Penuntasan wajib belajar 9 tahun di "daerah seribu pesantren": Masalah sosial-ekonomi, politik, dan budaya

Abstract

This paper illustrates the changing conditions for the completion of the nine years compulsory education in the context of regional autonomy, the struggle between general education and pesantren education, economic hardship, and the prospect of employment opportunity in Bangkalan. The Bangkalan society in general put religious education which mostly served by pesantren as a primary education because it involves learning (religious study) about the meaning of life, in the meantime, "public" schools education, even madrasah is seen as secondary because it emphasizes more on learning about ways or means to live. As a result, the record of gross enrollment rate in primary school was low. The record of achievement improved partly after these factors: the entrance of Package B (equivalent of SMP/MTs) was accepted by the pesantren and Islamic schools diniyah, the implementation of BOS assistance in schools and madrasah, as well as the increasing confidence in public school/madrasah. In contrast to the era before the autonomy, the educational programs in this region is now believed to not to "forget about religion in school" because many of the executives and legislators in the region come from pesantren themselves. In addition, the confidence in the path (trajectory) of ''pesantren-elementary schools-working entrepreneur-rich" has been weakened by the declining of the timber trade and shipping that have been relied upon. On the other hand, an expectation in the community raises that employment opportunities will open up as a result of the relocation of industry from around Surabaya to Bangkalan which will soon be receiving more graduates from public school/madrasah than graduates from pesantren. The APK achievement record will hopefully be better in the future if the local bureaucracy can end the discrimination by seriously placing pesantren in general and madrasah in particular as partners in order to complete the compulsory education.