Indonesian education system has been derived from a socialist view of education where the government pushes the people to become engineers, doctors, economist and scientist to boost massive development on infrastructure, technology and maintain prosperity, while keeping society docile with less room for creativity and innovation from the students.

For the past few months, all the hypes about the Indonesian presidential election hasn't really sparked my interest. I was one of many example of those kind of people who decided not to follow anymore news about the Indonesian politics simply because everything that the media said seems to be unreliable, or because wherever the story goes it wouldn't affect our lives significantly. Until very recently, my housemate showed me the presidential debate via YouTube, which she described as "a presentation of the same old bullshits, but from a different mouth" kinda thing, which makes me wonder how much Indonesia has develop since the last big guy took over.

Now I won't start criticizing or ranting or being cynical about anything. There are obviously some pros and cons from each candidate, which is a subject of another endless debate in the public. And believe me, I won't start another stupid arguments about which candidate is better or not, simply because I'm sick of it and I want you to decide your own choice, not by the influence of other, sometimes nonsensical and bias, human beings. From the debate, I notice that some points that have been mentioned by both candidates should be elaborated. And one that I would highlight the most is the education and employment of the general public.


The Fall of Conventional Education

Every year, millions of 12th grade high school students engage in the National Exam that shakes the entire nation due to the controversies that surround it. The test was proclaimed to be some sort of standardization of the education level in the entire nation. However, many argues that the exam was too hard, or too easy, for certain groups of people, therefore it is not a good measure of the academic skill of every students in Indonesia. Second, there has been many occasion that the answers has been leaked before the exam even begin. More importantly, the curriculum that gave birth to the National Exam itself, is one of the reason why Indonesia is lacking the requirements needed to transform itself to a developed country.

Our curriculum has been derived from a socialist view of education where the government pushes the people to become engineers, doctors, economist and scientist to boost massive development on infrastructure, technology and maintain prosperity, while keeping society docile with less room for creativity and innovation from the student. I was left confused with the initial discussion of removing English and Quantitative subjects from elementary level education and focus more in religious and moral teachings. And the way these subjects taught has not been changed significantly since the last time my grandfather went to a school. A passive way of learning where the students are considered as audience, not participants.

In this education system, students freedom of thinking and creativity has been very limited by leaving no room for discussion and a forum for students to express their minds. Worse, teachers are often very strict about answers and ideas. For instance, answers are often absolute and truths are something that cannot be changed, or even argued. Insubordination or disagreement with teachers are often punished, creating a human being with low self-esteem that are easily controlled and manipulated by power superior to them.

Based on my remark above, I think Indonesia should not rely on the idea of conventional education. To compete globally, Indonesia must adopt a new way of teaching that requires teachers to define concepts and knowledge essential for students to find their own perception of 'truth', not by limiting their thinking and directing them into previous ideas (that are sometimes not ideally correct) and stopping a chance for innovation and creativity.

Furthermore, based on Jokowi's remark, of course one cannot argue that moral values should be the ideal focus of primary education. But moral values are ingrained, not taught. It is achieved through observation and practice, and done voluntarily by the students. It cannot be forced so that the students feel obligated and ended up hating it. It requires example. What good a knowledge of moral values if there are still a lot of people, including their own parents, who are littering, swearing, spitting everywhere or maybe paying someone to actually do something illegal, like bribing a cop, in front of their child?



A Freedom of Thinking

Freedom of thinking should not be limited to only for students at the early stage of elementary school. Elementary school students should be introduced with basic concepts of arts, science, social science and language at the age of 10 minimum, that is at 5th grade on traditional level of education. However, I find it weird that our education system pays too much attention on natural and social science field, rather than other fields like arts and language, to name a few. More importantly, typical Indonesian parents and teachers has a stereotype that "natural science are better than the rest", making students somewhat forced to actually took those kinds of subjects.

However, the public should be resuscitated that the world works as a system. Is not possible for everyone to become doctors, or engineers, or economist, or lawyers. There should be someone occupies other jobs available and people should be aware of the existence of other non-conventional careers and how to pursue them. It is not a means of natural selection; those who doesn't pass the National Exam or did not go into universities will be at the bottom of the societal hierarchy. It is a freedom of choice; people should know what field they want to purse, how are they going to purse it and actually enjoy living life from their respective choice.

Therefore, students should be generally categorized by their talents, skills and passion by the time they reach junior high. And by the time they reach senior high school, they should be able to choose which subject they want to take and know that the pathways to their careers are not only universities. Indonesia actually does have a lot of other tertiary schools such as Sekolah Tinggi Ilmu Pelayaran, Sekolah Tinggi Pemerintahan Dalam Negeri, Sekolah Tinggi Akuntansi Negara and Sekolah Tinggi Ilmu Komunikasi, just to name a few.

One should take into account that the idea of 'success' is very subjective and different between people. Success is not always mean "to have a lot of money" or "to have certain jobs or position". What about doing exactly what you're passionate about and be happy with it? Will that count as a success? Well, it does for a lot of people. It is then back to the government itself to provide jobs in that specific area and give incentive like health insurance and allowance.



An Endless Possibilities

My former housemate concluded in his research that Indonesia has a large potential to be able to fully depend on renewable energy. But the scale of the archipelago hinders the plan for the distribution of energy from one province to another. Therefore, he added that each region should rely on different kinds of energy. For example, the island of Sumba in East Nusa Tenggara has a lot of potential to start a wind-based energy plant. Other plates like Dieng has a large raw source of Geothermal energy. Each region has their own specialty. If we are smart enough to exploit these professionally, we could be no longer depend on fossil fuel and could export it to other countries while gaining revenue out of it. However, being skeptic as usual, I added that the Ministry of Research and Technology of Indonesia has one of the lowest budget in the cabinet. Only having approximately Rp 500 billion or roughly equal to US$ 42 million. That means it would be a long way to go to actually achieve that kind of technological advancement.

But just imagine if each region has their own specialty? You don't have to travel far and wide to actually get a job. And with an effective regional autonomy, provided that corruption is at minimum (absolutely no corruption would be very superficial), each province will have their own respective school that best served their own resources and manage it for the prosperity of the people within their own region.

I agree with what Prabowo had to say that he will empower peasants, farmers and fishermen if he becomes president, but how many hectares of land would you actually give to the people? You won't give enough jobs for the people and you can't possibly think that everyone wants to be a farmer. I agree that Jokowi mentioned that traditional market and street vendors will be his main focus. But in the long run, not everyone wants to be a traditional market distributor. Eventually, people will shift into larger scale supermarkets with better quality goods. These are good points, but when you want to improve the education, you might as well provide more diverse choice of jobs.

We are in the industrial era, we need proletarians to move the entire economy. We need factory workers, we need mechanics, truck drivers, welders, builders, sailors, all the blue-collar works you can think of. For manufacturing sector, mining, oil and gas, construction, mechanical, maintenance and other areas that are exists, emerging or even haven't been explored before. They are the gears, the wheel that drives the economy of the nation. Empowering these people, with the right system of education will make a lot of difference to Indonesia as a whole.

On the other hand, arts, languages and social sciences should be well acknowledged too. Look at South Korea and their emerging culture of Kpop. These fields are required to maintain and empower the identity of a nation on the global scale. Take a look at Japan and how strong their culture are in the eyes of the world. Why can't we be like that? On the surface of earth, which nation has the most traditional language, the most extensive culture, the hybrid of many acculturation from India, Asia, Middle East and Europe? You want to preserve the national identity, this is one way how.

So, how's it gonna be Mr. Future President?



Side note: If you haven't decide which presidential candidate you would choose until the voting ballot date, please don't stay at home. Just come, even if you don't have the obligation to choose, just put a hole on each candidate's head. At least you've used your ballot paper. You know where all the campaign fund goes to? Yep, it is used to manipulate the result by using millions of unused ballot papers. So yeah, even if you don't give a damn about the politics, you should come and save your country.