Towards a Better Indonesia
Education is something that so familiar to human ears because education makes humans able to survive until now. From the time of BC until now, education has continued to develop. Likewise, from now until the years ahead, education will continue to develop and it will not stop. According to Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia (KBBI), education is the process of changing attitudes and behavior of a person or group of people to mature them through teaching and training efforts. From this definition, it can be concluded that the purpose of education is to change the attitudes and mindsets of people to become more critical and mature and also more open-minded so that later it will be used to live their lives and to build their own country.
Education is one of the most important aspects that must be maintained and developed in every country. The reason is, if education in a country is good, then Human Resources (HR) will be high and/or have a greater quality that will result in the country’s development which will make that country become a developed country.
Indonesia is ranked 67th out of 125 countries in the Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI) in 2019. As it can be seen from the table below.
GTCI is an annual comprehensive report that can be used as an indicator to measure how a developing country and city provide human resources to improve competitiveness. In 2018, Indonesia’s ranked 77th. It can be seen that education in Indonesia is growing year by year. However, if were to compare Indonesia’s rank with its large population, it is not very balance. Indonesia has a population of around 266.91 million people and 68% of them are of productive age. If a large number of people of this productive age is accompanied by good education, then Indonesia should be able to rank higher.
Because of this, Indonesian citizens should be more concerned with the condition of education in their own country. The lack of labor supply to educate the country, especially in remote areas, has left these regions behind in education. One example of the lack of education is conflict easily occurs, caused by a lack of ability to think critically. For example, the recent case about racism towards Papuan students.
This great riot occurred because of the rejection or failure in educating the citizen of Indonesia about unity in diversity (Bhineka Tunggal Ika). If only the community truly understood about Bhineka Tunggal Ika, a conflict like this would not have happened. Therefore, because of the insignificant influence of education on this country, the right thing to do for Indonesia is to make their education better to prevent a conflict like this to happen.
In conclusion, education is an aspect that plays a very important role in the progress of a country and therefore, lets us as citizens of Indonesia pay more attention to these aspects and participate in advancing education in Indonesia. Let’s make Indonesia a better country!
