Reclaiming an Ideal: The Islamization of Education in Muslim Mindanao

Abstract

Muslim Filipino families have long been accustomed to sending their children to public schools in hopes of securing their economic future while also sending them to Islamic schools to secure their religious faith. But by the early 1990s, growing dissatisfaction with what Hashim (2004) has termed “educational dualism”—that is secular education that ignored or even undermined students’ identity as Muslims and Islamic education that provided few if any economic opportunities—led more and more Muslim Filipino parents to call for the “Islamization” of education in Muslim Mindanao. This chapter traces the development of the notion of Islamization from its initial articulation by Muslim Filipino intellectuals and proprietors of private madaris to serious policy proposals by both the national Department of Education and the regional DepEd in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. It critically examines the potential promise and pitfalls of this policy experiment.