Reflection on the Traditional Education: BRE

Abstract

Reflection on the Traditional Religious Education: Within the Context of Formal Buddhist Religious Education Based on a Buddhist Personal Experience

As Dewey said that “self-realization or ability to see the linkages of what one learning and what is happening surround their life is very much more important than the subject taught”. This statement indicates the duty of teacher are not merely standing, speaking, and teaching the class to finish the prescribed curricula but to make the students sense about how to use the subject and apply them in their daily life or to response the problems that they may face in the society. So does the students, they should be able to perceive the message that teachers try to convey to them, accepting them in the heart and attempt to articulate them in order to be useable for their life. Emphasizing on the urgent need for teachers to make their student see the relation of the subject and their life were so that Dewey categorized it as violence or crime within education for anyone that misses this point.

Such intended or unintended way of teaching will affect the students’ development process, since they got little chance to explore the subject as far as they could and as to follow the idea that teachers told them. Often time, to some traditional kind of education, teacher has at the very beginning been telling the student that ‘you have to do exactly the same as I or the book told you’ in this way student can hardly develop their ability to think broader and deeper to the text. That is because they were so told by their previous teachers during student time. These kind of cases, which had been I experienced sometime in the past within the context of religious education and plural situational society.

Religious education is one of the subjects which are very crucial to be address because it directly talks about the principles, for example what is good or otherwise. Religious education, which is here contextualized within Buddhist Religious education, should actually be taught in such manner. Letting students to explore what is being taught in the class and then to integrate them in their daily life. The Study of Buddhist education should emphasize on the balance of theory and practice, and directed to the progress of students knowledge than just to be focused on the fulfillment of the set-curricula. This article will explore a reflection based on personal experience on account of formal Buddhist education. Besides, this paper will show how an open education could enhance and even give deeper understanding to the students, making Buddhism not as an ivory tower.

* This paper was presented at the conference held by UNDV in Hanoi, Vietnam. (2008)