Indonesian and Education

When i was on the way to my cousins' house, my mom asked us to hear a Saturday radio program in Smart FM (95.9FM, Jakarta) called "Indonesian Strong From Home" by Ayah Edy. The topic of the day is about changing our perspective toward learning.

Actually, the weekly program is designated for adults, but I don't care any of that thing

One of the biggest issue in today's topic is about why most of Indonesian children can't go forward. He said that it's not the child's fault at all, but it happened mostly because adults couldn't find a good way to teach the children. Our school system is designated not to develop the genious of every children, but it only repeat and repeat what we had learnt and discovered before. He also quoted what Edison said about education, "education is to innovate and modify what we had discovered before, and not repeat and forced someone to memorize what we had discovered before. So our way to educate youngsters, in the eyes of Edison(and some of the other genious) is practically wrong.

He also noted 4 ways of learning, based on their personality (sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, and melancholic) and some of other things. The point of today's program is, that children need different approach from one to another, and that's the first key to give our generation a good education. It's our obligation to know the child's (or our) way to learn, and learn with that way.

The program lasted for 2 hour (10 am-12 noon) and I started to discuss what i had heard before with my mom, my dad, and my sister. It's so worthwhile to discuss that I didn't realize that I'd arrived.

The first and the foremost thing of education, for me, is that I'm assured to get what I deserve to learn and what I have to learn. As a student, I agree of what Ayah Edy said before and I've faced a lot of struggle in my study. Indeed, I need a calm-but-not-quiet and supporting environment to discover something, also a capable and debatable teacher to discover something, and I rarely found this in my school.

But what I bear in my mind the most of education topic is that I'm afraid of Indonesia's quality of educator. People, and the way of approaching and teaching is the most important thing of education, and we know that Indonesia now face a shortage of this kind of educator. We had a lost generation in our country, and they're teaching our generation, the leader of the future, with an old, orthodox approach that has proven ineffective. The greatest fear of this nation is not about struggling macroeconomic, corrupt political and governmental system, but about the potential of the future "lost generation", with educational, moral, and ethical problem. This is the biggest problem we should address, and this is not only about raising the education budget, but it's about the people and the system.

We have to start to humanize ourselves, and we shall educate ourselves with the way genius educate themselves. Because everyone of us is born genius, God gave us unique talents and education is to raise them, and process them so we can face the challenge of the future. And the challenge of the future can only be solved by modify and innovate what we had discovered before, and not only by memorize what we had discovered.