Muslim’s Education and its Challenges in Indonesia

Bismillah

Indonesia is a country with the largest muslim population in the world. It is said
that 88% Indonesian people is muslim. But we know that today is still so many
people can not reach the ideal education. Less of infrastructure, teacher and access
information is the big problems that caused lag of education quality. And then, the
gap about the education in town and in the village is very obvious. So that is the
challenges facing by Indonesian muslim people today.

Education should be a right of every citizen, it is mandated by the constitution.

“Each citizen has the right of education”, 1945 Constitution article 31 paragraph
1. So this is the state's responsibility to meet the educational needs of each person.

Talking about the challenges of education for Muslims, there are some important
points we need to know :

1. Secularisation of education. The main thing that challenge by a Muslim

in Indonesia to achieve education is the secularisation of education or as
usual we understand be a separation between wordly life and religious life.
Yet this is not true at all, religion should not be separated from worldly
life, because religion is a basic rule of life in the world to survive until the
afterlife. Then we can see the pesantren there, very far from the
government's attention, as if only public schools are a priority allocation of
education budget.

2. The high cost of education. Starting from year to year our education cost
more and more expensive, as if people who do not have enough money do
not deserve a quality education. Yes, the reality in Indonesia today, only
rich people who can compete to achieve higher education while the poor
folk who only became marginalized and ignored.

3. The low quality of education. Quality of public education in Indonesia is

still below the international competitive quality standards. Again and again
 was due to lack of infrastructure, teaching staff and limited access to
information became the main obstacle in improving the quality.

4. Way of teaching the less creative. Maybe this could be an evaluation to

the teachers of our education. Teaching is not just giving and giving the
task alone, but also need a creative way so that what was submitted by
teachers to be easily understood and taught science well understood by
students.

Once again, there are so many constraints for improving education in this country.
However, that does not mean that the last way to get ahead. I personally would
like to express some feedback and suggestions for Muslim education in Indonesia
in order can compete or at least equal quality to other countries.

1. Changing perspectives in teaching. What I mean here is that there are

views to separate religious and worldly matters. I think this opinion is an
opinion only a handful of people who do not understand religion, because
religion is a pillar upholding a prosperous life and a peaceful and happy.
Therefore, changing the way teaching should be given to students since
was still in the stage of a child right up to college. Perspective which states
that in every activity of any kind, there will be basically in the science of
religion so that each of our behavior will not be separated from religious
values of Islam.

2. Cheap education for all. It is the responsibility all of us, governments are
the main charge, but participation of companies, organizations and
communities become the foundation necessary to support the educational
costs of cheap but has a high quality for all.

3. Provide scholarships to outstanding Muslim citizens. The impetus for

the Muslims so they can reach higher education is with giving scholarships
in order to take education. Because we know there are many Indonesian
 citizens are far from the prosperous but has the potential extraordinary.
Eventually they will come back to the community of origin and the
environment in which to teach education for all.

4. Facilitate access to education to all communities. Access to proper

education is still a luxury item for most Muslims who live in rural areas.
This means that access to education for them is still lacking, not even able
to achieve it. So the role of government is to provide easy access to
expand facilities and infrastructure and promote community participation
to underprivileged communities.

OK. I think that is my opinion about the education for muslim in Indonesia and
hopefully that we are can promote our quality of education to be better.

By Joko Setiawan

Student of Bandung College of Social Welfare majoring in Social Work

Practise.