What’s up guys! This time I want to share a little story with you about life as an Indonesian college student. Well, currently I am a student at a university in Yogyakarta. I will not tell you about my major or my university or something like that, maybe next time. What I want to share with you is about the behavior of people in my university (I am pretty sure in other universities are so) including students, lecturers and all academic staffs. I am not really sure if this is behavior or not. It may be the system that is wrong which makes such “strange” behavior.
Almost every student that I see -including me- just get to the class and sit far behind (so we can even sleep during the class). Then our teacher just read what is written in the screen (read: ppt) all the time and there will be a student (a diligent one) who writes it down on her/his (normally her) note, then everyone else will copy it on the day before exam. Interestingly, the exam itself has been designed by our teacher and she/he gives the design (we call it kisi-kisi) to us so we can study (literally memorize) just what will be questioned in the exam without comprehending the lesson. We just do such things every time and eventually we don’t even learn anything (ok forgive me, may be a little). Is it not amazing?
Ok. In one hand, such a condition can save more time and more energy because we don’t need to study so many things (which is exhausting if we use the current system) to graduate from a college. But in the other hand we (student) are robbed. Our rights are robbed. Right of understanding the concepts, right of acquiring new skills, right of joy of learning, right of having unlimited curiosity, and after all right of not to be treated as if we were not human being.
This post is inspired by Prof. Suwardjono. He said that students should be courageous in learning something new, miss the class and never be patient waiting for the next class. But the reality is: students in the class just come, sit, hear (not listen), hope class will end soon, do not think, never even learn, just copy friend’s note and make it as the only source of knowledge, and pray that there will be no class the next day. He even made epithets for the college graduates from time to time, which are Sarjana Diktat (Bachelor of Dictate), Sarjana Fotokopi (Bachelor of Photocopy), Sarjana Powerpoint (Bachelor of Powerpoint). Those epithets represent how the graduates attain the material (memorize to answer the question in exam) and use it as the only source of knowledge, instead of reading and understanding the book of reference, journal, etc. And by doing such things they become bachelors, yeah SARJANA. And all these kinds of graduates are occupying so many crucial positions in this nation. Can you imagine how would this nation be like?