Education is essential for human development; the role of education is to pass down the information and knowledge gained to another generation. Thus, the next generation do not have to do everything from scratch; the young generation can continue what the previous generation did. Both developed and developing country think that education is very important. The difference is developed country do not just think: they do something about it. Most of the top universities and schools around the world locates in developed country. Indonesia is one of the developing countries, which need more attention in their education.
Indonesia, as we all know has a lot of potential-both in nature and in human resources. About 250 million people are living in Indonesia, all spread in more than a thousand islands. Unfortunately, learning centers where people can get 'education' only exist in some big cities all over Indonesia, not in every side and corner of Indonesia. Some regions can already read and write in more than 3 languages while the other regions still do not even know how to read and write. The regions that are developing keep being developed while the regions that are undeveloped remain undeveloped. As mentioned before, education is important, yet neither government nor the people care about it. There are a lot of aspects showing Indonesian's education is problematic.
There are several news about students in Indonesia who have to go through fast-flow River, broken bridge, or should walk for a few hours to reach school because school does not exist in their village. No step taken to fix them and they remain the same for months or even years. It feels right if parents are worried about their children going to school in those kind of conditions; their children's life is more important than education. If the government open their eyes wide, they sure will do something about these conditions.
It is also the fact that a lot of children in Indonesia experience drop out from school because of having not enough money. Poverty is one problem in Indonesia's education. It is hard for those drop out children to put aside their education and start working in early stage but their condition force them to. It is also a problem that money is everything in education. When there is no money, there is no education gained. Scholarship is a solution for this condition but it leads to another problem. Is the scholarship given to children who need education or to children who have gained 'smart' predicate? Children who have never gotten an education will have a hard time getting a scholarship for education because they are uneducated; such an irony. Government has given a scholarship called BOS which stands for Bantuan Operasional Sekolah for children to reach minimum level of education, junior high but they still have to buy some things on their own while what they need is fully-paid school where they do not have to spend more money to get education.
Not only students, national schools also experience a lot of problems, especially in facilities and building. The facilities built are not enough to support teaching-learning process. The building is also easily wrecked. In rainy season, usually the roof get leaked and disturb the teaching learning process. Learning centers need to be more facilitated and also keep being renovated to make students feel more comfortable and to show some support in encouraging more people to get education.
The problems mentioned earlier are technical. How about the system itself? The education system in Indonesia can be said greedy. In Indonesia, students have to be superior in every subjects at school. They cannot be weak in some subjects, otherwise they will fail to be promoted to the next grade. It is not fair that students who are superior in non-academic subjects fail to graduate from school because they cannot do mathematics, physics, chemistry, and other subjects considered 'important'. Every subjects are important in their own way. Basics of each subjects are important for knowledge but once again, no one is perfect; they cannot be superior in every subjects. In developed countries, basics of the subjects are given and the students can choose freely which subjects they wanted to be focus on in early stage while in Indonesia, the chance to get that freedom is only when you graduate from senior high and take college. It takes too long for students to finally can express what they really love to do, they can feel desperate before reaching the 'free' stage because of their failure in other subjects.
School hours is another problem of education in Indonesia. Average school hour for senior high students is eight hours, same as working hour. Eventhough there are breaks given, the teaching-learning process will not be effective anymore because the brain will load too much information in that period of time. Moreover, if the teachers are catching the materials up that should be given, they will teach in rush, leaving the students who cannot catch up with the materials. In result, students will get stressed because they do not understand and having a hard time to catch up with the subjects because the next lesson will keep occur. They should take additional courses after school to help them studying, about 2 hours spent at course. Extracurricular activities also take some time-about 1.5 hours to occur-so that students feel more tired. If we calculate all the time spent for educational purpose, it is about 11.5 hours, almost half of the day. The previous minister of education said that students have not spent enough time at school, they need to be busy at school so that clash between school can be prevented. It is not true logically. By being stressed, human will be more dangerous than in healthy condition, they can do anything without thinking further, chance to clash between school will increase to reduce their stress level.
Actually, it does not stop there. Quiz, tasks, homeworks, projects, and assignments will worsen the situation. Additional hours at home should be spent on doing those works. Is there enough time to rest? Many students can relate and the answer is not enough time to rest. Rest is important for recovering energy and refreshing your mind. Concentration on learning is also affected by the fatigue built by not resting. It will be hard for the students to concentrate in class while being tired. They can fall asleep easily and do not listen to what the lecturer says.
The fact is students will study only for exams and as soon as the exams are over, they forget what they have learned. This is the main problem: school is not learning center; it is memorizing center. The only thing being tested in the exams is how well you can memorize things. Learning theory is necessary but learning by doing is the best way to remember. In theory, everything is possible but in practice; no one knows what will happen. It is very recommended to add more practical hours for education instead of adding more hours to spend on studying theory. The time spent on studying theory may should be reduced to fit in the schedule of practicing. The result can be seen later but sure practicing is more fun and have more benefits than learning too many theories. In short, Indonesia should put more care towards education for better future of Indonesia.