Implementation of Multicultural Education in Indonesia Between Expectations and Reality

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to describe the current implementation of multicultural education in Indonesia and to describe the implementation of multicultural education in Indonesia in the future. This research was a qualitative research to understand a phenomenon in the social context naturally with the advanced process of interaction between researchers’ in-depth communication and the phenomenon. Subject of research was the researchers, while the research object was the Multicultural Education Implementation of current and forthcoming. The methods of data collection were interviews, observation, and documentation. Data analysis technique was interactive analysis techniques as disclosed by Miles and Huberman (1984: 23) which included four steps, namely, data collection, data reduction, data display, and conclusion. The results showed that the implementation of multicultural education with a lot of experience irregularities included the dimensions of the multidimensional concept, the dimension of meaning, the content dimension, the cultural dimension, the dimension of primordialism, the egocentric dimensions, and the religious dimensions. It is expected that the future implementation of multicultural education should be improved both in quantity and quality. However, it will require a profound awareness from the Indonesian citizens that pluralism is a priceless investment. With the plurality, Indonesian people can be dynamic, creative, and innovative. Thus, the understanding should be introduced as early as possible that multicultural education can provide services to all students regardless of their socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation, or ethnic background, race or culture, and equal chance to learn in school. Multicultural education was also based on the fact that students do not learn in a vacuum as their cultures influence them to learn in a certain way. The researchers concluded that nowadays, the implementation of multicultural education faced a complex problem, thus, the future implementation of multicultural education should be able to minimize the various forms of problems that currently appeared.