Multicultural Citizenship Education in Indonesia: The Case of a Chinese Christian School

• Main Author: HOON, Chang Yau
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2013
• Subjects: Christianity; citizenship; education; multiculturalism; young population; Indonesia; Chinese; Asian Studies; Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies; Religion
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/1341; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/2597/viewcontent/MulticulturalCitizenshipEducationIndonesia_2013_afv.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

This study investigates how multicultural citizenship education is taught in a Chinese Christian school in Jakarta, where multiculturalism is not a natural experience. Schoolyard ethnographic research was deployed to explore the reality of a ‘double minority’ — Chinese Christians — and how the citizenship of this marginal group is constructed and contested in national, school, and familial discourses. The article argues that it is necessary for schools to actively implement multicultural citizenship education in order to create a new generation of young adults who are empowered, tolerant, active, participatory citizens of Indonesia. As schools are a microcosm of the nation-state, successful multicultural citizenship education can have real societal implications for it has the potential to render the idealism enshrined in the national motto of ‘Unity in Diversity’ a lived reality.