Cultivating Respect for Religious Diversity: A Case Study of Civic Education in Manado

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.200320.002How to use a DOI?

Keywords

civic education, religious diversity, character education

Abstract

Civic education is often aptly considered an important arena for cultivating the character of youth and instilling the importance of respect for fellow citizens. To address a growing concern regarding religious intolerance, civic education programs in Indonesia have increasingly stressed material about respect for diversity and inter-religious tolerance. In order to understand how the topic of religious diversity is addressed in civic education courses at the high school level, ethnographic data were collected over the course of 16 months at three different high schools (sekolah menengah atas) in Manado: a public high school (sekolah negeri), public madrasah (madrasah aliyah negeri), and a private high school (sekolah swasta) with Catholic affiliation. Interviews were also conducted with teachers, students, and school administrators. This study espouses a multi-centered understanding of education, which the researchers have operationalized via their examination of the implementation of the civic education in the classroom in addition to school policies, extracurricular activities, informal interactions, and local and national political debates that also shape frameworks for understanding religious diversity. Two major findings emerge from the study. First, although each of the schools is implementing the same national curriculum, each holds a different understanding of the role of the school, of religious education, and of civic education, in contributing to respect for religious diversity. These differences ultimately shape the delivery of the curriculum in each school. Second, at all schools, discussions of religious diversity alternate between collective and individual understandings of tolerance, which has significant ramifications for how tolerance is understood and enacted.

Copyright

© 2020, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Erica M. Larson
AU  - Sjamsi Pasandaran
AU  - Deitje Katuuk
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020/03/24
TI  - Cultivating Respect for Religious Diversity: A Case Study of Civic Education in Manado
BT  - Proceedings of the 2nd Annual Civic Education Conference (ACEC 2019)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 6
EP  - 11
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.200320.002
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.200320.002
ID  - Larson2020
ER  -