Classroom-Based Peace Education to Develop Students Character at

Religious School in Salatiga

Wahidin Wahidin

and Wawan Ahmad Ridwan

Department of Guidance and Counseling, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Bandung, Indonesia

Education Faculty, Institut Agama Islam Negeri (IAIN) Syekh Nurjati Cirebon

wahidin@student.upi.edu, wawanridwan68@gmail.com

Keywords: Peace Education, Character, Religious School.

Abstract: This paper aims to reveal how classroom-based peace education shape students' characters in schools with

different religion setting managements. This research uses qualitative method. Data was collected through

questionnaires, interviews and observation from 60 respondents of natural science classes. The results show

that the implementation of class base peace education in Islamic school is different from in Christian school.

In the Islamic school, a peaceful cultural character was built through insertion in every learning process. On

the other hand, in the Christian school, a peaceful cultural character was built through character building

program. The similarity between the two in building the peaceful cultural character is that both school, the

application of peace education is conducted using a non-formal approach.

1 INTRODUCTION

Salatiga was awarded as the second tertiary city in

Indonesia (Syarif, 2015). This achievement means

that people harmonize well with minimal horizontal

conflicts and harmonious community life. Salatiga is

so known as the miniature of Indonesia, as the people

have a wide range of ethnic, cultural, and religious

backgrounds.

One of the pillars to develop the Salatiga society

is the functioning of education as a character

educations. The function of education is as social

mobility and cohesion of various elements of life

(Akusoba, 2002), and as the value creation for the

ability of solidarity, creativity, responsibility, and

problem solving as a citizen (Fisk, 2000). The

purpose of the educational process is to create a

comfortable, calm, peaceful, and trustworthy learning

atmosphere (Kartadinata, 2011).

Unfortunately, there is a major failure dealing

with how education builds the students’ mindset and

life skills. Generally, education is merely understood

as the transfer of knowledge which ignores other

potential aspects like educating character. Education

should support the realization of expected national

life (Kartadinata, 2011).

Nowadays moral degradation has become a

concern from the communities including government,

schools, and family. Thus, schools, as one of the

communities, have an important role to build the

students' character, for example, attitudes. In schools,

attitudes can be build when they implement peace

education both in the process of teaching learning as

well as in the education atmosphere. In this situation,

peace education may become the character of

education in the future (Malihah, 2017).

Schools have an important role to develop

students’ attitudes to build a better society. Attitudes

can be build when school implements peace

education both in process of teaching and in the

education atmosphere.

Peace education will become the character of

future education. UNESCO (1974) affirms the goal of

peace education to build peace among individuals.

Peace education is needed for students to build peace

in their mind and heart. Peaceful minds and hearts

will be the basis for students to behave peacefully

(Kartadinata, 2015a; Anand, 2014), so as to

contribute to building peace, reconciliation and

preventing conflict. In addition, peace education may

also influence the student’s mindset to create world

stability, progress, and prosperity (Castro and

Gallace, 2010).

178

Wahidin, W. and Ridwan, W.

Classroom-Based Peace Education to Develop Students Character at Religious School in Salatiga.

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Educational Sciences (ICES 2017) - Volume 1, pages 178-183

ISBN: 978-989-758-314-8

They are various models of peace education base

on the culture of every country. The models are

disarmament education, human rights education,

global education, conflict resolution education,

education for international understanding, interfaith

education, gender-fair/non-sexist education,

development education, and environmental education

(Castro and Gallace, 2010). There are many

approaches to peace education, many of which are

based on ideology, practical experience, and good

intentions.

Indonesia as a country with a different context and

culture with other countries. As other countries,

Indonesia, a country with multi-cultures, ethnics,

races, and religions, should implement the

appropriate model of peace education. One

phenomenon is that some schools in Indonesia use

religion as their identity in their management, like

Islamic schools and Christian schools. These two

schools are under two different Ministries. The

Islamic schools in Indonesia are managed by the

Ministry of Religious Affairs from the elementary

school or Madrasah Ibtidaiyah (MI), junior high

schools or Madrasah Tsanawiyah (MTs) and senior

high school or Madrasah Aliyah (MA). Madrasah is

the Arabic term for schools. Henceforth, in this paper,

the word madrasah is used to refer to Islamic schools.

Different from Islamic schools, the Christian schools

are managed under the Ministry of Education and

Culture from elementary school or Sekolah Dasar

(SD), junior high school or Sekolah Menengah

Pertama (SMP) and senior high school or Sekolah

Menengah Atas (SMA). With this diversity, there is

an opportunity for the educators to find out a model

of peace education which can develop the students'

characters. A classroom-based peace education is

introduced in this paper as a model in schools with

religion-based management.

Classroom-based peace education aims to provide

students with the necessary knowledge and attitudes,

such as respect, tolerance, participation and

cooperation (Deveci, Yilmaz, Kardag, 2008). The

ideal class in it gives peace to the students, so they

can articulate it in the learning process.

Based on the description above, this paper

discusses how can the cope develop the students'

characters in Islam School and Christian School about

a model of peace education?

2 PEACE EDUCATION

Peace is the absence of violence and the presence of

social justice. The first definition calls a negative

peace and the second meaning a positive peace

(Galtung, 1995).

UNICEF (Fountain, 1999) defines peace

education as a process of promoting the knowledge,

skills, attitudes, and values needed to bring behavioral

change that allows children, youth, and adults to

prevent conflict and violence; to resolve the conflict

peacefully; and to create conducive conditions for

peace, at interpersonal, interpersonal, intergroup,

national and international levels.

Peace education is teaching the information,

attitudes, values, and behavioral competencies

needed to resolve conflicts without violence and to

build and maintain mutually beneficial, harmonious

relationships a strategy of building the capacity of

individuals with knowledge (Johnson and Johnson,

2003) and skills to prevent and manage inter/personal

or inter/inter-group conflict (Oshita, 2006). In more

simple language the essence of peace education is to

build a culture of openness and equality (Lirola,

2017).

There are four categories of peace education

activities (Solomon, 2004). They are, (1) peace

education as an activity of mindset change; (2) peace

education as the cultivation of skill; (3) peace

education as the promotion of human rights; and (4)

peace education as an activity of environmental

management, disarmament and the promotion of a

culture of peace.

Peace education can be applied in two forms:

formal and non-formal (Momodu, 2011). The first

form implements the official curriculum which is

emerged from the learning process. The materials

given includes building skill for conflict resolution,

building peace and promoting peaceful life. Through

such a formal form peace education is included in the

school curriculum from the elementary level to the

higher education.

While the non-formal form of peace education

uses methods outside of formal learning, such as

games, dramas, jingles, poems, posters, folklore, or

using radio channels, television, and other cultural

learning methods. The informal form is often

disorganized, but it is very effective for promoting

peaceful living.

3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Methodology Approach

This research is qualitative in nature. Data collection

techniques were conducted through interviews,

Classroom-Based Peace Education to Develop Students Character at Religious School in Salatiga

179

observations, and questionnaires. Questionnaires are

used to predispose to the reality that is in the class

about the Competence of Peaceful Life (CPL) and

Atmospheric Peaceful in Class (APC).

The Questionnaire CPL is developed based on

Galtung theory, with indicators (1) love, (2)

compassion, (3) harmony, (4) tolerance, (5) caring

and sharing (6) ) interdependence, (7) the

introduction of the souls of others, and (8) a sense of

gratitude. While the APC is developed based on the

thoughts of Castro and Gallace (2010) consisting of 5

(five) indicators: (1) listening when others speak, (2)

not excommunicate others, (3) speaking with polite

words, (4) speaking calmly, (5) showing respect for

others (Kartadinata, 2015).

3.2 Respondent

The respondents of this research are 35 students of

Madrasah Aliyah Negeri (state Islamic senior high

schools) (MAN Salatiga), 29 students of Christian

senior high schools (Sekolah Menengah Atas (SMA

Kristen 1 Salatiga), three natural science teachers and

two homeroom teacher of MAN Salatiga and SMA 1

Kristen. Both student respondents are from the XI

grade of natural science study program.

3.3 Analyse

The data collected in this research is analyzed using

content analysis. After the data are collected and

sorted, the next step is data reduction process by

creating an abstraction containing the core summary,

process, and statements that need to be kept inside.

After that, it is categorized and codified according to

the existing themes. To strengthen the analysis,

validation is done through triangulation (Miles and

Hubberman, 1984).

4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

4.1 Results

The results of LCP questionnaires are distributed in

table 1 below:

Table 1: Competence of peaceful life students in MAN

Salatiga and SMA Kristen 1 Salatiga.

Category

Range

MAN Salatiga

SMA Kristen 1

Salatiga

Freq

Percent

-age

Freq

Percent-

age

High

401-572

39.4

82.8

Medium

229-400

57.6

17.2

Low

57-228

3.0

Based table 2, it can be seen that the Atmosphere

of Peaceful Living (APC) in MAN Salatiga is lower

(39.4%) than in SMA Kristen 1 Salatiga (82.8%).

This finding fits the data collected from

observation during the learning process, with the

strength of character building implanted in SMA

Kristen Salatiga. The learning process in SMA

Kristen 1 Salatiga began with character building,

which was filled with prayer and reflection by their

homeroom teacher. The theme of meditation before

the Biology lesson of the day was "the heirs". In the

process of reflection, the majority of students were

solemn.

After the homeroom teacher read the reflection,

the next activity was a prayer reading led by the

ICES 2017 - 1st International Conference on Educational Sciences

180

homeroom teacher. The student's condition was the

same as when the homeroom read the reflections,

mostly solemn. The student left their class, the

students shook hands and kissed the teacher's hand as

a form of homage to his homeroom teacher.

The distribution of peaceful life competence,

when viewed from each aspect, for both schools, is

summarized in table 3 below:

Table 3: Compare among CPL in MAN Salatiga and SMA

Kristen 1 Salatiga.

Indicator

Competence

Peace Life

MAN Salatiga

In Percentage (%)

SMA Kristen 1

Salatiga

In Percentage (%)

love

39.4

57.6

3.5

65.5

Compassion

27.7

72.3

3.4

27.6

Harmony

6.1

60.6

33.3

48.3

51.7

Tolerance

15.2

84.8

Caring and

sharing

60.6

36.4

6.9

27.6

65.5

Inter-

dependence

33.3

66.7

34.5

65.5

Introduction

of the souls of

others

18.2

81.8

48.3

51.7

A sense of

gratitude

57.6

42.4

27.6

72.4

Note: L=Low; M=Medium, H=High.

Some aspects contained in the competence of

peaceful living in MAN Salatiga can be explained

based on observation at the time of learning

Mathematics, with "Z" as the initial teacher.

Mathematics lesson in natural science class MAN

Salatiga in morning schedule. The learning process

began with a greeting (salam) by the teacher, then

prayed by memorizing Qur’an (verse fatihah) and

asmaul husna. At the time of prayer, there were some

students who less focused, they intervening the prayer

by completing homework.

Many students had not yet focused on what the

teacher doing in front of the class. Such conditions are

exacerbated by the presence of late students, then the

other students give bullying. In addition, in

communication using local languages (Java) to the

teacher were still done by students.

Interestingly, when the students were given the

task of evaluation to be done in class, they were

spontaneously divided into several groups. In the

process of cooperation that occurred, still rely on one

student who was considered clever, so that noisy

conditions continue to haunt.

Base on the triangular result of an interview with

the student, with initial "R", got data, that condition

of the class which expected by the student is the class

which comfortable with not too noisy

"Honestly I am not comfortable, if that was not,

really not" (R-1)

The same is also conveyed by another student.

Sometimes, a noisy class is needed to melt the

atmosphere in the class, but there must be a limit”

(D).

These conditions and situations are not always in

every lesson, but depending on the teacher. Based on

an interview with students, at least teachers in natural

science class MAN Salatiga can be mapped into three

: (1) teachers who let when their students noisy, (2)

teachers who pay attention and warning when

students make a noise, (3 ) teachers who make the

class so tense.

Under such conditions, according to their opinion,

the ideal class is a class whose teacher is less tense

and humorous. They can be serious and can be joking

when teaching. While an ideal friend to study in the

classroom is able to see the situation and condition

when making a noise.

Although in natural science class in SMA

Salatiga, based on observations during learning

mathematics with teacher initials "A", obtained the

following description. The learning began with the

teacher greet students "good morning", then

proceeded to convey the purpose of learning that day.

When the teacher conveyed the purpose of the

learning, the mood was unstable (noisy) began to

appear.

When the teacher presents the material, one

student interrupts (cuts off the conversation) to have

his or her assigned workbook. The next learning

process was to form a group for discussion based on

the date of birth of the students, with the provision in

one group consisting of 4 persons and no members of

the same month of birth. At this time the situation was

noisy and classroom groups looked chaos because

students have to find friends who have different birth

dates.

In such a conducive situation, the situation is

countered by the student who called his friend’s name

in a less polite language. In addition, communication

between students and teachers seemed impolite,

because it uses mixed Indonesian language and Java

language.

Positive things in the class were visible when a

friend who came forward and finished working with

the right answer, they spontaneously give

Classroom-Based Peace Education to Develop Students Character at Religious School in Salatiga

181

appreciation in the form of applause. Events such as

over and over again, when there were students came

forward, others made a noisy, but at the end, they give

appreciation to the advanced.

The classroom looked relax, but improper

language usage by students tends to seem to

underestimate or lack respect for teachers. As

students instructed teachers to clean the whiteboard.

4.2 Discussion

Religions provide spiritually orientation of the peace

(Elias, 2005). Among the earliest peace education

roots, the peace emerges from the holy-books and

practices of the world’s great religions (Harris, 2008),

such prophets as Muhammad and Jesus. They taught

peace through words and actions about how to build

peaceful societies through nonviolence, social justice,

and the cultivation of inner peace.

Classroom peace education can be built by

focusing on critical thinking, self-reflection, and

experiential learning (Bartlett, 2008). The ideal class

from the student's perspective is a comfortable one

which creates a relationship that helps, cooperates,

understands and tolerances each other. Cooperation

becomes an ideal class representation because

through cooperation students will achieve goals

together (Tajfel, 2003)

Both schools demonstrated the ability to

cooperate with each other. Besides the aspect of

cooperation, the cultural competence of peace was

seen in both schools which showed the lack of

conflict. Conflicts that occurred in the classroom did

not damage and faded the social between students.

The conflicts that existed in each school are only for

a moment and can be resolved quickly by each class.

The lack of conflict in the classroom indicates that a

culture of peace is created in each school. The concept

of peace education released by UNICEF (Fountain,

1999) that stated that peace education is a process of

promoting knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values to

bring about behavioral change that allows children,

youth, and adults to prevent conflict and violence.

In the psychological dimension, each student in

the class is expected to be able to handle the conflicts

that occur in his/her life, including the conflicts that

occur in the classroom. The students in both schools

showed their ability to solve conflicts that occurred in

the classroom.

The use of nonformal approaches is very effective

for the formation of a peaceful character living in the

classroom. The non-formal approach as seen is more

effective for creating peace education (Momodu,

2011). This approach is implemented in both schools

but in different ways.

The character building in MAN Salatiga was done

by teachers during the learning. The characters were

inserted according to the context of the subject matter

being discussed. In this dimension, teachers have a

wide opportunity to install existing characters,

including the character of peaceful living.

While in SMA Kristen 1 Salatiga the form of

character building was done before the lesson began

by reflecting and respecting the national flag and the

obligation of the students to shake and kiss the hand

of the teacher. The insertion of character building in

cognitive dimension is done through reflection, while

in psychomotor dimension is done through the act of

respecting the flag and shaking hands / kissing the

teacher's hand.

Based on the results, the aspects of life

competence of peace in school have the different

strength for each class. Students in MAN Salatiga

have greater tolerance value than another aspect

(84,8%), while SMA Kristen 1 Salatiga have power

on grateful aspect (72,4%).

Tolerance in MAN Salatiga is higher because of

its learning pattern. It accommodates the difference of

scholars in Islam so that the tolerance building is

emphasized to all students. Based on the observation

result, the tolerance building values is done through

character building during learning.

While in SMA Kristen 1 Salatiga, the life

competence of peace in the aspect of "gratitude" is

greater because most of the time the homeroom

teacher always invites his students to be grateful for

the grace given by God to the students.

From the description above it can be understood

that schools with different religious bases (Islam or

Christian) will be effective through character building

when applying nonformal approaches to peaceful

cultural building, the creation of peaceful

atmosphere, and the peaceful life competencies

building in the classroom, either through programmed

character building such as SMA Kristen 1 Salatiga or

not programmed as it was done in MAN Salatiga.

The peaceful culture building through such a

system follows the opinion expressed by Oshita

(2006), that peace education is an individual capacity-

building strategy with knowledge and skills. The

ability and skill of individuals to live peacefully is in

accordance with culture, environment, and diversity

in society.

Finally, Johnson and Johnson (2006) propose to

implement classroom peace education at all levels of

schooling. It should (a) institutionalize peace

education in schools; (b) ensure that students from the

formerly adversarial groups experience positive

interaction for years; (c) ensure that the cooperative,

controversy, and conflict resolution procedures

become automatic habit patterns; and (d) ensure that

ICES 2017 - 1st International Conference on Educational Sciences

182

the values underlying these procedures become

firmly embedded.

5 CONCLUSIONS

The peaceful building of classes at religious schools

in Salatiga (MAN and Christian SMA) was conducted

using a non-formal approach, through character

building. The difference between them is in Christian

high school the peaceful character building is done

programmatically before the lesson begins, whereas

in MAN Salatiga the peaceful character building is

done through the insertion of each subject matter.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author address gratitude to the Ministry of

Religious Affair of the Republic of Indonesia that

gives the opportunity to me to access scholarship

program at UPI Bandung. The author would also like

to thank all of those involved in the realization of this

study and the anonymous reviewers who helped him

improve this document with their comments.

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