The National Education Ministry's plan to reconstruct the curriculum of religious education for students calls for the attention of all stakeholders, particularly because religious education has played and always plays an important role in the creation of an Indonesian identity.

As we live in a diverse country, students should learn not only about their own religion, but also about other religious traditions so as be able to engage with people of different faiths in better ways.

Therefore, an interreligious model of religious education should be implemented in public schools, which would improve upon the mono-religion model that aims to deepen students' knowledge of beliefs, values and rituals of particular religions, as mandated by the 2003 Law on the National Education System.

Why interreligious education? The education system law requires schools to provide religious education for all students according to their religious background, and to be taught by teachers professing the same religion.

This model obviously closes the door to dialogue between students. Unlike other subjects that enable students to discuss issues with their classmates, our existing religious education model seems to prevent students from learning from their friends of different faiths.

The interreligious education model offers a space for dialogue between students regardless of their faith. Unlike the multireligious education model, interreligious education does not focus so much on a neutral description of religions, but rather dialogue between adherents of different faiths. Interreligious education seeks to express the uniqueness of each religious tradition and at the same time evaluate religious plurality in a positive way.

There are two models of dialogue: simple and parallel. In the simple dialogue, the points of departure and destination are the religion of students. The dialogue serves to broaden the vision that one has developed within one's own tradition.

The parallel dialogue, on the other hand, means participants alternately adopt the perspective of each of the various religious traditions. In such dialogues, students engage other religions from their own perspective and at the same time engage their own religion from the perspective of other religions.

The theological basis of this parallel model is known as pluralism that liberates students from a dilemma between exclusivism, which perceives that there is only one absolute and true religion, and relativism as the foundation of multireligious education.

Interreligious education tries to overcome the narrowness of mono-religious education. On the other hand, it takes into account the aspect of the commitment. It implies not only the pursuit of mutual understanding, tolerance and respect, but also reflection about oneself and self-criticism.

How does the interreligious education deal with the construction of religious identity of students? Interreligious education offers opportunities for students to develop their own identity through dialogic encounters with other religions. Students learn from this encounter with members of other religions.

How this affects the identity of the students is up to the students themselves. Interreligious education opens up opportunities for students to form their own identities, but it does not direct this formation in a certain way. Interreligious education seeks to develop students' competence to hold a dialogue that will help change perspectives.

What does interreligious education mean with regard to its goal, aims, content and method?

Goal: Religious education should not only develop religious literacy, but also help students shape their own religious identity on the basis of different religious values.

Aims: Cognitively religious education should help students understand their own religion through dialogue with other religions. Therefore, interreligious education should enable students to deepen their knowledge of beliefs, values and rituals of their own religion and other religious traditions.

Affectively, interreligious education should develop students' interest in learning religion on their own through dialogue with other religions. Religious education should also stimulate interest in dialogues between their own religions and other religions.

Attitudinally, religious education should aim to value dialogue between students' own religion and other religions and to develop willingness to engage in dialogue between students' own religion and other religions.

Content: With regard to its content, religious education should present different teachings of world religions from the point of view of students' own religion and of other religions.

Method: How should inter-religious education be conducted in the classroom? Dialogue is the key word to conducting interreligious education. Religious education should offer opportunities for dialogue and mutual exchange between students of different faiths. (Mohamad Yusuf/Jakpost)

The writer works for the Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies at Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, and is currently pursuing a doctoral degree at the School of Empirical Religious Studies, Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

(Lihat foto: Interreligious education: An option for teaching religion. (Copas))

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