Argumentative

               Education is very important in our life. It serves as a basic foundation for our life and helps us to know the things we need in our jobs and our daily lives, It also provide us with the hard skills we need in our job like how to calculate something or how to do something and also the soft skills like communication skills that are essential in our daily lives. With good education, it will be easier for us to get a good job and of course that means a good salary as well. Imagine if we never got education in our life, forget thinking about getting a good job, it will be very difficult for us to fulfill our daily needs and to keep up with the advancement of technology especially when we live in a big city like Bandung or Jakarta. Everyone knows the importance of education but nowadays education in Indonesia only focus on getting a good score in a subject but sometimes forget about teaching the soft skills. Moreover, whether or not a student graduates from the high school is very much determined by 3-days national exam and many teachers often just teach the subjects to make the students get good marks but do not know what the benefit of the lesson for the students.

               Getting a good score for a school subject, can prove that someone understands the material taught, but it is useless without a good character or the lack of soft skills. The curriculum in Indonesia is focused on a quantitative parameter which is someone’s score. Meanwhile, the qualitative parameters such as teamwork or communication skill are often being forgotten. The unbalanced skills can affect our life in the future. For instance, students who graduate from a university often have very good understanding about a subject they learnt, but sometimes lacks the ability to communicate it to other people or cannot work in a team. It happens because since high school, they are accustomed to study hard by themselves in order to get a good score but seldom work together in a team. But in real life, the soft skill is much more important to have than just getting a good score in a school.

               Some people think that having a 3-days national exam is great because it could standardize the education in Indonesia, thus it is easier to tell which student is better than the others by looking at the exam score. However the exam still has many flaws, the 3-days national exam is like telling someone that the exam is everything, and the 3-years study in a school means nothing, because we could only study 3 days before the exam and still graduate from high school even if we are often absent from school. According to a survey conducted by Djemari Mardapi and Badrun Kartowargiranonal in 2009 (taken from octoferiana.blogspot.com) about 41% of the junior high students feel very tired because they have to study more for the national exam, even though they have studied the materials for 3 years. There are about 66% of the teacher said the same thing and about 53% of the high school teacher said that their students become stress because of the national exam. The stress comes from the lack of self-confidence when the students face the national exam. Not yet ready for it, the pressure of the 3-days exam will determine their fate in high school, and they may also think that if they bad score in the exam they cannot enter a good university. These are a few example of the many reasons that make the students stress in facing the national exam.

               Many students do not know the function of the subject they learnt in school for their life. This cannot be blamed entirely to the students, because sometimes even the teacher who teaches a subject does not really know the benefit of the lesson they taught for the students and only focused on how to make the students get a good score. Many teacher neglect to tell the importance of studying a subject before teaching it to the students. This makes the mindset of the student put on ‘how can I get a good score?’ instead of ‘what can I take from this lesson for my life’. This kind of mindset often also makes the student ends up memorizing the materials for the exam then forget it after the exam rather than trying to understand the essence of the subject and find a way to implement it in their daily lives.

               Education is not only about getting a good grade in an exam but, it is about how we can implement the knowledge for the better of the society. Therefore understanding a subject and getting a good score but no real action means nothing. We, the university students have to start from ourselves to change the mindset of only getting a good score become how to be useful for the society as well as improving our soft skill. It is because in the future, the one that will decide the fate of Indonesia are us, whether it will become better or worse.

Sources

Feriana, Okto. 2013. Menuju perubahan melalui matematika ICT. http://oktoferiana.blogspot.com/2013/10/dampak-ujian-nasional-terhadap.html

How to Choose a Major

After graduating from high school, many people prefer to continue their study in a university rather than to search for a job. While some of them have decided which major to choose, there are still many people who are still confused or haven’t decided which major they would take for continuing their study in the college. Deciding which major we choose is a very important thing to do when we want to continue our study in a college, because it will affect our life as a college student as well as our future. Many people are having difficulties in choosing what major to take, in fact deciding which major to take can be done by two simple steps.

               The first and the most important step is find and determine your passion. It can be done by asking other people, conduct personality test, and many other methods. In choosing a major, it will be better if the major is the same or at least connected with our passion. We have to know what we are interested in, because when we are interested in something, we usually will be pleased to learn about it. Knowing our passion is the most important thing to do when we want to choose our major, and even if we only have very little knowledge in that area, it is not a big problem. Because we will try to improve our knowledge. Avoid choosing a major what we have a little interest in. Sometimes parents want their child to choose a certain major just for prestige even though the child doesn’t like it. The best solution is try to talk to the parents and explain to them about it. If we choose a major that we have little or no interest of it, it will be difficult for us to learn

               Next, when choosing our major, think about the future. Job opportunities is one of the thing that we must consider. Try to visualize what the world will be like when we graduate from college and try to get job, whether there will be many job opportunities or not. After we graduate from college we will have to work to feed our family, so when there is big probability that it is difficult to find the job, try to find another major which has better job opportunities in the future. Beside job opportunities, think about what we can do in the future that makes human’s life better with our knowledge. This can motivates us when we feel bored.

               As passion and the future is a very important thing to consider when we choose our major, by considering our passion and the future, we will have less problem than when we choose our major without thinking about it. By choosing a major that matches our passion, it helps us to deal with any problem whenever they come in our way.