Education, Indonesia
How do Most People in Indonesia Interpret Education?
First of all, “most” is not “all”. I do believe there are people out there, in Indonesia, who have different interpretations about education like most people do. Secondly, it’s just my personal thoughts, based on my personal experience. Certainly, the truth is up to yours.
I lived in this country for almost 24 years. I was born, grew up, took formal education, until I had a career in Indonesia. I think growing up in Indonesia, which is a developing country, is not bad at all. I may not be as genius as the people in Silicon Valley. My orientation also should be different from the people in Wall Street. I may not be as hardworking as the people in Japan or China. However, being born and grew up in Indonesia is a blessing for me because this country still has much more problems than the places that I mentioned before, where one of them is education.
There are still many problems in education in Indonesia, especially formal education. Unequal education, the quality of teachers or lecturers, economic, infrastructure and technology still become the main issues of formal education in this beloved country. Nevertheless, I will not discuss those problems in this article, but to explain how many misunderstandings Indonesians have in interpreting education.
Among those misunderstandings that I often face is the function of the education itself. Many people, especially parents in my country, only consider education as an instrument to achieve their careers, which is not false at all. But, if we only consider education as such, I think we reduce the potential of education itself. So, my question is:
“What is education?”
In fact, education is a metaphysical thing. We can say and think about it, but we can’t touch, see or smell it as well as justice, freedom, kindness, poverty, love, faith and so on. On the question about “what is education”, I would like to answer it in the perspective of its function.
In my opinion, the function of education is divided into 3 things: career, maturity and wisdom. Sadly, people in my country have a tendency to see the function of education only for a career. It is like “you have to get an A in every subject in school in order to save your career in the future”.
Motherfucker. I mean, how the fuck can I get A in every subjects? It may be possible, but surely there’s an opportunity cost in it. I may get A’s in every subject, but it also may make me become less active, socialize or organize as a consequence.
I remember when some people ask me, “what kind of major did you take in your university?” I replied, “Philosophy”. The next question is quite fun and some of them make me laugh. It’s like “Hah, what’s philosophy?”, “So, you decided to become atheist?”, or “What do you want to be a philosophy graduate?”
Man, I took this education not to grant my career. I try to gain my bachelor’s degree not to become the next Zuckerberg or Bezos. I’m not doing this so that I could sit at the top of the building while drinking my Cointreau, sucking a cigar and saying “ahh, how easy it is”. If I think that education is only to guarantee my career, then I have killed the potential of education itself
“Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of mind to think.”
I’m doing this because I’m human. As a human, God gave me this rationality to think and speak. I just want to thank God and respect (him or her?), that’s why I took this education to sharpen my sense of human being. And I think education is all about its process, not the A score on the sheet of paper.
Education not only for my career, but it also develops my maturity and wisdom. It is shaping the way of my thoughts, the way I speak and the way I treat each other. It teaches me about values, morality and ethics. This is all packaged in one variable called education, but unfortunately most people’s eyes in my country only focus on the function of education as a career.
By the way, thank you Indonesia for having this kind of problem so that I could write this shit. I really recommend this country if you want to be a writer lol. Indonesia is a place where a lot of forces come together that work on you as a person, work on your community, work on a country and there’s no shortage of thieves.
