific translation into affective development by constructing case-based value learning will supposedly help the teachers.
Thirdly, there is a need for taking students of public and Islamic senior secondary school to deeply comprehend Islamic teaching. Psychology of Development explains that students at the age of 16-18 are within adolescence and late adolescence psychological phase (Cole & Hall, 1970). In this phase, they search for meanings and select various values that can be their act reference in the future. Teaching universal and particular value therefore can help student to comprehend the principles of Islamic teaching and to judge the impact of value on their life.
3. The Challenge for Case-Based Value Learning
Learning the religion of Islam in Indonesian schools and madrasahs by emphasizing the descriptive, creative, and inductive teaching technique is a challenging work. Some people of Moslem community maybe regard it as unpopular idea. Such perception was found when the writer discusses about this perspective with some people. There is somewhat skepticism among them on the effectiveness of the model to make students more pious. This anxiety especially rises among people who believe that understanding the religion of Islam must only promote the principles of virtue. They refer to the opinion of Imam al-Ghazali that remarks “Do teach a child something good or kindness, because through this he will know why it is important” (Sulaiman, 1964). This principle is often understood as very normative context by some people. Finding the truth for them as if should be taken from the only sacred truth through textual understanding without comparing it with the real life issues. Such perception, of course, has a particular starting point on how to enable make a child to be more pious. Perennialism and textual standpoint come to be the most significant in their way of thinking.
Subsequently, there are people who believe that deep comprehension of the meaning of a religion can be developed by encouraging contextual analysis. For them, knowing good action can be transformed by knowing paired cases of badness. The understanding of the importance of peace, for instance, can be enhanced by explaining the negative effect of war to civil people. Likewise, understanding and realizing some other principles of Islamic tenet are possible to advance by critical analysis toward contradictory actions. The viewpoint lays down its characteristic on the basis of constructivism and the importance of contextual and meaningful analysis. Descriptive value learning actually has large sphere for its development in this viewpoint. Unfortunately, people who advocate this view have not reached any significant improvement for future Islamic education.
Another challenge may emerge from the substance of Islamic teaching. Islam teaches three bedrock dimensions of religious doctrine namely: creed, law, and ethic of Islam (Qurtubi, 1985). The crucial challenge will come up when we apply the framework of contemporary value learning for the substance of creed. Compared with two other dimensions, it is unlikely to be easy to explain the dynamic of creed dimension in clear description. Discussing religion in the context of creed will touch esoteric domain in which the quality of belief in God, angles, holy books, messengers, day of Judgment and predestination will be appropriately known by individual himself. We may, sometimes be able to predict it from behavioral phenomena, but the abstract attribute of creed makes us unsure in which belief those phenomena refer to. Case-based learning value is not for debating the essence of creed. It is a kind of effort to create learning situation in which students are able to deepen what they actually believe in.
Unlike the teaching of creed, the teaching of value within law and ethic of Islam allows teachers and students of senior secondary schools to explore various explicit social issues. For these dimensions, a teacher of Islamic education may lead his students to comprehend deeply the problematic application of law and the phenomena of misbehavior character. For instance, the problem of dualistic law application (positive law and Islamic law) in social contract may become a means of value analysis on Islamic law dimension. Equally, the phenomena of racial conflict, financial corruption, juridical injustice, untidy city, natural disaster, and so on provide rich information for analyzing contradictory values to ethic of Islam. In another word, to conduct case-based value learning in term of law and ethic is easier than to carry out it in term of creed.
4. Case-Based Value Learning as a Model
Learning value in classroom of Islamic education can be deployed by using a certain model of teaching. Like a model for designing a dress, a model for case-based value learning provides a plan or pattern. Referring to Joyce & Weil (1985), a plan or pattern of teaching model can be used to design face-to-face teaching in classrooms or tutorial settings and to shape instructional materials. Each model is basically constructed by theoretical assumption and consists of some phases for student’s competence improvement.
a. Basic Assumptions
When a theory of value education is applied in developing Islamic education in senior secondary school, there are two basic assumptions that can be placed. First, the theory of value education rooted from the tradition of scientific rationalism has the same purpose as the mission of Islamic education in the context of empowerment of whole human potencies. The statements of Koran that ask human being to think (ta’qilun and ya’qilun) and to think of God (yatafakkarun and tatafakkarun) reflect the need for improving the function of perceiving, feeling, and thinking of doing good conduct. These human potencies are also developed through value education. Second, the framework of value education that consists of various schemes of thinking and dynamic wave of feeling can be replicated for empowering the process of Islamic education in classroom activity. Therefore, the development of Islamic education needs to incorporate religious substance into the framework according to the objectives of teaching-learning in Islamic education.
b. Basic Construct of Case-Based Value Learning
Case-based value learning consists of five steps constructed in the model of N-I-L-A-I. Each letter of word “nilai” (value) represents each step of learning value through Islamic education. Consecutively, each step of this model includes narration of case (narasi kasus), identification of value (identifikasi nilai), literacy of norm (literasi norma), affixation of consciousness (afiksasi kesadaran), and internalization of value (internalisasi nilai). The construct of this model is started from story-telling and ended in value-personalizing (Mulyana, 2005). More detail explanation of each step is presented below.
• Narration of Case
Narration of case is the first step of this model. It is practically conducted through promoting a number of casual stories in real life. Many occurrences can be promoted in this step. A teacher of Islamic education can begin his or her classroom meeting by telling one or more relevant stories with the competence of students or learning topic. The story must be chosen selectively based on the need and the complexity of value dilemma contained in it. By taking 2 of 34 listed competences (Depdiknas, 2003) for students of senior secondary school, the story can be created as the description on the right side column of following matrix.
Student’s Competence Example of Story
Devotion in religious services Story title: Does it mean devotion?
(The story tells a tragic experience of a priest who was invited by someone to convey Islamic lecture in a far distance village. The priest got low payment for his speech; meanwhile his old car driven to the village was broken on the way back home. He had no money for fixing it. Then, he said, “Does it mean devotion?”
Tolerance in social life Story title: “They can. Why can’t we?”
(The story tells a tragic experience of a pious teacher who lives in a religious conflict area. His house was burnt when the conflict occurred even though he himself had never involved in the conflict. One day he attended a seminar of inter-faith harmony and saw the share of brotherhood among leaders of different religions. At the time he said to other participant: “Look at them. They can, why can’t we?”
• Identification of Value
After introducing dilemmatic story to students, a teacher can let them to identify various values contained in the groove of story. In this step, a teacher can ask students a number of problematic questions taken from the story to encourage them to expand their moral value of cognition, affection, and action. The questions should be gradually asked from a simple to a complicated one. The technique of constructing more complicated questions adopts the thinking scheme of value clarification technique (VCT) within discussion on moral value dilemma. Here are the examples.
Student’s Competence Example of Identified Values
Devotion in religious services Story title: Does it mean devotion?
Questions:
What was the most important value performed by
the priest?
By grumbling at the payment, did the
priest have genuine devotion? Why?
Is one’s devotion in religious service directly
connected to the gain of money? Why?
Supposed the man who invited the priest was your
father, how did you feel?
Tolerance in social life Story title:
“They can. Why can’t we”
Questions
Do you think that the pious teacher has
high tolerance toward religious diversity?
Should the teacher’s house be burnt in the
tragedy? Why?
Did the tolerance attitude of the teacher toward
religious diversity mean that he was a narrow-
minded man? Why?
Supposed the pious teacher who got his house burnt
was your father, how did you feel?
• Literacy of Norms
In this phase, a teacher lets students learn much about Islamic principles derived from Koran and Prophet Traditions. One or more verses of Koran or proofs of Prophet Tradition are introduced to students. Even memorizing verses or proofs is important for this step, a teacher is preferable to try to lead students into deep comprehension of noble Islamic values. Regarding the two kinds of student’s competence as listed previously, the relevant verses and proofs with the competence are provided below.
Student’s Competence Example of Islamic Norm Reference
Devotion in religious services Surah al-An’am (verse: 162):
“Say, ‘Verily, my prayer, my sacrifice, my living, and my dying are for Allah, the lord of the ‘Alamin (mankind, Jinn and all that exists)”
The Prophet said:
You know well for your business in the earth.
Tolerance in social life Surah al-Baqarah (verse: 256)
“There is no compulsion in religion. Verily the Right Path has become distinct from the wrong path. Whoever disbelieves in taghut and believes in Allah, then he has grasped the trustworthiest handhold that will never break. And Allah is All-Hearer, All-Knower.”
• Affixation of Consciousness
The term “affixation” has similar meaning to “enrichment”. This step, therefore, has function to enrich student’s consciousness in order to comprehend value on the topic of learning. Many other casual social occurrences may be given in this step. The process of affixation is developed on the principle of integration between the issues and the student’s competence. In a simple example, the following matrix provides some alternative cases taken from social occurrences.
Student’s Competence Example of Casual Topic for Affixation of Consciousness
Devotion in religious services Devotion in doing prayer (compare, which one has
high quality of devotion, doing prayer at mosque
or at house?)
Devotion in fasting (why can we restrain the
feeling of hunger and thirst?)
Devotion in sharing alms (compare, who has high
quality of devotion, people who give alms by
official institution or those who do it by his hand
directly?)
Devotion in helping others (compare, who has
high quality of devotion, people who help his
friend or those who help unknown man?)
Tolerance in social life
Tolerance attitude toward different religion (Can we
attend a birthday party of a non-Moslem friend?)
Tolerance attitude toward different Islamic views
(Find the socio-religious issues among Moslems
that reflect intolerance toward the difference of
Islamic views and compare it to find which
member of Islamic organization is more fanatic.
Why?
• Internalization of Value
Broadly speaking, internalization of value virtually involves all processes of learning value in this model. Ideally, the internalization is conducted in action. But as a model emerges from moral cognition, this case-based value learning puts its assumption on a belief that the skill of thinking on high order level can brings about correct and good actions. Based on the assumption, the internalization of value in this model is restricted to simpler one. It is a kind of justification to moral of cognition, moral affection, and predicted action. This simplification is aimed at helping the teachers of Islamic education conveying his subject matter in classroom. Further explanation can be clarified through the following examples.
Student’s Competence Example of Value Internalization
Devotion in religious services Moral value in cognition
Do you agree upon this opinion? A Moslem who
conducted pilgrimage to Mecca more than once has
low social concern.
What do you think of a Moslem who conducted
pilgrimage to Mecca spending unlawful money?
Moral value in affection
(Questions of this part are developed according to
the case story presented in the phase of case
narration)
How do you feel if the priest is your father?
Can you share your unprejudiced feeling to both
the priest and the man?
Moral value in predicted action
Can you ensure yourself to get genuine devotion in
your prayer?
Shall you help whoever need your help?
Tolerance in social life
Moral value in cognition
Why should we have tolerance attitude toward
interfaith diversity?
Which one can support the spirit of tolerance,
inclusiveness or exclusiveness? Why?
Moral value in affection
(Questions of this part are developed according to
the case story presented in the phase of case
narration)
Do you hate the man who burnt the house
of the pious teacher?
How do you feel if the pious teacher is you,
yourself?
Moral value in predicted action
Can you share your tolerance attitude when you
live in heterogeneous beliefs?
Can you share your money for helping community
of other religion who experience a natural disaster?
The model of case-based value learning is important to develop in senior secondary school in which most of students are able to expand their thinking ability to higher order thinking level. This model, actually is being tried out in two senior secondary schools in Bandung, West Java. In the future, such descriptive model can be more applicable for teachers of Islamic education who need practical guidelines.
Therefore, it is strongly suggested that implementing a courage and doing a hard work be our “future must” to make learning religion in senior secondary schools more critical, contextual, and meaningful.
5. Bibliography
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Cole, L. & Hall, I. (1970). Psychology of Adolescence. New York: Holt Rinehart and
Winston, Inc.
Depdiknas. (2003) Pedoman Umum Pengembangan Kompetensi Dasar PAI. Jakarta:
Dikdasmen.
Joyce B. & Weil M. (1986). Models of Teaching. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc.
Kirschenbaum, H. (1992). A Comprehensive Model for Value Education and Moral
Education. Internet: http://www.hi-ho.ne.jp/taku77/refer/kirsch. htm.
Kniker, C.R. (1977). You and Values Education. Ohio: Charles E. Merrill Publishing
Company.
Kohlberg, L & Gilligan, C. (1971). TheAdolescent as a Philosopher: The Discovery of the Self in a Post-Conventional World. Dedalus.
Langgulung, H. (1989). Asas-Asas Pendidikan Islam. Jakarta: Pustaka al-Husna.
Mulyana, R. (2004). Mengartikulasikan Pendidikan Nilai. Bandung: Alfabeta
Mulyana, R. et al. (2003). Pengelolaan Pendidikan Agama Islam di SMA. Jakarta:
Puslitbang Pendidikan Agama dan Keagamaan.
Qurtubi, M. A. (1985). Al-Jami’ul Ahkamil Qur’ani. Juz I. Libanon: Darul Ihya.
Piaget, J. (1932). The Moral Judgement of the Child. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
Rokeach, M. (1973). The Nature of Human Values. New York: The Free Press.
Ryan, M. & Malone, P. (1996). Exploring the Religion Classroom. Australia: Social
Science Press.
Simon, S.B. (1972). Value Clarification. New York: Hart Publishing Company.
Sulaiman, F.H. (1964). Bahtsu fil madzahibut Tarbawiyyi ‘Indal Ghazali. Mesir:
Maktabah Nadla.
Thomas, H. (2002). Excellence in Islamic Education; Key Issues for Present Time.
http:// www.thebook.org/tep-articles/exellence.shtml.
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Office for Asia and the Pacific.
Zohar, D. & Marshall, I. (2000). Spiritual Intelligence: The Ultimate Intelligence.
London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Bandung, May 20, 2005
Abstract
A Challenging issue for teaching religion at public schools and madrasas in Indonesia concerns with the way teachers introduce students to relative values. Teaching religion as a subject matter, therefore, should extent the horizon of student’s views to rich different areas of life, ensure the sphere of religious studies as knowledge of reality, and promote deep comprehension toward any social and multicultural issues. Technically, inductive thinking and descriptive value judgment needs to be developed in such a teaching. This paper tries to elaborate some challenging issues for teaching religion in Indonesia and to present a basic construct of case-based value learning that consists of five steps namely: narration of case, identification of value, literacy of norm, affixation of consciousness, and internalization of value. This construct offers a narrative and descriptive approach for meaningful affective development through teaching religion.
1. Introduction
Indonesia is a country where many people live with their uniqueness of race, ethnic, culture, and religion. Various life styles are commonly performed in different regions of the country. People in every region can perform their own language, custom, ritual, artifact, and belief in accordance with their properties. All the diversities are ensured by legal constitution and supported by the so-called national motto “unity in diversity”.
In such diversity, education as a sub-system of culture cannot be developed through single perspective of certain community. One community cannot cope and monopolize others, even though the community constitutes a major race, ethnic, culture or religion. Related to this, the most important issue is not laid down on superiority of one citizen to others, but on how to create a multicultural understanding and mutual respect among them. People should understand the right of citizen by which the differences of way of life take them for granted. And, they also must know that natural distinctiveness is not only because they are socially constructed by human beings but also naturally created by God.
Using this view, the national education in Indonesia developed a basic principle for religious education that touches parts of universal as well as particular values. Universal values promote learners within broad-mindedness principle and mutual understanding among religion believers to enhance peace and harmony among religious communities. Teaching those values are often performed in classroom activity by both religion and civics teachers. Particular values reflect the existence of religious education conducted through a single subject matter of religion in each community of belief like Islamic Education, Christianity Education, and Buddhism Education. The policy of teaching-learning process of religion has been taken for very long time. Since students attend Kindergarten, some basic religious teachings are introduced to them. Hence, they are formally taught religion when they study at elementary school, secondary school, and university.
Should a student of a public school learns religion about 90 minutes a week, he will have studied his religion in classroom formally for at least 864 hours by the time he finishes his senior secondary school. In addition, he also gets some religious teaching and training from several extracurricular activities conducted by school. Meanwhile, madrasah, as Islamic educational institution, introduces Islamic teaching more than public school does. There are five Islamic subjects which are separately taught in madrasah i.e. Islamic Theology, the Koran Interpretation and Prophet Traditions, Islamic Jurisprudence, The History of Islamic Culture, Islamic Ethic, and Arabic Language. Each subject matter is conveyed for 90 minutes classroom meeting in a week. So, it can be said that a student of madrasah learns about Islamic teaching in classroom for 4.320 hours in a year.
What is the effect of this learning duration? There is a tendency that student of madrasah is more knowledgeable on religion than that of public school. As a result, there are more students from madrasah who succeed to follow higher education in Islamic university than those who are from public education. Does it mean that students of madrasah are getting more pious than students of public school? In some case, the differences of their commitment on Islamic conduct are not easy to compare. The piousness seems to be deeper than intellectual dissonance in which its direct connection to behavior needs to be proved through empirical evidence.
It is the case that some people say that madrasah is more successful to guide students to be pious. They have such notion because they see some phenomena of misbehavior that seldom appears among the students of madrasah rather than among the students of public school. It may be correct since they never ask further questions such as: Have the students of madrasah been more broad-minded to look the differences of culture and religion of others? Can they deploy their attitude of tolerance to religious diversity? Have they applied Islamic teaching as a means of problem solving for contextual issue? The answer of these questions, I think, may not be as simple as we think, for example, by explaining the characteristic of knowledgeable learners in their religion. The cohesiveness and homogeneity of madrasah climate as particular religious community can be a potential aspect to influence students for being more exclusive, narrow-minded or normative learning oriented. Here, the role of teachers in creating more conducive classroom interaction and good school climate that makes students elaborate universal values of interfaith understanding and the relative values of social context places as a significant aspect of value transformation.
Unlike madrasahs, public schools promote religion diversity. The public schools students study many different subjects in heterogeneous religion believers that enable them to be more accustomed to keeping in touch with other religion believers. Some Indonesian educationists, therefore, assume that students of public schools can be more open-minded in respecting different religions. Such assumption is virtually easy to understand since the aspect of social interaction involves mutual admiration among different believers. But, we actually still have a crucial question to ask: How good their students do understand Islamic teaching and think it critically and conduct it in reality? This question is important to explain the causes of juvenile delinquency frequently performed by some public school students. For this reason, a deep and contextual comprehension on Islamic teaching needs to be improved and teachers should extent the two hours teaching on religion effectively by deploying more effective teaching techniques.
Regarding these problems, the teaching-learning process of the religion of Islam as a subject matter in schools and madrasahs needs a breakthrough. In a very specific approach, a breakthrough for learning Islam concerns with modification of classroom interaction such as modifying imperative to descriptive, normative to creative, deductive to inductive, and memorization to comprehension. Related to this, classroom interaction should be made as such to enable students to broaden their ability of understanding real life issues and to engage them in making value judgment. It is, of course, a challenging effort for teachers who often use traditional and monotone techniques such as memorization in teaching Islamic doctrine. The future of the religion of Islam classroom ought to promote a novel learning situation and a meaningful interaction rather than a mere memorization of sacred text. Besides, it is likely that the understanding of religion can be attained through pointing some examples of either positive or negative conduct done by people around us. In line with this, Zohar and Marshal (2000) believe that wrestling the problem of good and evil, problems of life and death can be a way to get full possession of spiritual intelligence.
This essay presents a discussion of how to create model of Islamic teaching that ensure students of senior secondary school to understand behavioral dilemma occurred in social life. Using the topic Case-based value learning; a challenging issue in religious education in Indonesia, this essay tries to present three sides of explanation that concern with: First, the need of descriptive teaching on value in Islamic education subject matter. Second, the possible response and the challenge to the idea of case-based value learning in Islamic education. Third, the construct development of case-based value learning with thorough explanation for each stage.
2. The Need for Descriptive Teaching
One of the weaknesses of teaching religion in senior secondary school in Indonesia is the poorness of systematic exploration to find the meaning. Learning religion was isolated by the wall of classroom, restricted by memorization, and jailed by imperative notion of how religion inheritance be taken for granted. Even the latter problem is not always incorrect, the process of learning religion is claimed to be more capable to balance the effort of tenet exploration and the process of translating it into real life situation.
In a metaphor discourse written by Langgulung (1983), the balance of two sides is understood as a need of equilibrium between “under tip of iceberg” and “upper tip of iceberg”. Under tip of iceberg symbolizes the principles of religion that can be understood by reason such as the thought of human nature according to Islamic philosophy view, the Islamic education theories deeply rooted from Koran and Moslem Prophet Tradition, and some fundamental thoughts on Islamic teaching. According to him, the exploration on this area has significantly appeared and never ended in a procession of innovation (tajdid) on Islamic discourse. Meanwhile, the upper tip of iceberg symbolizes the need of how to enhance religious consciousness through practical and systematic efforts that has not yet been optimally empowered by Moslem community. Islamic education, therefore, is important to ensure that the sphere of religious studies is not cut off from knowledge in contemporary life and not compartmentalized from studies of the humanities and the natural and social discipline. For this reason, the balance exploration on both sides becomes an important issue in creating dynamic classroom interaction.
Lack of balance in Islamic education has also stimulated a European thinker. Thomas (2003), in his essay entitled Excellence in Islamic Education appreciates the charity of Islamic education concept as effort to build a total man, yet in other side he also fairly recognizes that the process of learning tends to sheer rote-learning, repetition, and memorization divorced from understanding and meaning. Such phenomena, according to him, need some improvements for future prospective Islamic education. It is necessary that the process of teaching religion at the present time result in an active interaction through critical thinking, collaborative learning, inquiry learning and reflexion of personal experience.
What was written by both experts actually can be thought of as auto-criticism to the stereotype of nowadays Islamic education that tends to practice monotone strategy with minimum students motivation. Obviously, value is a key term that should be explored explicitly in both general and specific meaning through teaching the religion of Islam. Possessing value is important part of learning. In this regard, the process of teaching the religion of Islam must promote the process of identification, judgment, choice, reflexion, and habituation for religious noble values experienced in social life. A functional Islamic teaching always reflects a high concern toward the important of promoting practical religious moral and value. Conversely, the non-functional Islamic teaching will only create a classroom climate as memorization place devoid of meaning of current social issues.
Some experts of moral and value education offered their work in detail framework for teaching value. A number of moral dilemma stories for improving skill on moral judgment (Kohlberg & Gilligan, 1971; Piaget, 1932) and the techniques of value clarification (Kniker 1997; Rokeach, 1973; Simon, 1972) have been developed with thorough explanation for practical usage. The stories and the techniques virtually provide rich inner construct that value of Islamic teachings can be incorporated in it. For creative and broad-minded teachers of Islamic education, the inner construct of moral and value learning will be precious alternative to enrich their classroom interaction and to create a novel insight of learning religion. The process of Islamic teaching by constructing both positive and negative story of a social event and relating it to the stage of one’s religious consciousness is believed to have been effective in making students feel good impact of Islamic teaching on his life style.
This case-based value learning on Islamic education is important to introduce to teachers and students of public and Islamic senior secondary school because of the following reasons:
Firstly, in today classroom interaction, such a value learning has not been yet implemented seriously in Islamic Education. Most of Islamic education books were written in very normative explanation and in the form of definitive paragraph. Teaching the religion of Islam, in turn, has technically no significant difference from teaching other subject matters (physics, biology, chemistry, economics, geography, etc). Most of the teaching processes of the religion of Islam do not give much knowledge and skills necessary for engaging in meaningful and contextual activities in this life. Bagir (2003), in his essay, claimed that religious education in Indonesia failed because of its weaknesses in improving student’s religiousness.
Secondly, the effort of redesigning national education curriculum has led to the importance of attitude and value toward student’s competence. But, in Competence-Based Curriculum (CBC) – a new educational curriculum in Indonesia – the development of affective domain has not been yet described in a clear explanation and in a practical use for Islamic education. Some explanations of affective development are still in general view of competence that can be ambiguity in understanding the aspect and tend to put the work on teaching the religion of Islam in too broad perspective for teachers. Hence, a specific translation into affective development by constructing case-based value learning will supposedly help the teachers.
Thirdly, there is a need for taking students of public and Islamic senior secondary school to deeply comprehend Islamic teaching. Psychology of Development explains that students at the age of 16-18 are within adolescence and late adolescence psychological phase (Cole & Hall, 1970). In this phase, they search for meanings and select various values that can be their act reference in the future. Teaching universal and particular value therefore can help student to comprehend the principles of Islamic teaching and to judge the impact of value on their life.
3. The Challenge for Case-Based Value Learning
Learning the religion of Islam in Indonesian schools and madrasahs by emphasizing the descriptive, creative, and inductive teaching technique is a challenging work. Some people of Moslem community maybe regard it as unpopular idea. Such perception was found when the writer discusses about this perspective with some people. There is somewhat skepticism among them on the effectiveness of the model to make students more pious. This anxiety especially rises among people who believe that understanding the religion of Islam must only promote the principles of virtue. They refer to the opinion of Imam al-Ghazali that remarks “Do teach a child something good or kindness, because through this he will know why it is important” (Sulaiman, 1964). This principle is often understood as very normative context by some people. Finding the truth for them as if should be taken from the only sacred truth through textual understanding without comparing it with the real life issues. Such perception, of course, has a particular starting point on how to enable make a child to be more pious. Perennialism and textual standpoint come to be the most significant in their way of thinking.
Subsequently, there are people who believe that deep comprehension of the meaning of a religion can be developed by encouraging contextual analysis. For them, knowing good action can be transformed by knowing paired cases of badness. The understanding of the importance of peace, for instance, can be enhanced by explaining the negative effect of war to civil people. Likewise, understanding and realizing some other principles of Islamic tenet are possible to advance by critical analysis toward contradictory actions. The viewpoint lays down its characteristic on the basis of constructivism and the importance of contextual and meaningful analysis. Descriptive value learning actually has large sphere for its development in this viewpoint. Unfortunately, people who advocate this view have not reached any significant improvement for future Islamic education.
Another challenge may emerge from the substance of Islamic teaching. Islam teaches three bedrock dimensions of religious doctrine namely: creed, law, and ethic of Islam (Qurtubi, 1985). The crucial challenge will come up when we apply the framework of contemporary value learning for the substance of creed. Compared with two other dimensions, it is unlikely to be easy to explain the dynamic of creed dimension in clear description. Discussing religion in the context of creed will touch esoteric domain in which the quality of belief in God, angles, holy books, messengers, day of Judgment and predestination will be appropriately known by individual himself. We may, sometimes be able to predict it from behavioral phenomena, but the abstract attribute of creed makes us unsure in which belief those phenomena refer to. Case-based learning value is not for debating the essence of creed. It is a kind of effort to create learning situation in which students are able to deepen what they actually believe in.
Unlike the teaching of creed, the teaching of value within law and ethic of Islam allows teachers and students of senior secondary schools to explore various explicit social issues. For these dimensions, a teacher of Islamic education may lead his students to comprehend deeply the problematic application of law and the phenomena of misbehavior character. For instance, the problem of dualistic law application (positive law and Islamic law) in social contract may become a means of value analysis on Islamic law dimension. Equally, the phenomena of racial conflict, financial corruption, juridical injustice, untidy city, natural disaster, and so on provide rich information for analyzing contradictory values to ethic of Islam. In another word, to conduct case-based value learning in term of law and ethic is easier than to carry out it in term of creed.
4. Case-Based Value Learning as a Model
Learning value in classroom of Islamic education can be deployed by using a certain model of teaching. Like a model for designing a dress, a model for case-based value learning provides a plan or pattern. Referring to Joyce & Weil (1985), a plan or pattern of teaching model can be used to design face-to-face teaching in classrooms or tutorial settings and to shape instructional materials. Each model is basically constructed by theoretical assumption and consists of some phases for student’s competence improvement.
a. Basic Assumptions
When a theory of value education is applied in developing Islamic education in senior secondary school, there are two basic assumptions that can be placed. First, the theory of value education rooted from the tradition of scientific rationalism has the same purpose as the mission of Islamic education in the context of empowerment of whole human potencies. The statements of Koran that ask human being to think (ta’qilun and ya’qilun) and to think of God (yatafakkarun and tatafakkarun) reflect the need for improving the function of perceiving, feeling, and thinking of doing good conduct. These human potencies are also developed through value education. Second, the framework of value education that consists of various schemes of thinking and dynamic wave of feeling can be replicated for empowering the process of Islamic education in classroom activity. Therefore, the development of Islamic education needs to incorporate religious substance into the framework according to the objectives of teaching-learning in Islamic education.
b. Basic Construct of Case-Based Value Learning
Case-based value learning consists of five steps constructed in the model of N-I-L-A-I. Each letter of word “nilai” (value) represents each step of learning value through Islamic education. Consecutively, each step of this model includes narration of case (narasi kasus), identification of value (identifikasi nilai), literacy of norm (literasi norma), affixation of consciousness (afiksasi kesadaran), and internalization of value (internalisasi nilai). The construct of this model is started from story-telling and ended in value-personalizing (Mulyana, 2005). More detail explanation of each step is presented below.
• Narration of Case
Narration of case is the first step of this model. It is practically conducted through promoting a number of casual stories in real life. Many occurrences can be promoted in this step. A teacher of Islamic education can begin his or her classroom meeting by telling one or more relevant stories with the competence of students or learning topic. The story must be chosen selectively based on the need and the complexity of value dilemma contained in it. By taking 2 of 34 listed competences (Depdiknas, 2003) for students of senior secondary school, the story can be created as the description on the right side column of following matrix.
Student’s Competence Example of Story
Devotion in religious services Story title: Does it mean devotion?
(The story tells a tragic experience of a priest who was invited by someone to convey Islamic lecture in a far distance village. The priest got low payment for his speech; meanwhile his old car driven to the village was broken on the way back home. He had no money for fixing it. Then, he said, “Does it mean devotion?”
Tolerance in social life Story title: “They can. Why can’t we?”
(The story tells a tragic experience of a pious teacher who lives in a religious conflict area. His house was burnt when the conflict occurred even though he himself had never involved in the conflict. One day he attended a seminar of inter-faith harmony and saw the share of brotherhood among leaders of different religions. At the time he said to other participant: “Look at them. They can, why can’t we?”
• Identification of Value
After introducing dilemmatic story to students, a teacher can let them to identify various values contained in the groove of story. In this step, a teacher can ask students a number of problematic questions taken from the story to encourage them to expand their moral value of cognition, affection, and action. The questions should be gradually asked from a simple to a complicated one. The technique of constructing more complicated questions adopts the thinking scheme of value clarification technique (VCT) within discussion on moral value dilemma. Here are the examples.
Student’s Competence Example of Identified Values
Devotion in religious services Story title: Does it mean devotion?
Questions:
What was the most important value performed by
the priest?
By grumbling at the payment, did the
priest have genuine devotion? Why?
Is one’s devotion in religious service directly
connected to the gain of money? Why?
Supposed the man who invited the priest was your
father, how did you feel?
Tolerance in social life Story title:
“They can. Why can’t we”
Questions
Do you think that the pious teacher has
high tolerance toward religious diversity?
Should the teacher’s house be burnt in the
tragedy? Why?
Did the tolerance attitude of the teacher toward
religious diversity mean that he was a narrow-
minded man? Why?
Supposed the pious teacher who got his house burnt
was your father, how did you feel?
• Literacy of Norms
In this phase, a teacher lets students learn much about Islamic principles derived from Koran and Prophet Traditions. One or more verses of Koran or proofs of Prophet Tradition are introduced to students. Even memorizing verses or proofs is important for this step, a teacher is preferable to try to lead students into deep comprehension of noble Islamic values. Regarding the two kinds of student’s competence as listed previously, the relevant verses and proofs with the competence are provided below.
Student’s Competence Example of Islamic Norm Reference
Devotion in religious services Surah al-An’am (verse: 162):
“Say, ‘Verily, my prayer, my sacrifice, my living, and my dying are for Allah, the lord of the ‘Alamin (mankind, Jinn and all that exists)”
The Prophet said:
You know well for your business in the earth.
Tolerance in social life Surah al-Baqarah (verse: 256)
“There is no compulsion in religion. Verily the Right Path has become distinct from the wrong path. Whoever disbelieves in taghut and believes in Allah, then he has grasped the trustworthiest handhold that will never break. And Allah is All-Hearer, All-Knower.”
• Affixation of Consciousness
The term “affixation” has similar meaning to “enrichment”. This step, therefore, has function to enrich student’s consciousness in order to comprehend value on the topic of learning. Many other casual social occurrences may be given in this step. The process of affixation is developed on the principle of integration between the issues and the student’s competence. In a simple example, the following matrix provides some alternative cases taken from social occurrences.
Student’s Competence Example of Casual Topic for Affixation of Consciousness
Devotion in religious services Devotion in doing prayer (compare, which one has
high quality of devotion, doing prayer at mosque
or at house?)
Devotion in fasting (why can we restrain the
feeling of hunger and thirst?)
Devotion in sharing alms (compare, who has high
quality of devotion, people who give alms by
official institution or those who do it by his hand
directly?)
Devotion in helping others (compare, who has
high quality of devotion, people who help his
friend or those who help unknown man?)
Tolerance in social life
Tolerance attitude toward different religion (Can we
attend a birthday party of a non-Moslem friend?)
Tolerance attitude toward different Islamic views
(Find the socio-religious issues among Moslems
that reflect intolerance toward the difference of
Islamic views and compare it to find which
member of Islamic organization is more fanatic.
Why?
• Internalization of Value
Broadly speaking, internalization of value virtually involves all processes of learning value in this model. Ideally, the internalization is conducted in action. But as a model emerges from moral cognition, this case-based value learning puts its assumption on a belief that the skill of thinking on high order level can brings about correct and good actions. Based on the assumption, the internalization of value in this model is restricted to simpler one. It is a kind of justification to moral of cognition, moral affection, and predicted action. This simplification is aimed at helping the teachers of Islamic education conveying his subject matter in classroom. Further explanation can be clarified through the following examples.
Student’s Competence Example of Value Internalization
Devotion in religious services Moral value in cognition
Do you agree upon this opinion? A Moslem who
conducted pilgrimage to Mecca more than once has
low social concern.
What do you think of a Moslem who conducted
pilgrimage to Mecca spending unlawful money?
Moral value in affection
(Questions of this part are developed according to
the case story presented in the phase of case
narration)
How do you feel if the priest is your father?
Can you share your unprejudiced feeling to both
the priest and the man?
Moral value in predicted action
Can you ensure yourself to get genuine devotion in
your prayer?
Shall you help whoever need your help?
Tolerance in social life
Moral value in cognition
Why should we have tolerance attitude toward
interfaith diversity?
Which one can support the spirit of tolerance,
inclusiveness or exclusiveness? Why?
Moral value in affection
(Questions of this part are developed according to
the case story presented in the phase of case
narration)
Do you hate the man who burnt the house
of the pious teacher?
How do you feel if the pious teacher is you,
yourself?
Moral value in predicted action
Can you share your tolerance attitude when you
live in heterogeneous beliefs?
Can you share your money for helping community
of other religion who experience a natural disaster?
The model of case-based value learning is important to develop in senior secondary school in which most of students are able to expand their thinking ability to higher order thinking level. This model, actually is being tried out in two senior secondary schools in Bandung, West Java. In the future, such descriptive model can be more applicable for teachers of Islamic education who need practical guidelines.
Therefore, it is strongly suggested that implementing a courage and doing a hard work be our “future must” to make learning religion in senior secondary schools more critical, contextual, and meaningful.
5. Bibliography
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http://www.becal.net/toolkit/npdp/npdp2.htm.
Bagir, H. (2003). Gagalnya Pendidikan Agama, Jakarta: Harian Kompas tanggal 03
03-2003.
Cole, L. & Hall, I. (1970). Psychology of Adolescence. New York: Holt Rinehart and
Winston, Inc.
Depdiknas. (2003) Pedoman Umum Pengembangan Kompetensi Dasar PAI. Jakarta:
Dikdasmen.
Joyce B. & Weil M. (1986). Models of Teaching. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc.
Kirschenbaum, H. (1992). A Comprehensive Model for Value Education and Moral
Education. Internet: http://www.hi-ho.ne.jp/taku77/refer/kirsch. htm.
Kniker, C.R. (1977). You and Values Education. Ohio: Charles E. Merrill Publishing
Company.
Kohlberg, L & Gilligan, C. (1971). TheAdolescent as a Philosopher: The Discovery of the Self in a Post-Conventional World. Dedalus.
Langgulung, H. (1989). Asas-Asas Pendidikan Islam. Jakarta: Pustaka al-Husna.
Mulyana, R. (2004). Mengartikulasikan Pendidikan Nilai. Bandung: Alfabeta
Mulyana, R. et al. (2003). Pengelolaan Pendidikan Agama Islam di SMA. Jakarta:
Puslitbang Pendidikan Agama dan Keagamaan.
Qurtubi, M. A. (1985). Al-Jami’ul Ahkamil Qur’ani. Juz I. Libanon: Darul Ihya.
Piaget, J. (1932). The Moral Judgement of the Child. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
Rokeach, M. (1973). The Nature of Human Values. New York: The Free Press.
Ryan, M. & Malone, P. (1996). Exploring the Religion Classroom. Australia: Social
Science Press.
Simon, S.B. (1972). Value Clarification. New York: Hart Publishing Company.
Sulaiman, F.H. (1964). Bahtsu fil madzahibut Tarbawiyyi ‘Indal Ghazali. Mesir:
Maktabah Nadla.
Thomas, H. (2002). Excellence in Islamic Education; Key Issues for Present Time.
http:// www.thebook.org/tep-articles/exellence.shtml.
Unesco. (1992). Education for Affective Development. Bangkok: Principal Regional
Office for Asia and the Pacific.
Zohar, D. & Marshall, I. (2000). Spiritual Intelligence: The Ultimate Intelligence.
London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Bandung, May 20, 2005
Spirit (Ruh) and Nature (Fitrah)
NY: Oct, 12 2006
By Rohmat Mulyana
All prays belong to Allah and to Him alone. We have no power without the power given by Him and we have no nobility except the nobility before Allah Swt. Alhamdulillah, today we reach the fifteenth days of Ramadhan, as the special month in the Islamic calendar. For which in this month we are the guests of Allah Swt. And in this month we are to improve ourselves, to improve our spirituality, to increase our religious belief (taqwa), and to find ourselves as human being in order to achieve the nearness of Allah Swt.
As often said by many speakers or lecturers, shaum at least has two benefits for the people who do it seriously. First, what we called as dzahir or physical benefits. These benefits are manifested outwardly. They are very visible and sensible such as losing weight, giving up smoking, temporary stop eating and drinking, etc. As said in al-Hadits shumu tasihu (Do fasting in order you get health) The Second benefits are concerned with, batin or mental benefits. These benefits are something inward, intangible, and inner and they can not be measured by others. This only himself or herself who can feel how the inner spiritual journey presents in the time or after fasting. Allah Swt says in Surah Al-Baqarah ayah 183: “Ya ayyuha ladzina aamanu kutiba ‘alaikumu syiyamu kamaa kutiba ‘ala ladzina min qoblikum la’alakum tattaquun.” (O you who believe! fasting is prescribed to you as it was prescribed to those before you, that you may become al-Mutaqiin).
Both benefits actually relate with the nature of we all as human being. We are the creature of Allah who always live in the two dimensions; physically and mentally, dzahir wal baathin, body and mind or soul, that they are related each other, effected each other, and they work in very harmonious system, in very beautiful coordination, and in inseparable function. None of human being can create such the creature of God. It is very perfect as Allah says in al-Qur’an Laqod kholaqnal insaana fii ahsani taqwim (We created human as a perfect creation).
This creation physically, no doubt that our body consists of flesh, bone, blood, muscle, skin, and neurons. All those body components generate day by day, from a small to a large number, a simple to a complex system, like what we have ever experienced when we were at a childhood, teenage, adolescence, and adult. Look our body now; is it the same as what we have in 15 years ago? Of course no. There are a lot of changes in our body. In 20 years ago we may still fresh, full power, and so on and so forth, but after the age of 50s, 60s, or 70s we really become less of physical power.
Normally this physical growth is always accompanied by mental development. When our body cell proceeds the physical growth, our mental function like feeling, thinking, imagination and some other mental entities including our spiritual life simultaneously develop from phase to phase. Let’s compare what we are able to think when we were 10 years old and what we have now. Of course there are some different in the developments in our mental entities. I am sure what Pak Jaja thinks now is different from what he thought in ten years ago.
That is why, an interesting question concern with: What makes our physical and mental entities become growing, developing, and working together? This, I think, is not a simple question and it cannot be answered from scientific outlook only, but we have to address our answer on spiritual dimension. The answer is al-Ruh (The Spirit) of our life. Al-Ruh is the first, the foremost and the last human life. This is a mystery human existence that we all as human cannot explain it in detail. We know that al-Ruh exist in our body, but we don’t know much about it. As Allah says in Qur’an Surah Al-Isra ayah 85: Wa yasalunaka ‘anirruuh quli ruh nim amri rabbi (and they ask you (O Muhammad) concerning the Ruh (The Spirit). Say: “The Ruh is one of the things, the knowledge of which is only with my Lord).
Because of the existence of Ruh, we can live, we can breathe, we can see, we can feel and we can think. Because of Ruh, our body can make flexible movement, like handling on things, walking, exercising and so on and so forth. Because of Ruh we can feel hungry of divine, feel longing to Allah Swt, or even because we will dead after the Ruh separated from our body. This is the last of our life in the world, when many Muslim who hear our name will spontaneously say: Innalillaahi wa inna ilaihi raajiun (truly we are from Allah and will be back again to Him).
For this reason, let’s see again the beginning of our life in which Allah Swt testify us to recognize that Allah is our Lord. Allah says Qur’an Al-Araaf: 172: “And (remember) when your Lord brought forth from the children of Adam, from their loins, their seeds and Allah made them testify as to themselves (saying): “Am I not your Lord?” They said: “Yes! We testify.” Lest you should say on the Day of Resurrection; Verily, we have been unaware of this.”
This is what we have to put as the first thing in our life. The recognition of Allah as our Lord (tauhid rububiyah) was proclaimed by every human being who was born in the world. Our God is Allah Swt and no gods except Allah. The only Him to whom we surrender and to whom we set our purpose of conduct. Allah says in Qur’an Surah Ar-Rum ayah 30: Faakim wajhaka liddiini haniifan fithrotallaahu, allatii fatoronnaasa ‘alaiha la tabdiila likholqillah. (So set your purpose for religion as a man upright by nature (fitrah) - the nature (fitrah) framed by God, in which He created mankind. There is no altering (the Laws of) the creation of God.)
Some mufasir (Qur’an interpreter) explains that this fitrah is integrated with human’s spirit (al-Ruh) so that all mankind acknowledge Him as the Lord who has power over all things. This the beginning of human life in the phase of pre-natal conception when we are still in our mother’s pregnancy. That is way, our obligatory to actualize our fitrah by recognizing the Oneness of Allah and to cling it as our life principle is very very important in our spiritual being. No one can make his or her inner spiritual being and inner spiritual journey without trying to purify himself or herself by believing in the Oneness of Allah. So, we have to put it as the basis of whatever we do, including our fasting (shaum) in this Ramadhan.
Ali Syariati says that the most crucial problem of human life today is not a nuclear explosion, but the change of fitrah. I am sure that what he said is more meaningful than the many popular phrase or statement made by greatest politician in the world. We know that nuclear weapon is one of dangerous war technologies that can terribly kill many people as victims. But whoever and whatever a mount of people was killed by a nuclear weapon is not important for Allah, except for them who are remain in their fitrah. Another interpretation for the statement is that no nuclear explosion if all humankind are being consistent and committed with their fitrah. Fitrah by means of the Oneness of Allah, the inclination of al-dienul Islam, the feeling of honesty, or the self-purification.***
By Rohmat Mulyana
All prays belong to Allah and to Him alone. We have no power without the power given by Him and we have no nobility except the nobility before Allah Swt. Alhamdulillah, today we reach the fifteenth days of Ramadhan, as the special month in the Islamic calendar. For which in this month we are the guests of Allah Swt. And in this month we are to improve ourselves, to improve our spirituality, to increase our religious belief (taqwa), and to find ourselves as human being in order to achieve the nearness of Allah Swt.
As often said by many speakers or lecturers, shaum at least has two benefits for the people who do it seriously. First, what we called as dzahir or physical benefits. These benefits are manifested outwardly. They are very visible and sensible such as losing weight, giving up smoking, temporary stop eating and drinking, etc. As said in al-Hadits shumu tasihu (Do fasting in order you get health) The Second benefits are concerned with, batin or mental benefits. These benefits are something inward, intangible, and inner and they can not be measured by others. This only himself or herself who can feel how the inner spiritual journey presents in the time or after fasting. Allah Swt says in Surah Al-Baqarah ayah 183: “Ya ayyuha ladzina aamanu kutiba ‘alaikumu syiyamu kamaa kutiba ‘ala ladzina min qoblikum la’alakum tattaquun.” (O you who believe! fasting is prescribed to you as it was prescribed to those before you, that you may become al-Mutaqiin).
Both benefits actually relate with the nature of we all as human being. We are the creature of Allah who always live in the two dimensions; physically and mentally, dzahir wal baathin, body and mind or soul, that they are related each other, effected each other, and they work in very harmonious system, in very beautiful coordination, and in inseparable function. None of human being can create such the creature of God. It is very perfect as Allah says in al-Qur’an Laqod kholaqnal insaana fii ahsani taqwim (We created human as a perfect creation).
This creation physically, no doubt that our body consists of flesh, bone, blood, muscle, skin, and neurons. All those body components generate day by day, from a small to a large number, a simple to a complex system, like what we have ever experienced when we were at a childhood, teenage, adolescence, and adult. Look our body now; is it the same as what we have in 15 years ago? Of course no. There are a lot of changes in our body. In 20 years ago we may still fresh, full power, and so on and so forth, but after the age of 50s, 60s, or 70s we really become less of physical power.
Normally this physical growth is always accompanied by mental development. When our body cell proceeds the physical growth, our mental function like feeling, thinking, imagination and some other mental entities including our spiritual life simultaneously develop from phase to phase. Let’s compare what we are able to think when we were 10 years old and what we have now. Of course there are some different in the developments in our mental entities. I am sure what Pak Jaja thinks now is different from what he thought in ten years ago.
That is why, an interesting question concern with: What makes our physical and mental entities become growing, developing, and working together? This, I think, is not a simple question and it cannot be answered from scientific outlook only, but we have to address our answer on spiritual dimension. The answer is al-Ruh (The Spirit) of our life. Al-Ruh is the first, the foremost and the last human life. This is a mystery human existence that we all as human cannot explain it in detail. We know that al-Ruh exist in our body, but we don’t know much about it. As Allah says in Qur’an Surah Al-Isra ayah 85: Wa yasalunaka ‘anirruuh quli ruh nim amri rabbi (and they ask you (O Muhammad) concerning the Ruh (The Spirit). Say: “The Ruh is one of the things, the knowledge of which is only with my Lord).
Because of the existence of Ruh, we can live, we can breathe, we can see, we can feel and we can think. Because of Ruh, our body can make flexible movement, like handling on things, walking, exercising and so on and so forth. Because of Ruh we can feel hungry of divine, feel longing to Allah Swt, or even because we will dead after the Ruh separated from our body. This is the last of our life in the world, when many Muslim who hear our name will spontaneously say: Innalillaahi wa inna ilaihi raajiun (truly we are from Allah and will be back again to Him).
For this reason, let’s see again the beginning of our life in which Allah Swt testify us to recognize that Allah is our Lord. Allah says Qur’an Al-Araaf: 172: “And (remember) when your Lord brought forth from the children of Adam, from their loins, their seeds and Allah made them testify as to themselves (saying): “Am I not your Lord?” They said: “Yes! We testify.” Lest you should say on the Day of Resurrection; Verily, we have been unaware of this.”
This is what we have to put as the first thing in our life. The recognition of Allah as our Lord (tauhid rububiyah) was proclaimed by every human being who was born in the world. Our God is Allah Swt and no gods except Allah. The only Him to whom we surrender and to whom we set our purpose of conduct. Allah says in Qur’an Surah Ar-Rum ayah 30: Faakim wajhaka liddiini haniifan fithrotallaahu, allatii fatoronnaasa ‘alaiha la tabdiila likholqillah. (So set your purpose for religion as a man upright by nature (fitrah) - the nature (fitrah) framed by God, in which He created mankind. There is no altering (the Laws of) the creation of God.)
Some mufasir (Qur’an interpreter) explains that this fitrah is integrated with human’s spirit (al-Ruh) so that all mankind acknowledge Him as the Lord who has power over all things. This the beginning of human life in the phase of pre-natal conception when we are still in our mother’s pregnancy. That is way, our obligatory to actualize our fitrah by recognizing the Oneness of Allah and to cling it as our life principle is very very important in our spiritual being. No one can make his or her inner spiritual being and inner spiritual journey without trying to purify himself or herself by believing in the Oneness of Allah. So, we have to put it as the basis of whatever we do, including our fasting (shaum) in this Ramadhan.
Ali Syariati says that the most crucial problem of human life today is not a nuclear explosion, but the change of fitrah. I am sure that what he said is more meaningful than the many popular phrase or statement made by greatest politician in the world. We know that nuclear weapon is one of dangerous war technologies that can terribly kill many people as victims. But whoever and whatever a mount of people was killed by a nuclear weapon is not important for Allah, except for them who are remain in their fitrah. Another interpretation for the statement is that no nuclear explosion if all humankind are being consistent and committed with their fitrah. Fitrah by means of the Oneness of Allah, the inclination of al-dienul Islam, the feeling of honesty, or the self-purification.***
ESQ Life Spot
Emotional and spiritual Quotient (ESQ) is one of progressive toughts introduced by Ari Ginanjar Agustian, a contemporary Muslim free-thinker. He combined two big theories of transpersonal psychology of spiritual quotient written by Danah Zohar & Ian Mashal (2000) and emotional quotient by Daniel Goleman (1998). In his book entitled ESQ with Five and Six Pillar of Islam, he described brilliantly of how the sphere of human consciousness hung toward ultimate values. The end of human consciousness, according to Agustian, means zero mind process. Hence in his second book entitled ESQ Power, he also emphasizes the important of religious spirituality for sustaining all efforts of humankind.
Recently, Agustian expanded his idea on larger works of creative spiritual training that involved many people around Indonesia. Through it he made the second wave of spiritual enlightenment after the large efforts conducted by Aa Gymnatsiar at Darut Tauhid.
There are at least 3 million people of Indonesia have ever attended the ESQ Leadership Training. Although they have to pay for the training, almost every people who participate said that they feel happy because their religious consciousness beyonds the highest and deepest level of spirituality. It is hard to them for not to drop their tears in the time of three days training involvement. "God as if presented before us," said my friend who participated in training six months ago.
Similar to what have ever occurred to the participants of ESQ Leadership Training, I also have ever felt such spiritual hollow and beauty when I participated in the training one year ago. In the time of training, I found myself as the real "I" and "me" and tried to express what actually emerged in my heart in a series of poems that was written spontaneously. (see the poem at Puisi ESQ 1 and 2)***
Recently, Agustian expanded his idea on larger works of creative spiritual training that involved many people around Indonesia. Through it he made the second wave of spiritual enlightenment after the large efforts conducted by Aa Gymnatsiar at Darut Tauhid.
There are at least 3 million people of Indonesia have ever attended the ESQ Leadership Training. Although they have to pay for the training, almost every people who participate said that they feel happy because their religious consciousness beyonds the highest and deepest level of spirituality. It is hard to them for not to drop their tears in the time of three days training involvement. "God as if presented before us," said my friend who participated in training six months ago.
Similar to what have ever occurred to the participants of ESQ Leadership Training, I also have ever felt such spiritual hollow and beauty when I participated in the training one year ago. In the time of training, I found myself as the real "I" and "me" and tried to express what actually emerged in my heart in a series of poems that was written spontaneously. (see the poem at Puisi ESQ 1 and 2)***
Pengembangan Skema Berpikir Anak
Kecenderungan saat ini, pendidikan sangat diwarnai oleh proses pengajaran sebagai transfer of knowledge, padahal masalah fundamental pendidikan lebih rumit proses itu. Guru sering disibukan oleh keharusan menyusun Satuan Pelajaran (Satpel) setiap ia akan mengajar. Mereka seolah diwajibkan untuk mengajar seperti apa yang telah ditulis dalam seperangkat laporan dalam bentuk Satpel kepada atasannya (kepala sekolah). Ketika mereka tidak memenuhinya, seringkali mereka dinilai atasannya sebagai tidak taat administrasi. Tetapi bagi sebagian guru yang kurang disiplin dalam menyusun Satpel ini, mungkin mereka memiliki berberapa alasan yang rasional. Mereka mungkin beralasan bahwa Satpel yang disusun terkadang tidak sepenuhnya digunakan dalam pengajaran di kelas. Dari tahun ke tahuan pembuatan satpel masih sama saja dengan Satpel sebelumnya. Mereka juga mungkin beranggapan bahwa penyusunan Satpel merupakan pekerjaan yang cukup melelahkan, tanpa dibarengi dengan insentif yang memuaskan.
Keadaan seperti itu sebenarnya merupakan dilema pendidikan di sekolah yang mengehendaki adanya disiplin secara administratif dengan disiplin akademik. Namun tampaknya tekanan disiplin lebih banyak berorientasi pada kebutuhan pemenuhan kewajiban administratif dari pada kewajiban akademik. Salah satu sinyalemen yang mendukung dugaan tersebut, kepala sekolah atau pengawas yang memiliki kewajiban untuk mengawasi kegiatan pengajaran di kelas jarang sekali muncul di kelas. Sekali menyerahkan tugas penyusunan Satpel seolah selesai tugas mereka dalam membimbing guru. Dengan demikian tidak ada suatu upaya pengawasaan secara berkala terhadap profesionalisme guru dalam mengajar di kelas.Hal tersebut pada gilirannya telah membuat pengajaran di kelas menjadi kurang terkontrol.
Selain itu, kemampuan guru pada umumnya dalam mengembangkan strategi belajar yang bermakna dinilai masih rendah. Tidak banyak guru yang mengetahui bagaimana cara pembelajaran yang demokratis dan lebih memusatkan pengajaran para pengembangan potensi anak. Pengajaran berputar pada kebiasaan lama yang lebih mengutamakan sistem ceramah dengan bobot otoritas guru yang demikian tinggi. Guru mengajar di kelas dengan menyampaikan sejumlah materi pengajaran seperti halnya yang mereka pahami. Ketika mereka menguasai suatu materi secara matang, maka seolah semua pengetahuannya harus ditransfer kepada anak didiknya dengan harapan mereka menjadi orang yang memiliki pengetahuan yang sama dengan dirinya. Cara ini persis kurang dapat mengembangkan sistem berpikir akan didik secara kreatif. Bahkan cara tersebut dapat dikatakan sebagai "pemaksaan" terhadap pikiran anak yang belum cukup dewasa untuk berpikir seperti berpikirnya guru yang sudah pintar. Daya serap pikiran anak memang masih segar dan tidak mudah lupa, tetapi alangkah bijaksananya apabila mereka diberi kesempatan untuk berpikir sesuai dengan kemampuan dan minat mereka dalam batasan-batasan topik yang sesuai dengan kurikulum yang telah ditetapkan. Maka, dalam cara ini materi pelajaran dapat dikatakan sebagai pemancing untuk mengajak siswa berpikir secara kreatif. Adapun sampai sejauhmana mereka mampu berpikir tentang suatu pengetahuan dalam materi pelajaran menjadi kebutuhan siswa berikutnya. Di sini penguasaan materi tidak lebih penting dari pada pencapaian kedewasaan berpikir anak.
Mengapa muncul pemikiran seperti itu? Untuk menjelaskan pemikiran tadi suatu analisis tentang hakikat pendidikan perlu dipahami. Untuk apa pendidikan itu? dan apa sesungguhnya yang hendak dikembangkan dalam diri anak didik. Salah satu tujuan pendidikan yang paling populer adalah untuk mendewasakan anak didik. Kata mendewasakan berarti membekali kemampuan anak agar mereka mampu berpikir ke arah yang lebih matang dan bijaksana. Istilah pendewasaan harus dipahami dalam konteks perkembangan berpikir anak. Pendewasaan bukan berarti membuat anak kecil menjadi seperti orang dewasa dalam hal berpikirnya, tetapi membuat mereka mampu mengakomodasikan segala potensi berpikirnya sesuai dengan tahapan perkembangan yang tengah dialaminya. Seorang anak umur 6 tahun dapat dikatakan dewasa berpikirnya apabila ia mampu melakukan pertimbangan terhadap tindakan yang sangat sederhana seperti mengatakan "tidak" terhadap sesuatu yang memang salah. Perkataan "tidak" sesungguhnya merupakan akhir pernyataan dari suatu inferensi berpikir dalam kerangka tertentu yang dialami anak.
Jadi, andaikata pendidikan diartikan sebagai suatu proses pendewasaan berpikir, maka hal tersebut harus tercermin dalam upaya pendidikan yang memberikan keleluasaan kepada anak didik untuk menata pikirannya sesuai dengan kemampuan dirinya. Di sini yang paling penting adalah proses berpikir bukan hasil berpikir. Di sini pula tercakup prinsip learning how to learn, sebagai salah satu pilar penting pendidikan dari UNESCO, bukan learning how to evaluate. Nilai, prestasi dalam bentuk angka, harus dipahami sebagai sebuah proses evaluasi yang berada dalam proses pendidikan keseluruhan. Evaluasi seperti ulangan UAN, bukan akhir dari proses pendidikan atau pengajaran. Suatu ungkapan yang dikatakan oleh Edward J. Power (1985) bahwa education is never ending menunjukan bahwa evaluasi yang dilakukan selama ini hanyalah merupakan salah satu riak dari segala proses pendidikan yang anggap penting untuk menilai keberhasilan sementara dalam belajar.
Kembali pada persoalan mengapa proses berpikir itu lebih penting dari pada hasil berpikir. kemampuan siswa untuk berperilaku mandiri yang didasari pertimbangan-pertimbangan kognitif mereka diyakini sebagai akibat dari kemampuan mereka melakukan inferensi berpikir atas persoalan yang dihadapi. Dengan demikian pertimbangan kognitif mereka melibatkan pengetahuan fungsional yang secara keseluruhan merupakan rangkaian yang menyatu. Itulah yang disebut sebagai kerangka berpikir (frame of thinking) dari anak didik. Kerangka berpikir ini mungkin terjadi dalam bentuk-bentuk yang sederhana atau dalam bentuk yang sangat kompleks, bergantung pada fase perkembangan berpikir seseorang. Penulis menyakini bahwa kerangka berpikir ini akan lebih fungsional apabila ditemukan secara kreatif melalui pengembangan diri siswa sendiri, dari pada diarahkan. Artinya, biarkan mereka berpikir lebih leluasa tentang suatu masalah yang dikemukakan oleh guru atau tentang suatu topik pelajaran sampai mereka mampu mengembangkan pemikirannya secara lateral. Peran guru adalah mengarahkan membimbimbing apabila mereka kurang berkembangan atau malah melenceng terlalu jauh dari suatu topik yang ditargetkan. Inilah sebenarnya yang disebut sebagai non-directive learning yang diaplikasikan melalui proses yang demokratis dengan mengurangi dominansi peran guru.
Persoalan pertama yang muncul adalah mungkinkan hal tersebut sepenuhnya dalam kontek pendidikan kita? Jawabannya adalah mungkin! Hal tersebut mungkin dilakukan karena saat ini ada suatu kebijakan yang mendukung dengan digulirkannya Otda yang memberikan keleluasaan kepada sekolah untuk mengembangkan manejemen yang berbasis sekolah (School Based Manajement). Mungkin suatu saat evaluasi pendidikan seperti EBTA yang saat ini sering dirasakan sebagai sesuatu yang sangat mengikat pola tindakan guru dalam mengajar segera dihapuskan. Evaluasi lebih terfokus pada evaluasi yang dibuat guru. Dengan demikian ada kewenangan guru dalam menentukan standar penilaian yang lebih akomodatif dalam membedakan kemampuan siswa. Penilaian terhadap kemampuan berpikir siswa secara kreatif di kelas dapat dimasukan ke dalam salah satu komponen penilaian. Artinya, aktivitas siswa dalam berbicara dan mutu pembicaraannya dapat diberikan bobot skor yang lebih pasti untuk bahan penilaian prestasi mereka.
Yang jelas, dengan digulirkannya Otda dibarengi dengan disentralisasi pendidikan yang lebih memberikan kewenangan penuh kepada sekolah dan pemerintahan daerah setingkat Kota/Kabupaten untuk mengelola pendidikannya. Dengan demikian norma acuan penilaian yang berbeda sangat mungkin untuk digunakan berdasarkan kebutuhan tiap sekolah. Yang kita harapkan adalah dengan adanya disentralisasi pendidikan dalam rangka Otda tidak justru melahirkan raja-raja kecil di daerah yang ingin menguasai sistem pendidikan ke arah pemusatan pendidikan dengan dalih disentralisasi.
Persoalan berikutnya adalah pada jenjang mana pengembangan berpikir secara kreatif dapat dilakukan? menurut hemat penulis, untuk tahap pertama implementasi pemikiran sudah dapat dilakukan dalam jenjang pendidikan menengah. Pada jenjang ini siswa sudah mulai memiliki kedewasaan berpikir. Mereka adalah siswa yang tengah mengalami proses perkembangan psikologis remaja (adolescence) dan remaja akhir (late adolescence). Mereka memerlukan nilai-nilai kehidupan dan kemampuan kematangan berpikir untuk kebutuhan perkembangan di masa mendatang. Mereka juga sudah mampu berpikir analitis bahkan sintesis. Dapat dibayangkan apabila mereka masih diceramahi dengan sejumlah pengetahuan tanpa adanya pelibatan mereka dalam berpikir secara kreatif, maka mereka tidak akan memiliki kemandirian dalam berpikir. Setelah keluar dari sekolah mereka akan seperti "seekor ayam yang kehilangan induknya." Mereka akan kurang mampu menentukan sikap, merespon situasi dan memecahkan masalah yang tengah dihadapinya, lantaran ilmu-ilmu yang diperolehnya hanyalah potongan-potongan pengetahuan yang belum terintegrasi dan kurang fungsional. Sedangkan apabila mereka diajarkan suatu kerangka berpikir yang mengandung sistem informasi yang jelas dan gamblang runtutannya, benar-benar dipahami anak, besar kemungkinan mereka akan mudah mengingatnya dan menggunakannya dalam suatu kesempatan.
Dengan demikian, suatu kerangka atau skema berpikir melibatkan sejumlah pengetahuan yang saling terkait satu sama lainnya. Anak dapat berpikir mulai dari mana saja untuk menuju pada pamahaman yang lebih lengkap. Dalam konteks pemahaman berpikir seperti itulah sesungguhnya terdapat pertimbangan nilai-nilai logis yang akan bertahan lama dalam diri anak. Konsep ini sesuai apa yang dikatakan Chaplin (1972) dan Warren (2000) yang menyatakan bahwa belajar adalah "sebuah perolehan pengalaman yang bertahan lama dalam diri anak". Anak boleh lupa tetapi dari sekian banyak pengetahuan yang terlupakan harus ada yang teringgal dan melekat lama serta fungsional untuk kehidupannya. Kemungkinan-kemungkinan pengembangan kerangka berpikir demikian sangat mungkin dilakukan pada anak usia sekolah menengah (SMP atau SMU) yang mana secara psikologis mereka sudah memiliki kemampuan berpikir hipotetis dan abstrak secara simultan (serentak).
Persoalan lainnya adalah apa yang harus disiapkan oleh guru dalam mengembangkan kerangka berpikir anak. Untuk membentuk suatu kerangka berpikir yang lebih terarah dan fungsional, tentu memerlukan keahlian yang sama pada diri guru. Artinya bagaimana bisa seorang guru mendidik siswanya berpikir kreatif kalau dia sendiri tidak mampu mengembangkan pemikirannya secara kreatif. Karena itu, sebelum mereka mengembangkan kemampuan berpikir siswa, guru harus menata dahulu cara berpikir mereka. Mereka perlu menguasai bahan ajar secara mendalam, meski hal tersebut bukan merupakan satu-satunya syarat yang harus dipenuhi. Sebenarnya kekurangmampuan guru dalam menguasai bahan ajar, dapat diatasi oleh kemampuan mereka dalam menggunakan model-model pembelajaran siswa aktif.
Kegagalan yang terjadi pada saat Cara Belajar Siswa Aktif (CBSA) diterapkan, delapan tahun yang lalu, sebenarnya tidak saja bertumpu pada kelemahan siswa, tetapi mungkin adanya kekurangpahaman guru terhadap teknik-teknik yang dapat dilakukan dalam pengembangan metode tersebut di lapangan. Hal tersebut juga sebenarnya diakibatkan oleh kurangnya informasi yang disampaikan kepada guru. Ketika CBSA diluncurkan sebenarnya pola pelatihan terhadap guru tidak berbeda dengan sebelumnya, yaitu dengan memberikan ceramah tentang metode bukan mengaplikasikannya dalam model-model pelatihan (training) yang lebih menyentuh tataran teknis. Penulis melihat bahwa untuk menerapkan cara tersebut dibutuhkan waktu yang cukup lama agar guru mengetahui secara lengkap mengenai berbagai teknik yang dapat digunakan.
Seperti yang dilakukan oleh negara-negara Barat yang sangat humanis, pendidikan dan pelatihan guru lebih diarahkan pada pembentukan keterampilan (skill) pengajaran yang lebih praktis dan operasional. Di Amerika Serikat, misalnya, teori pendidikan hanya memperoleh porsi 1/3 dari keseluruhan kurikulum pelatihan guru. Sementara 2/3 lainnya digunakan untuk pematangan keterampilan guru secara praktis dalam menggunakan model-model pengajaran yang demokratis. Cara ini diwajibkan kepada semua calon guru, tanpa terkecuali. Yang dengan cara tersebut guru mengajar dibekali kemampuan teknik-teknik mengajar yang berorientasi pada pengembangan kemampuan siswa secara individual.
Kenyataan yang terjadi di Tanah Air, bahwa pendidikan dan pelatihan guru lebih banyak berorientasi pada pengembangan nalar tentang pendidikan dan pengajaran. Dari kurikulum yang ada di LPTK sekitar 80% muatannya bersifat teoteris, membicarakan "tentang" pendidikan dan pengajaran dalam konteks perluasan wawasan berpikir. Sementara itu pembekalan keterampilan mengajar hanya mendapat porsi yang sangat sedikit. Hal tersebut sudah tentu berdampak pada style of teaching yang guru kembangkan di kelas. Mereka akan mengajar tidak jauh berbeda dengan pengalaman pendidikan yang telah diperolehnya ketika kuliah.
Dengan demikian pembentukan kerangka berpikir anak yang lebih fungsional dan bermakna membutuhkan para pendidik yang handal; memiliki wawasan psikologi pengajaran yang cukup, serta memiliki keterampilan mengajar yang demokratis. Lebih jauh lagi, untuk mengubah pola pengajaran berpikir ke arah yang lebih fungsional dan bermakna, membutuhkan perubahan paradigma kurikulum pendidikan dan pelatihan guru yang lebih menjamin akuntabilitas guru dalam mengajar di kelas. Apabila kebutuhan-kebutuhan tersebut terpenuhi, maka ironi kekurangmatangan berpikir siswa di tengah proses pendidikan yang cenderung kognitivis, tidak lagi terjadi.*** (Rohmat Mulyana, 19 Desember 1998)
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