Education and Dreams with it

Nelson Mandela had said, “Education is the weapon, which you can use to change the world.” Most of us now believe that education has main role in our life. How could we say that we can use it to change the world?

We already have the answer. Education is a stage of knowledge transfer and experience sharing. Experience sharing gives learners the knowledge about what they have not faced or seen in their lives—that is the capacity of imagination. With this capacity, people gain the power of innovation which can be used to enhance human life quality.

Formal education is not the only form of education that is important. Non-formal and informal education also have equal roles in creating the mass that can make impact. It means that family and society also take a big part in educating young minds. However, those forms of education won’t be counted to determine the human quality. It is because exact measurable standards are required to check to what extent people have succeeded or failed in getting knowledge.

Based on these facts, the formal education is the way that most of us have agreed to use as the standard of human quality. The problem is, the high and good quality of formal education is limited and not accessible to people of lower-middle-class societies. The formal education that is implemented by the levels from elementary school to university education has been designed to sharpen people’s qualities. Higher the level of formal education, more skilled the people are.

But, how many people who join elementary education succeed in pursuing higher education? According to a report by UNICEF Indonesia, 47% of Indonesian people complete elementary school, 22% complete Junior High School, and only 2% graduate from university. The data show that formal education still has a long way to go.

As the agent for changes, what can we youths do to respond to the condition? We can start by building a mindset that every people have a right to get quality education and they should put optimum efforts to attain it. We should also bring the positive spirit to the others regarding it.

I gained memorable experiences when I joined some voluntary teaching activities. From 2009 to 2013 I got to be a Qur’anic studies teacher in my village. Every weekend, I taught children how to read holy Qur’an and Islamic stories. I felt the positive spirit of my student on how the have a high interest in the history. I taught them how to pray, and how to learn by playing also told them about morality. I once asked my student what made him join my classes. “You tell me how to pray. When I pray before study, God helps me in being a smart student,” he replied.

I got another lesson I got when I was a voluntary teacher for about four months in a small village near to my university. I taught languages, mathematics, and social science to the children. One of my student, named Yoga told me that he wants to be a president. I asked him, “Why do you want to be a president?” He said, “When I lead a country, I can build a good school and give children like me the good facility. So they can study happily”.

I got a chance to learn how actually education helps the children in living their dreams. I realized that education helps people in having sensitivity towards their problem and makes us have a willingness to find the solution for the problem.