Devotional Study

The Jakarta Post   |  Tue, 04/29/2008 3:48 PM  |  Center Piece

The pesantren is an Indonesian institution that has provided religious teaching anda solid educational grounding over the centuries. In a rapidly changing age, Bhimanto Suwastoyo examines how Muslim boarding schools are adapting and surviving.

For many, the word pesantren conjures up a world of Muslim traditionalists filled with sarong-clad, skullcap-wearing students, taught by venerable scholars poring over old Arabic books with pages yellowed by time.

For others, especially since 9/11 and several terrorist attacks in this country, it evokes stereotyped images based on a limited understanding of this great Indonesian Islamic tradition.

But not many realize that these institutions -- Islamic boarding schools that have roots far back in the history of this archipelago -- have long been centers of learning and knowledge for the general population, an egalitarian setting that opens the path for them to move up the social ladder.

The schools have disseminated Islam to Indonesians for centuries while at the same time acting as guardians of cultural values, norms and morality. They have been widely recognized as having tutored nationalists and religious leaders who helped free the nation from its colonial shackles and now help run the country.

But modernity and ever-encroaching globalization mean this age-old institution must face the challenge of survival. Despite their potential as accessible learning centers and agents of social transformation, there is the impression that the role of the pesantren is neglected, that the government pays more attention to the political side of the schools.

Although the schools remain for many, especially in rural and isolated areas, the only educational avenue accessible to them, formal schooling is gaining ground, with the lure of better job opportunities and more prestige.

"If we want to be honest, this country owes a lot to the pesantren. But this debt has never been repaid and the worst thing is that officials do not seem to have the sense that they owe pesantren a debt of gratitude," says Masduki Baidlhowi, a legislator and an observer of education issues.

"What needs to be done is to bring pesantren into the mainstream of national education," says Azyumardi Azra, chancellor of the Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University in Jakarta.

He said that although under law the Education Ministry is the sole state organ responsible for providing education for the people, the pesantren depend on another ministry, that for religious affairs.

"And that means much less money. In order to be able to compete in terms of quality with other education institutions such as public schools, they should receive the same level of financial assistance too. There should be no discrimination," Azra says.

The Education Ministry is one of the ministries receiving top budget allocations, and although it has yet to reach the long targeted 20 percent provision, its allocations are considerably higher than those for the Religious Affairs Ministry.

Muslim boarding schools are basically self-sustaining, with funding dependent on contributions from the community.

Ahmad Zayadi, who heads the Religious Affairs Ministry's education equality and obligatory schooling subdirectorate, said since 2003 the government had effectively worked to include pesantren in the national education system.

One of the keys to improving the quality of education is through budget allotment policies, Zayadi said.
"A low budget for education often translates into low education quality," he says.

The government, he added, is now working to provide various financial aid schemes for pesantren, and the Religious Affairs Ministry is planning cooperation with other relevant ministries, including for national education, to expand the sources for funding.

Baidhlowi believes that most important is that efforts must be concentrated "[on] eradicating discrimination that exists against those forms of education that are not held by the Education Ministry."
Discrimination against pesantren, he said, is found in funding, in standards, in quality and even in their recognition. Baidhlowi said that all these factors should be standardized in the education sector.

But the great variety of education provided by the religious schools also makes standardization and recognition difficult.

Their education is based on Islamic traditions and values as perceived and interpreted by their founders and as set down by the paramount leader in each pesantren, the Kyai – a respected Muslim scholar who is also a teacher and a patron of the local community -- whose words are law there.

Students of pesantren, known as "santri" are immersed in Islam around the clock and usually spend their entire education in the schools.

It is this very freedom in setting up their own curriculum combined with their limited financial resources that make pesantren difficult to standardize, and consequently, to bring into the country's formal national education system.

"Pesantren are recognized as a component of the national education system, but they provide non-formal education," says Mansyur Ramly, who heads the Education Ministry's research and development agency.
According to official figures there were 16,000 Islamic religious schools across the nation in 2006, not an insignificant number compared to the 181,432 government-recognized schools providing educations for children between 7 and 18 years of age.

"Their accessibility is their greatest asset," Ramly says, referring to the fact that pesantren can often be found in isolated areas not reached by formal education facilities, and their admission fees are usually commensurate with the economic power of the students' parents. Many in regional areas pay their fees with rice, poultry and agricultural products, or even manpower.

But if these institutions reject entirely modernization and remain nostalgic for their glorious past, they will become increasingly marginalized and irrelevant to Indonesia's mainstream, Azra warns.

"There are many types of pesantren with varying degrees of educational qualities, but in general it is true that the majority of these institutions cannot meet national education standards," Azra says.

Modernity has already prompted the rise of two different types of pesantren: Salafi, or the form where only Islam is taught in the traditional manner, and Khalifi, the more modern version where Islam remains the mainstay but other more secular subjects are also taught.

Ramly said that pesantren, especially Salafi, should gradually move to include secular subjects into their curriculum if they want to survive as educational institutions.

"Studying religion nowadays also needs to be backed up by appropriate skills in order to be able for its santri to face the real world after they finish their studies," he says.

Sugeng Riyadi, the secretary of the Assalam Modern Islamic Pondok Pesantren in Surakarta, Central Java, says the trick is how to adjust the application of the principles and tenets of Islam to the needs of the times.

"The future of pesantren depends on how far they can formulate themselves into institutions that can respond to the demands of time without losing their identity.”

Students in Assalam, for examples, have to use two other languages, Arabic and English, in addition to Indonesian.

"Arabic is to enable them to understand religious teachings better and the English is to allow them to better face the outside world after they graduate."

Besides its regular high school level pesantren classes, Assalam also runs a vocational high school. Students are trained in computer networking technology and graphic design.

Riyadi said that at the primary school level, emphasis is on religious teachings, at the junior high school level equal importance is accorded to religious teachings and general sciences as taught in public schools. In senior high school, studies lean heavier toward the general sciences.

Zayadi said could earn the equivalent of formal school levels by taking the appropriate "catch-up packages" of examination programs held by the Education Ministry which are for elementary, junior and senior high school levels.

In 2006, 10,412 santri took the primary school level examination, 21,535 took the junior high school level and 29,101 took the senior high school level, according to data from the Education Ministry.

"This an educational institution that existed long before any other form of modern schooling. This is an institution that has weathered centuries and will continue to exist long into the future," Riyadi says.

"In this country, people do not only want their children to be smart, but also to have high moral values and be good believers.”

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