Education

Today’s Education for Future

Education is a life time need. Every person needs education since without education people will be difficult to develop and even left behind. Therefore education must totally be headed to bring about qualified and competitive out puts having great and good morale.

The aim of education is supposed to make people’s life better and improve entirely. It means that education is able to make people have not only good faith to the God Almighty, have good manner, knowledge and skill  but also have healthy physic and mental, tough personality, independent,  and have high responsibility as society and nation. In addition, education must be able to make people take an active role in every field of life, smart, creative, skilful, honest, discipline, democratic, tolerant with the priority of the nation union.

Giving the priority for the children today means preparing the future generation as the mind of the children is like the imageless photographic plate reflecting no picture.

The four pillars of education for today and future launched by UNESCO which need to be developed by formal education are: (1) learning to know, (2) learning to do, (3) learning to be, and (4) learning to live together.

To implement 'learning to know', teachers should function as facilitator. They should be able to be friends to talk to in improving certain knowledge mastery.  

’Learning to do’ can work well if an education institution facilitates students to actualize their skill, talent, and interest. Though the students’ talent and interest is much influenced by heredity but its development depends on the environment where the students grow up. Students’ skill can support their life even it does more dominant than their knowledge in getting their success.

Education implemented must suit the society’s need or the need of the area where the education is done. The ‘local load’ developed must meet the local society’s need.

‘Learning to be’ is closely related to talent, interest, physical and mental development, personality and the environment of the student.  For aggressive students, self development can work well if given great chance to be creative. On the contrary, for the passive students, the teacher’s role as a guide and facilitator is really needed to develop his/her maximally.

The habit of living together, respecting each other, being open-minded, taking and giving need to be improved. This condition will give chance to have the process of "learning to live together".

Hence, the demand for education today and future must lead to improve not only the quality of intellectual and professional competence but also attitude, personality and morale. With these all, it can place us in dignity in the middle of the world society.

Due to the downward of the education achievement so far, the anticipative steps must be taken are to get the society’s active role in the education world, to improve the management in every level and program of education. To improve the quality of the local education, especially in districts, what should be observed are the objective condition of : (1) the teachers (the distribution, qualification, competence on material and instructional, socio-personal, and prosperity; (2) the curriculum (how the teachers and biaruocrate look on it); (3) The instructional sources used by students and teachers (the quality and quantity of the material sources); (4) the instructional facilities; (5) the supporting links (institution and society, inter institutions, institution and information centers); (6) the instructional atmosphere.

The quality of education can be improved through series of actions on problems faced. It can be in the form of curriculum enhancing basic competence, applying mastery learning concept, and supporting creative, democratic and independent attitude.  Besides, it is necessary to identify the local /regional  strength and make use of it to facilitate the process of optimizing the education quality such as the organizations of experts, university students, mass media, politics, study clubs, publishers and non-government organizations (NGOs/LSM)- (referred to many sources)