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Teachers criticize 'piety grades'

Jakarta Post - January 23, 2015

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Jakarta – Teachers have complained about the inclusion of piety as a category of student assessment in the 2013 curriculum.

During a meeting held Thursday to review the curriculum at the Culture and Elementary and Secondary Education Ministry, Federation of Indonesian Teachers Associations (FSGI) secretary-general Retno Listyarti said that most teachers present denounced the inclusion of student piety as a category of assessment.

"We were so shocked when they told us that students would be graded by how religious they were. The ministry is supposed to organize the education system, not control how religious children are," she said.

The curriculum is currently being revised after Culture and Elementary and Secondary Education Minister Anies Baswedan scrapped it in December. Currently, 6,221 schools are permitted to use the new curriculum. The rest are required to revert to the 2006 one.

Retno said that ministry officials said students would be graded on how often they attended their respective houses of worship and how well they did in their religious studies.

She added that the heavy focus on religion could create conflict among classmates of differing faiths and undermine the principle of pluralism.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/01/23/teachers-criticize-piety-grades.html.