Consider Unyil, son of a municipal high official who lives prosperously in the capital city. Every day, he goes to school picked up by his driver from his mansion. In school, he and his affluent friends use computer to do their math assignment from their teacher. On the other side, Bolang, a child living in a shack in his remote village, goes to school by walking down the hills along with his other companions. Studying in a small class and reading his books on the weathered table are his daily life in school. Though he is at the same grade with Unyil, Bolang knows nothing about computer. Instead of using calculator, he uses gravels gathered from a riverbank close to his school for studying math. They use an old fashion blackboard with some white chalks bought once a month by their teacher from the closest suburb which can be reached by motorcycle in 1 day journey.
The contrast condition described above on how those two kids in one generation experiencing different side of education facilities in their schools portrays the social reality of education divide of rich-poor which is mostly drawn as rural-urban discrimination. It indicates that children in cities were given more access to high-quality schools than those of their peers in villages. The major problem is that poor people are provided with schools, but unlike those elite schools in the cities, not with proper facilities to develop. The exclusion of the poor children increases the number of uneducated and illiterate rates of villagers which keeps them to be left behind. While cities grow faster each time, villages remain undeveloped. Ignoring education in the villages will delay their life improvement (as the impact of late adoption), and impede villagers’ welfare to grow which eventually makes them laggard.
Lack of education for poor children in the villages should be tackled with higher attention, because it is imperative to improve rural people’s life before thinking about overall development. There are many ways to improving education in rural areas. Make access to good education for underprivileged children, which is elaborated as cheap and affordable school’s fees, skilled teachers, good teaching and learning devices, and other student’s conveniences, is the most important things to be provided to make students’ passion for study to rise. Education is basic need of mankind (after oxygen, of course) to evolve, furthermore, to build and adopt with civilization. Specifically, education is primary need of children for building the country, where children and teenagers will play their future roles as the nation stakeholders. Addressing issues on modernize the country is impossible to be realized without aiming rural development as the sole of the nation, and achieving rural development will be unworkable without resolving its education problem for rural children.
* a reflection on national education day… commemorated on May 2nd, 2011..
Zulham Mahasin 