Structuration in religious education: The ideological burdens of Islamic education in Indonesian schools

This paper discusses one of the central issues of religious education in Indonesia, namely its perceived ineffectiveness in imbuing adolescents and youths with proper morals, as seen in their increase perpetration of crimes in recent years. Unlike previous studies, which have evaluated the effectiveness of religious education in terms of curricula, teaching competencies, and infrastructure, this study highlights the structural positioning of schools as the main reason for their inability to realise their mandate. Being extensions of the Indonesian State or of particular organisations, schools serve to advance particular ideologies, and as such lack to authority to develop a contextual religious education curriculum that meets students' needs. This study shows that, when positioned subordinately, schools are incapable of identifying students' interests or of providing contextual lessons that meet students' needs or prepare them for their everyday realities. The education system has positioned students as objects, and it is because of this objectification-through the dual processes of discipline and indoctrination-that the system has failed to produce moral graduates. Islamic education would be better able to imbue students with morality if its curricula were free of State/institutional ideologies. © 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.