I

t used to be that religion was a subject taught at home.

Today, as parents spend most of their time working, they are more than happy to allow schools to teach their children about angels and apostles, and how to live life according to the holy books.

Kristina Pujaningrum, whose daughter is a sixth-grader at a Catholic school in Bekasi, West Java, said that religious school was probably the only place where lessons on religion were taught well.

“It might be easier to make your children smarter in math and science at regular schools, but I think it’s harder to instill religious values amid all the modernity. So that’s why I decided to enroll her in a religious school,” she said.

At the school, Kristina said that other than having two to three hours of religious studies a day, her daughter attended daily morning prayer, daily mass prayer and Sunday services.

Kristina said she believed that enrolling her daughter in a Catholic school would not turn her into a less tolerant child. “I would not in any way bar her from making friends with kids from other faiths,” Kristina told The Jakarta Post.

Trisnawieta Eviany, a 37-year-old mother who lives in Kelapa Dua, Depok, said that no one in her family was knowledgeable enough about religion to teach their children, so they were sent to Nurul Fikri Islamic school, in the neighborhood. Nurul Fikri is one of 1,700 Islamic schools in Greater Jakarta.

“I know they are in good hands and I believe this school can give them a solid foundation for their lives based on Islamic values,” she said.

Trisnawieta said that learning Islamic values early on in their lives could help shape her two sons to become better people.

“I simply want them to behave, and one of the ways to do that is through religion. And I want to introduce religion to them as early as possible because it takes a very long time for someone to get used to religion and make it a main reference,” she told the Post, adding that daily Koran recitals were part of the school’s curriculum.

Trisnawieta said that in spite of some intensive courses on Islamic values, she was not concerned about her two sons being exposed to a skewered version of Islam that could turn them into extremists.

“The school intensively communicates with the parents. They tell us about the materials taught in class. So I’m pretty sure that the school doesn’t have any intention to turn their students into extremists,” she said, adding that her two children did not seem to have problems with any of the subject matter studied at the school.

Rector of Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University (UIN) Komaruddin Hidayat said that teachers in religious schools held the key to creating inclusive students. “With good teachers, students can become tolerant. On the contrary, if teachers are too exclusive, they will teach them to be narrow-minded students,” he said.