WUNRN
Singapore
- A More Progressive Islamic Education
Norimitsu Onishi/The New
York Times
April
23, 2009
SINGAPORE
— After starting the day with prayers and songs in honor of the Prophet
Muhammad’s birthday, the students at the Madrasa Al Irsyad Al Islamiah here in
Singapore turned to the secular. An all-girls chemistry class grappled with
compounds and acids while other students focused on English, math and other
subjects from the national curriculum.
Teachers
exhorted their students to ask questions. Some, true to the school’s embrace of
new technology, gauged their students’ comprehension with individual polling
devices.
“It’s
like ‘American
Idol,’ ” said Razak Mohamed Lazim, the head of Al Irsyad, which
means “rightly guided.”
A
reference to the reality television program in relation to an Islamic school
may come as a surprise. But Singapore’s Muslim leaders see Al Irsyad, with its
strict balance between religious and secular studies, as the future of Islamic
education, not only in this city-state but elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
Two
madrasas in Indonesia
have already adopted Al Irsyad’s curriculum and management, attracted to what
they say is a progressive model of Islamic education in tune with the modern
world. For them, Al Irsyad is the counterpoint to many traditional madrasas
that emphasize religious studies at the expense of everything else. Instead of
preaching radicalism, the school’s in-house textbooks praise globalization and
international organizations like the United
Nations.
Leaders
in Islamic education here rue the fact that, in much of the West, madrasas
everywhere have been broad-brushed as militant
hotbeds where students spend days learning the Koran by rote. Still,
they were relieved that not one terrorism suspect in the region in recent years
was a product of Singapore’s madrasas, though some suspects were linked to
madrasas in Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries. That association
deepened a long-running debate over the nature of Islamic education.
“The
Muslim world in general is struggling with its Islamic education,” Mr. Razak
said, explaining that Islamic schools had failed to adapt to the modern world.
“In many cases, it’s also the challenge the Muslim world is facing. We are not
addressing the needs of Islam as a faith that has to be alive, interacting with
other communities and other religions.”
In
Indonesia, most Islamic schools still pay little attention to secular subjects,
believing that religious studies are enough, said Indri Rini Andriani, a former
computer programmer who is the principal of Al Irsyad Satya Islamic School, one
of the Indonesian schools that model themselves on the school here.
“They
feel that conventional education is best for the children, while some of us
feel that we have to adjust with advances in technology and what’s going on in
the world,” Ms. Indri said.
Here,
the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore, a statutory board that advises the
government on Muslim affairs, gave Al Irsyad a central spot in its new Islamic
center. Long the top academic performer among the country’s six madrasas, Al
Irsyad was chosen to be in the center as “a showcase,” said Mr. Razak, who is
also an official at the religious council.
The
school’s 900 primary- and secondary-level students follow the national
curriculum of the country’s public schools while also taking religious
instruction. To accommodate both, the school day is three hours longer than at
the mainstream schools.
Mohamed
Muneer, 32, a chemistry teacher, said most of his former students had gone on
to junior colleges or polytechnic schools, while some top students attended the
National University of Singapore. “Many became administrators, some are
teaching and some joined the civil service,” he said.
At
the cafeteria, Ishak Bin Johari, a 17-year-old who wants to become a newspaper
reporter, said the balance between the secular and religious would help the
school’s graduates “lead normal Singaporean lives compared to other madrasa
students.”
That
balance resulted, like many things in this country, from pressure by the
government. Singapore’s madrasas — historically the schools for ethnic Malays who
make up about 14 percent of the country’s population — experienced a surge in
popularity in the 1990s along with a renewed interest in Islam.
But
that surge, coupled with the madrasas’ poor record in nonreligious subjects,
high dropout rates and graduation of young people with few marketable job
skills, worried the government. It responded by making primary education at
public schools compulsory in 2003, allowing exceptions like the madrasas,
provided they met basic standards by 2010. If they fail, they will have to stop
educating primary school children.
“That
forced the madrasas to shift their curriculum away from being purely religious
schools,” said Mukhlis Abu Bakar, an expert on madrasas at the National
Institute of Education, a teachers college.
Last
year, the first time all six madrasas were required to sit for national exams
at the primary level, two failed to meet the minimal standards, though they
still had two more years to pass.
Al
Irsyad, which was the first to alter its curriculum, outperformed the other
madrasas. But neither it nor the others made any of the lists of best
performing schools or students compiled by the Education Ministry in Singapore.
Mr.
Mukhlis, who also was a member of Al Irsyad’s management committee in the
1990s, said the madrasas still had a long way to go to catch up with mainstream
schools. While Singapore’s teachers are among the most highly paid civil
servants, the madrasas have had trouble attracting qualified teachers because
they rely only on tuition and donations to operate, he said.
“I
think Al Irsyad has not achieved a level where I would say it is a model for
Islamic education,” he said, “but somehow the system it has in place could
become one.”
Still,
it began drawing students who would not have attended a madrasa otherwise.
Noridah Mahad, 44, said she had wanted to send her two older children to
madrasas but worried about the quality of education. With Al Irsyad’s adoption
of the national curriculum, she felt no qualms in sending her third child.
“Here they teach many things other than Islam,” she said. “So Muslim students
will have two understandings: the Muslim and the outside world.”
Al
Irsyad said it was in talks to export its model to madrasas in the Philippines
and Thailand. In Indonesia, Dahlan Iskan, the chairman of Jawa Pos Group, one
of the country’s biggest media companies, opened a school modeled on
Singapore’s. And a conglomerate, the Lyman Group, backed Al Irsyad Satya.
Poedji
Koentarso, a retired diplomat, led the search for Lyman, visiting madrasas all
over Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.
“We
shopped around,” he said. “It was a difficult search in the sense that often
the schools were very religious, too religious.”
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