Abstract:

This paper investigates Character Education (CE) in the latest school curriculum in Indonesia, to see if and how ‘tolerance’ is taught in the subjects ‘Religious and Character Education’ and ‘Citizenship Education’ in schools. Indonesia has struggled with ethnic and religious violence since the end of authoritarian rule in 1998; and recently there has been a significant swing towards religious fundamentalism and intolerance. For these reasons, it is important to see how schools teach children tolerance.

The paper begins with an historical literature review of the development of the various approaches to CE to see how the CE that has been introduced in Indonesia recently is like or unlike that taught elsewhere, with a particular interest in ‘tolerance’. It is found that in coupling CE with Religious Education, and with good citizenship, Indonesia is following the dominant, traditional form of CE, as in the US.

However ‘tolerance’ is not a typical character trait in traditional Character Education. A short second section presents some critiques of CE. The third section surveys the innovative incorporation of CE into the subject ‘Religious and Character Education’ in the 2013 curriculum in Indonesia, to see if and how ‘tolerance’ is instilled along with other desirable character traits, like honesty. An addendum notes that tolerance is more a feature of the subject ‘Pancasila and Citizenship Education’ than of ‘Religious and Character Education’. The unfortunate effect of this subject location is that religion and tolerance are not seen as co-existing, and students are not equipped with the capacity to be both religiously devout and tolerant of other faiths.

Keywords:

Indonesia, education, education for tolerance, religious education, character education.