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59 

Indonesian Islamic Schools’ Curriculum History: From Independence to the New Order 
Muhammad Zuhdi 
McGill University 

 
 

The main objective of this study is to examine the 
evolution of Islamic schools’ curriculum in Indonesia 
1945 – 1990. Using the social constructionist 
perspective as an approach, this research is trying to see 
the significance of political and social changes to the 
development of Islamic schools’ curricula throughout 
the country’s history. 

 
This study examines the curriculum of Islamic 

schools in Indonesia. By Islamic school I mean a formal 
education institution in which Islam is the only religion 
officially taught as a belief, and which maintains Islamic 
practices as part of the school’s regulations. In Indonesia, 
there are currently three types of formal Islamic schools: The 
pesantren (religious and traditional boarding school), the 
madrasah (religious day school), and the sekolah Islam (a 
day school that combines secular curriculum and religious 
teachings).  

The existence of Islamic educational institutions in 
Indonesia has a long history, beginning before the 
independence of the country. Various types of institutions 
such as masjid (mosque), pesantren (mainly in Java), surau 
(in West Sumatra), and madrasah have functioned as 
educational sites wherein indigenous Indonesians have been 
taught to become “good Muslims” for centuries. According 
to 2001/2002 national education statistics, the total number 
of madrasahs (mainly private) offering elementary to high 
school level instructions is 37,362, which constitutes 17.06 % 
of total schooling (Ministry of National Education, 2002). 
However, this figure does not include a number of private 
Islamic schools (not registered as madrasah) that are 
supervised by the Ministry of Education, as well as non-
recognized religious schools.  

Although Islamic education has a long history and 
has made its own significant contribution to society, formal 
recognition from the government was not granted until 1975 
through the creation of the three-minister decree concerning 
the status of madrasah.  Later, this decision was maintained 
by the 1989 National Education Act, the first act that 
explicitly referred to the madrasah as part of the Indonesia’s 
national education system.  The main reason for the inclusion 
of Islamic schools as part of the secular education system 
was the country’s long history of Islamization and the role 
that Islamic education had played throughout the country’s 
history. This history has resulted, albeit belatedly, in the 
government’s accepting the responsibility of improving the 
quality of education in those schools, without transforming 
them into secular schools. 

The changing political circumstances throughout the 
country’s history have had a huge impact on the evolution of 
the Islamic schools, especially their curricula. Following 
independence, the government maintained the Islamic 

education institutions under the supervision of the Ministry 
of Religious Affairs (referred as MORA). Since then, the 
state has been directly involved in the development and 
supervision of some of these institutions. In addition to this 
political influence, the evolution of Indonesian Islamic 
schools has been also influenced by changes in society. The 
demand for more open-minded Islamic schools has thus 
resulted in alterations to the curriculum in various Islamic 
institutions. 

Research framework 
For the purposes of this research essay, curriculum 

is understood as subject matter, that is to say, “the curriculum 
is equated with the subjects to be taught” (Schubert 1986, 
26). There are a number of reasons for using this definition. 
First, without intending to simplify the meaning of 
curriculum or the process of education, the content of 
curriculum or subject matter can be used to analyse the 
ideology and philosophy that exist behind a curriculum. 
Second, studying the curriculum as content or subject matter 
is somewhat more feasible than studying the practical 
classroom curriculum - as far as a historical study is 
concerned - because unlike the latter, the content is usually 
documented. Lastly, the study of curriculum as subject matter 
is the traditional approach used in the history of education in 
Indonesia.  

Among the most important goals of this study is that 
of discovering the reasons behind the selection of some 
subjects and the exclusion of others in religious schools’ 
curricula. These inclusions and exclusions not only reflect 
how the curriculum-makers view the importance of certain 
areas of knowledge, but they can also help us to see the 
ideological and political backgrounds behind those decisions. 
Therefore, it is important to raise questions such as “Who 
decides the subjects to be taught?” and “What were the 
considerations in deciding which subjects?”  

Ivor Goodson (1994) proposes certain directions for 
doing research in the field, two of which I use as general 
guidelines for my research. The first is the importance of the 
written curriculum document. Curriculum documents can 
provide me, as a researcher, with a great deal of information 
about how their authors view education and the importance 
of knowledge and skills, through examining both the 
rationale and the contents of the curriculum.  The main 
reason for concentrating my study on the written curriculum 
is that, as Goodson (1994, 19) argues, “the written 
curriculum is the visible and public testimony of selected 
rationales and legitimating rhetoric for schooling.”  

The second crucial point that Goodson makes is the 
use of the social constructionist perspective in conducting a 
study of curriculum history. The basic assumption of the 
social constructionist perspective is that knowledge is never 
free from interests, politics and human experience. It is 



 

60 

something that is constructed based on individuals’ 
experiences, together with their ideological, political and 
cultural interests (Schwandt 2000, 198). Hence, a curriculum 
is not something taken for granted; it is created and 
constructed by certain people to be ‘taught’ to others. 
According to Goodson (1994, 19), “the school curriculum is 
a social artefact, conceived and made for deliberate human 
purposes. It is therefore a supreme paradox that in many 
accounts of schooling the written curriculum, this most 
manifest of social constructions, has been treated as a 
‘given’.” The assumption of the curriculum as a social 
artefact is important in studying curriculum history, as far as 
the social constructionist is concerned, since this will enable 
one to view the relationship between the curriculum and its 
external factors.  

Although the social constructionist view of curriculum 
– which proposes students’ involvement in curriculum-
making (see Gergen 1995, 32) – is different from the 
definition that I have chosen, it nevertheless offers a point of 
view that can help one to construct an understanding of the 
factors that influence curriculum decisions. One of the 
assumptions of the social constructionist orientation is that 
“the terms in which the world is understood are social 
artefacts, products of historically situated interchanges 
among people” (Gergen 1985, 267). It is from this standpoint 
that the evolution of curriculum in the Indonesian context 
will be explored; not as documented and silent texts, but as a 
source of information on how ideology, politics, and social 
changes influence curriculum.  
 

Early development of Indonesian Islamic schools’ 
curriculum (1945 – 1975) 

When the first Indonesian government established 
its national education system, this system was secular in 
nature. Existing schools incorporated into this system had to 
be secular in order to receive government’s funding. This of 
course left a vast number of Islamic schools – such  as 
pesantrens and madrasahs – outside this network. These 
schools received no support from the government, even as 
they continued their efforts to educate a great number of 
Indonesian children.  

On March 1, 1946, Suwandi, the country’s second 
minister of education, set up a commission known as Panitia 
Penyelidik Pendidikan (Committee for the Investigation of 
Education) to examine the state of affairs of national 
education. One of the areas that interest them was the 
existence of Islamic schools, thus the committee made the 
following observation: “madrasahs and pesantrens which 
have became sources and sites of education for the 
indigenous Indonesian population, and whose existence has 
been widely accepted among the Indonesian people, deserve 
to receive the government’s attention and even some kinds of 
subsidies” (Steenbrink 1985, 96; Lee Kam Hing 1995, 34).  

This clearly indicates that Islamic educational 
institutions, despite the fact they were not formally 
recognized at the time, had been and remain – in the era 
immediately following independence – significant factors in 
the development of Indonesian education. The fact that 
Islamic educational institutions brought learning to so many 

young Indonesians in rural areas made their existence 
invaluable. Yet, the problem was that most of them did not 
have structured approaches to subject matter, let alone a 
curriculum. 

In view of the facts that these institutions focused 
mainly on religious instruction, the government decided to 
place them under the supervision of the Ministry of Religious 
Affairs (MORA), instead of the Ministry of Education. 
Therefore, in the initial formation of the MORA in 1946, its 
mandate included responsibility for religious education 
(Yunus 1992, 363). Since then, Indonesian education has 
been administered under two umbrellas: the Ministry of 
Education and the MORA. Later, to avoid confusion over the 
definition of “religious school” and “non religious school,” 
the Ministry of Education, together with the MORA, made 
the following categorization: an institution constituted a 
secular school if less than 50% of its curriculum was devoted 
to religious instruction, and a school was to be classified as a 
religious school if it had a curriculum including more than 
50% religious instruction (Lee Kam Hing 1995, 75). Hence, 
the first is administered under the Ministry of Education, 
while the second is under the MORA. 

The issue of the composition of curriculum also 
proved crucial for obtaining government subsidies. In 1952, 
the MORA issued a decree concerning financial and other 
kinds of subsidies for madrasahs and other private Islamic 
institutions. Two of the requirements for obtaining the 
subsidy were that, in addition to religious instructions 
offered, an Islamic school should include the teaching of 
some non-religious subjects in its curriculum, the minimum 
requirement of: reading, writing and arithmetic for the three-
year elementary schools, plus geography, history, basic 
sciences and health for six-year elementary schools; and the 
allocation of at least 30% of its total study hours per week for 
non-religious subjects (Sosromidjojo 1952, 265). The issue, 
however, did not lead the MORA to create standardized 
curricula for madrasahs and pesantrens. 

Beside the above issue, the MORA paid little attention 
to the creation of curriculum for Islamic schools during its 
initial development. This implies that the responsibility for 
this task remained in the hands of Muslim educators in each 
school. The main concern of the Ministry was to provide a 
sufficient number of teachers to teach religion in secular 
schools. Therefore, the first curriculum developed by the 
Ministry was the curriculum for the SGAI (Sekolah Guru 
Agama Islam/High School for Islamic Teachers), which later 
came to be known as PGA (Pendidikan Guru 
Agama/Education for Islamic Teachers). Students of these 
schools were mainly graduates from the madrasahs and 
pesantrens, who would be appointed to teach religion in 
public schools upon their graduation from the SGAI or PGA.  

At this point, it can be said that although the 
government acknowledged the existence of Islamic schools, 
there was no initiative to reform these institutions, and 
especially the curriculum. These institutions were solely 
dependent upon the expertise of their leaders. As a result, the 
curriculum of madrasah as well as its grading system varied 
from one institution to another. Hence, the 1952 National 



 

61 

Education Act did not recognize madrasah and pesantren as 
part of the National education system. 

In 1958, the MORA initiated the creation of the 
Kurikulum Madrasah Wajib Belajar (Religious School 
Compulsory Education Curriculum) in an effort to 
standardize and promote the improvement of the madrasah 
system throughout the country (Zuhairini et al. 1984, 80), 
especially at the primary level. It was expected that this 
model would encourage the private madrasahs to renew their 
systems. However, this program was unsuccessful in its 
implementation, and the private schools continued to run 
their own curriculum. 

The failure of the program inspired the government to 
create the Madrasah Negeri (State-sponsored madrasah) 
system with a clearer mandate and structure. The schools 
were organized in a fashion similar to that of the secular 
schools: Thus, the Madrasah Ibtidaiyah Negeri (elementary 
state madrasah) was on roughly the same level as the Sekolah 
Dasar Negeri (Public Elementary School), the Madrasah 
Tsanawiyah Negeri (junior secondary state madrasah) on that 
of the Sekolah Menengah Pertama (Public Secondary 
School), and the Madrasah Aliyah Negeri (secondary state 
madrasah) on that of the Sekolah Menengah Atas (Public 
High School). It is notable that most of the state-sponsored 
madrasahs were located on the property of private 
institutions.  
 

The turning point: the 1975 three-minister decree 
The country’s changing leadership in the late 1960s 

also had an impact to the development of Islamic schools. 
The ‘new order’i government under Suharto’s leadership 
believed that one of the best strategies for improving the 
quality of life of the Indonesian people was to enhance the 
quality of education. They furthermore presumed that the 
enhancement of the education system would only be possible 
if there is a single education authority responsible for all 
forms of schooling, instead of having various ministries run 
specific schools for their own purposes.  For this reason, the 
government released a presidential instruction in 1972 
require all formal education to be administered by the 
Ministry of Education.  

As no exceptions were mentioned in the instruction, 
the status of Islamic schools was left unanswered. It was 
understood that they should be administered by the ministry 
of education, yet many Muslim educators found this decision 
unacceptable. For them, the policy was an over-
simplification of a complex situation that existed in the 
Indonesian education system in general, and in Islamic 
education in particular. Since the decision did not specifically 
acknowledge the existence of Islamic education institutions, 
they assumed that the government was trying to eliminate 
them through application of the so-called “pendidikan satu 
atap” (single umbrella education) policy. For this part, 
Muslim leaders maintained that Islamic education should be 
supervised by the MORA, because it was the only 
government institution with the expertise necessary for 
evaluating the competency of the Islamic schools.  

While acknowledging the weaknesses of the Islamic 
educational institutions, a number of Muslim educators 

approached the government asking it to exclude these schools 
from the presidential decree and make a special regulation 
for them. Furthermore, they proposed the idea of 
reconstructing the curriculum of Islamic educational 
institutions to meet government expectations, rather than 
merging them with secular schools, which would have been a 
sharp political disappointment to the Muslim people (Pondok 
Modern Gontor 1996, 168). In response, the government 
released a joint decree signed by three ministers: the Minister 
of Education, the Minister of Religious Affairs, and the 
Minister of Internal Affairs. The so called SKB 3 Menteri 
(three-minister joint decree) proposed the standardization of 
the curriculum of Islamic schools, through the installation of 
a national curriculum for all madrasah. The Madrasah 
Negeri, which had been instituted prior to this decision, 
became the model for private madrasahs. 

This decree was followed by MORA's decisions in 
1976 to reform the composition of madrasah’s curriculum to 
comprise 30% religious instruction and 70% non-religious 
subjects, including languages, social studies, math, natural 
sciences, arts education, and the national ideology. 
Additionally, the new curriculum also introduced five 
programs of study (majors) within the Islamic high schools: 
Natural sciences, Social Sciences, Language and Culture, 
Religion (Islam in general), and Islamic Jurisprudence (see 
Zuhairini et al. 1984, 84-6).  

This was a very significant decision that not only 
changed the structure of the curriculum of the madrasah, but 
more importantly gave Muslim students more opportunities 
to explore branches of knowledge other than religion. This 
decision can also be seen as the result of a political 
negotiation between the government, which wanted the 
people to be sufficiently educated, and the Muslim leaders, 
who felt responsible for maintaining the faith of the Muslim 
people. 

Although many Muslim leaders viewed the 1975 
joint decree as accommodating the demands of Muslim 
people and as testimony to the success of political 
negotiations between Muslims and the government, not all of 
them agreed that the new curriculum ensuing from the joint 
decree met the needs of Muslim students. As a result, the 
curriculum of Islamic schools throughout the country 
continued to exhibit local variations, some of which can be 
seen in the following selected responses to the 1975 decree. 
 

The responses 
 

First case: accommodation with combination 
 
Pesantren Tebu Ireng in Jombang, East Java is an 

example of the positive response to the national curriculum 
for madrasahs following the 1975 three-ministry decree. 
Actually, even before the introduction of the 1976 curriculum 
for madrasahs, Tebu Ireng had restructured itself to offer its 
students more non-religious subjects. Realizing that some of 
their students needed more “secular subjects” within a 
religious environment, since the early 1970s Tebu Ireng been 
offering two different kinds of schooling: madrasah, for 
those who wanted to perfect their religious knowledge, and 



 

62 

sekolah, for those who wanted to learn more non-religious 
subjects. In addition, Tebu Ireng also maintained the classic 
pesantren education after school hours, in keeping their 
original mandate. 

The enactment of the 1975 joint decree put Tebu Ireng 
in a difficult situation and forced its board to review their 
educational program. The difficulty was that, on the one 
hand, the national curriculum for the madrasahs had less 
religious instruction than theirs, so adopting it would make 
their madrasah no different from their sekolah. On the other 
hand, ignoring the national curriculum meant their certificate 
would not be recognized by the government, which would 
disappoint the students and their parents. This difficulty, 
however, did not prevent them from adopting the national 
curriculum.   

In the first thirty years of its history, under the 
leadership of KH Hasyim Asy’ari (a noted Islamic leader in 
Indonesian history), Tebu Ireng was meant to be a pesantren 
that educated young Muslims in order for them to become 
religious leaders. Therefore, the teaching materials focused 
heavily on Islamic knowledge. In its later development, 
however, and especially following the 1975 decree, the 
orientation of Pesantren Tebu Ireng (one of the biggest 
traditional education institutions) shifted from being an 
institution for religious experts to being an institution for all 
people Dhofier 1994, 113).  

 
Second case: independent school 
 
One of the most notable cases of an educational 

institution retaining its independence during the introduction 
of the national curriculum was Pondok Pesantren Gontor in 
Ponorogo, East Java. This pesantren was founded by three 
brothers: KH Ahmad Sahal, KH Zainuddin Fananie, and KH 
Imam Zarkasyi. Although each of the three made his own 
contribution to the development of Gontor, Zarkasyi was 
notably the most influential of them all. His achievements 
were acknowledged by the government in the form of an 
appointment as the chairman of the MP3A (Religious 
Education Council) under the Ministry of Religious Affairs 
in the late 1950s. 

 Zarkasyi’s involvement in the government’s 
committees on religious education, however, did not 
compromise the independence of Gontor. Zarkasyi refused to 
implement the 1975 curriculum, as he believed that the one 
on offer at Gontor was better than what the government 
proposed. Zakiyah Daradjat (1996, 633) notes that Zarkasyi 
did not agree with the idea of standardizing the pesantrens, 
and hence he did not allow his students to take the national 
examination for Madrasah Aliyah (high school level) in order 
to acquire the government-recognized diploma. The main 
reason however for Zarkasyi’s decision, according to 
Daradjat, was the government’s imposition of Pancasila (the 
national ideology) as a compulsory subject. As a result, 
Gontor was not recognized as a formal educational institution 
according to the 1975 joint decree.  

That decision also had consequences for the status of 
the alumni of Gontor. While the students agreed that the 
different curriculum at Gontor was worthwhile, many of 

them needed a government-recognized certificate either to 
study in a public university or to find a job in public 
institutions. Fortunately for them, the system allowed them to 
take the national examination in other schools while 
maintaining their status as Gontor students. 
 

Third case: between religious and secular school 
 
 As an educational institution using the national 

secular curriculum, Al-Azhar was not directly affected by the 
1975 joint decree. However, as an Islamic school, Al-Azhar, 
founded in the late 1960s, reflected the shifting features of 
the Islamic schools. Unlike other Islamic schools in 
Indonesia, Al-Azhar was neither a madrasah nor, despite 
being run by a foundation called Yayasan Pesantren Islam 
Al-Azhar (Al-Azhar Islamic School Foundation), a pesantren 
(Busyairi, 2002). It chose moreover to adopt the Ministry of 
Education’s curriculum rather the one created by the MORA. 
However, Al-Azhar could not be categorised as a secular 
school either since it devoted a greater amount of time to 
religious education compared to some other schools run by 
Islamic organizations. Located in the strategic South Jakarta 
area, Al-Azhar offered the new Muslim middle class family a 
new model of Islamic school, which combined the secular 
curriculum with guided religious practices. 

The increasing numbers of the Muslim middle class in 
the late 1980s in Indonesia, following the rise of Indonesian 
economic development, had a significant impact on the 
growth of Al-Azhar. This is because families at this level 
preferred to send their children to a non-denominational 
school, while still maintaining religious practices. This is also 
another indication of the shifting role of Islamic schools, 
from parochial to “more secular.” In other words, Indonesian 
Muslim society had demonstrated a need for more schools 
that give students non-religious subjects combined with some 
religious values and practices, and fewer schools that prepare 
students to become religious experts. 
 

The new development of the Islamic schools 
The idea of political, economic and defence stability 

promoted by the New Order government, followed by 
successful explorations for petroleum in various parts of 
Indonesia and sky-rocketing oil prices in the world market in 
the late 1970s, brought about considerable economic 
development in the country. Subsequently, this development 
improved the per-capita income of Indonesian people and 
hence swelled the Muslim middle class from the late 1980s 
onwards. 

The emergence of the Indonesian Muslim middle class 
gained political momentum with the birth of ICMI 
(Organization for Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals) in 1990 
(Syamsuddin 2001, 78). This organization united a great 
number of Indonesian Muslim scholars, as well as 
technocrats, in pursuit of the advancement of the people of 
Indonesia, especially its Muslim citizens.ii Although the 
organization was not founded as a political party, its 
contribution to the formation of the 1993 cabinet and 
parliament members was nevertheless considerable. B.J. 
Habibie, the first chairman of ICMI and one of the ruling 



 

63 

cabinet’s senior ministers, was the most influential figure in 
bringing a number of Muslim scholars and technocrats into 
the cabinet. The contribution was even stronger when B.J. 
Habibie himself was appointed as Vice-President in 1998, a 
few months before the fall of the New Order regime. 

The birth of ICMI and the growing role of the 
Indonesian Muslim middle class in the political and 
economic arenas were all indications that the issue of religion 
(i.e. Islam) retained a significant aspect in the development 
of these sectors. This development, furthermore, had a 
considerable effect on the future of Indonesia’s Islamic 
schools. 

The implementation of the 1989 Education Act is 
another evidence of the increasing role played by Indonesian 
Muslims in the political arena. Sirozi (1998) shows how 
Muslim leaders reacted when the first draft of the 1989 Bill 
proposed by the Ministry of Education did not specifically 
mention the position of religious education. Panji 
Masyarakat, a nation-wide Muslim magazine, reported the 
discussion of the bill among Muslim leaders in an article 
entitled “Sebuah RUU tanpa Iman (A Bill without Faith)”. 
The article reflected a strong desire on the part of the Muslim 
leaders that both government and parliament revise the bill 
before ratifying it (Panji Masyarakat, July, 1988). Sirozi 
(1998, 188) concluded that Muslim leaders build their 
arguments based on two rationales: “moralistic”, which 
stresses the importance of religious values, and “historical”, 
which implies the roles that Muslim educators have played 
throughout the history.  

At least three elements of the 1989 Education Act 
show evidence of the increasing role of Muslims in the 
political arena: first, the inclusion of the words iman dan 
taqwa (religious devoutness) as part of the general statement 
of the goals of national education; second, the recognition of 
the existence of Islamic schools in keeping with the 1975 
three-ministry decree; and third, the obligation of religious 
instruction at every level of formal education. 

 
The new Islamic schools 
The changing political and social atmosphere that 

accompanied the country’s economic and political evolution 
under the New Order government brought with it a number 
of developments critical to the well-bieng of Islamic schools. 

First, thanks to their strong position in politics, the 
Muslim middle class has been able to maintain the status of 
the Islamic schools as part of the national education system. 
There has been even stronger political support for this 
recognition since the passage of the 1989 Educational Act, 
which recognized the madrasah as equal to secular schools. 

Second, the constituency of the Islamic schools has 
been broadened from including only “conservative religious” 
families to welcoming middle class and religiously moderate 
families as well. More parents are willing to send their 
children to the religious schools, in the belief that their 
children need religious values to protect them from the 
negative aspects of the secular world. 

Third, in their early development, the main goal of the 
Islamic schools was to train young Muslims to become, 
simply put, clerics. The changing constituency has forced 

many Muslim schools to change their educational goals, from 
producing ulama (clerics) to producing students with a broad 
understanding of various scientific disciplines and a strong 
commitment to religious life. 

Although there is no statistical data available 
regarding the exact number of new Islamic schools, the 
record from Al-Azhar Foundation can serve as an indicator. 
As mentioned earlier, Al-Azhar is a model of school that 
combines the secular curriculum set by the Ministry of 
Education and their own religious instructions and practices. 
The record indicates that in 1971, the Al-Azhar Foundation 
had only four formal schools at the elementary and junior 
secondary levels. In 1989, the total number of schools had 
grown to 14, including a number of high schools. This 
number continued to grow significantly to 31 schools in 1995 
(Busyairi, 2002). Azra (2000, 74) notes that in the last twenty 
years, Al-Azhar has become the model for a number of 
newly developed Islamic schools.  

 
General Conclusion 

From an early point in Indonesian history, religious 
leaders have been important actors in Indonesian education, 
most often through the creation of various educational 
institutions. Although their main goal was to educate students 
to become good Muslims, nonetheless many of those 
institutions taught their students a variety of knowledge and 
skills apart from religious instruction. Therefore, following 
independence, the government could not ignore the existence 
of Islamic institutions in any discussion of the national 
education system. In other words, the government had no 
choice but to accept those institutions as part of the national 
education system. As a result, there have always been 
political negotiations regarding the place of religion 
(especially Islam) in any policy on national education. 
Furthermore, the creation of the 1950 and 1989 Education 
Acts indicated the similar fashion. 

These phenomena indicate that the issue of religious 
education remains a very crucial issue in Indonesia. For a 
great number of Indonesian people, religion is an important 
aspect of their life, especially when it comes to facing the 
issues of globalization and secularization. This is not only 
reflected by the changes in the education law, but also by the 
changing trends of schooling. 

For Indonesian Muslims, as for others, formal 
education is the best way to provide future generations with 
the necessary knowledge and skills for their future lives. 
Moreover, many Indonesian Muslims seem to agree that, in 
addition to knowledge and skills, religious instruction is 
another important aspect of education. With religion itself 
still an important aspect of their lives, they believe that 
religious education will provide young people with the values 
and beliefs that can help them cope with an increasingly 
globalized and secularized society. Therefore, the majority of 
Muslim people, especially their religious leaders were 
resistant to any efforts to secularize the Islamic schools, 
although they were more and more open to restructure their 
curriculum to a more “secular” way.  

The changing features of Indonesian Islamic schools 
throughout the country’s history indicated that both of the 



 

64 

                                                

politics and social changes have a significant influence to the 
evolution of curriculum. The government through the MORA 
has made invaluable efforts to support the modernization of 
various Islamic educational institutions, not only those of 
state’s schools, but also private institutions. Additionally, the 
changes in the society, most notably the increasing number of 
the Muslim middle class, influenced the way Islamic schools 
view the importance of knowledge. These phenomena clearly 
reflect what Kliebard (1992, 158) says that “the relationship 
between a society and curriculum is reciprocal”.  
 
 

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i ‘New order’ is the official name for Suharto’s long run 
government to distinguish them with the previous leadership 
which is called the old order. The new order era ends in 1998 
when Suharto left the presidential position. 
ii Some of the Muslim scholars (including then former 
president Abdurrahman Wahid) refused to join this 
organization as they believed that such an organization will 
only promote sectarianism among the religious people which 
is absolutely dangerous for a multi-religions state like 
Indonesia. 
 


	Indonesian Islamic Schools’ Curriculum History: From Independence to the New Order
	Research framework
	Ivor Goodson (1994) proposes certain directions for doing research in the field, two of which I use as general guidelines for my research. The first is the importance of the written curriculum document. Curriculum documents can provide me, as a researcher, with a great deal of information about how their authors view education and the importance of knowledge and skills, through examining both the rationale and the contents of the curriculum.  The main reason for concentrating my study on the written curriculum is that, as Goodson (1994, 19) argues, “the written curriculum is the visible and public testimony of selected rationales and legitimating rhetoric for schooling.” 

