Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts

October 23, 2009

Anies Baswedan: A Young Rector with Liberated Mind (part1)



If this is the first time you hear the name 'Anies Baswedan', it might be assumed that you're not quite familiar with Indonesian academic world. This very man is absolutely one of the remarkable figures in the country. 
Farhan the famous TV presenter got him on the show  "Tatap Muka" and interviewed him on his campus, the University of Paramadina. They were talking about some worthnoting issues this nation is dealing with now.

September 26, 2009

Restoring My Feeble Reading Mood


Don't know why it's harder for me to find some alluring ideas to be my post. So I'm now back to basic, I'm just going to tell you what I've been doing since this afternoon. Going to a department store with some relatives is what I just did. While they were having fun, sightseeing, and doing things I was ignorant of, I happened to discover a book section where some books were displayed, an effort of the department store to tempt some potential readers to buy.
It's been a while since the last time I stepped my feet on some place called 'bookstore'. I always think the Internet can offer anything free (though to get the free stuffs I have to spend quite big sum of money to get connected with the network, which sounds totally ironic!) so I think it's foolish to buy things or books in bookstores. I don't have to buy newspapers as the site already provides the print version.

But then I realized some books are not available online even if I use 24 hours a day 7 days a week to google intensively the whole virtual world to find the free e-books of all my favorite books. Some books are born printed and thus must be purchased, that's the conclusion I arrived at eventually.

I gazed at the racks and displays and nothing beats the sensation of holding the books you want to read and at the same time having a wallet full of money, more than enough to bring the book you want home. So liberated!!
But what I'm afraid of is becoming a book hunter not a book reader. I bought some books and novels but as time went by I just left them on my book shelf, which always makes me guilt-ridden every time I see them, like they're waving to me "How dare you leave us stranded here, covered with dusts..."

August 11, 2009

I DON'T REALLY LIKE NATURAL SCIENCES AND NEITHER DO INDONESIAN STUDENTS NOWADAYS....

"Govt to attract students to natural sciences" is the huge headline on The Jakarta Post a couple of days ago, which dragged me to my past memory. I preferred English Literature to exact,or natural science.
First of all, all my family members and relatives are not farmers, fishermen,or people related to any jobs requiring them to study or learn how to fish well, plant well, breed cattle well. So i don't really have any background or even wild imagination of earning my living as one of those. Therefore, I suppose it's a kind of cultural and mindset hindrance. How can Indonesia be a modern maritime,agricultural country while the parents don't really endorse the proud of being a maritime, agricultural country to their kids? Indeed, Indonesian still think that such jobs aren't quite prestigious. Most of them (and my dad isn't an exception) have a stance that having a job or getting a job as a govt civil servant is the best, as it is the safest, most financially guaranteed job. You get paid monthly, at a regular interval, without even having to think what to do something innovative, to create something new, to think creatively, which these people only consider as 'difficulty'. You just obey the rules, do what your superior tells to you to do, and that's it. But for some others, the difficulty may be viewed as 'challenge', 'opportunity'.
The universities try to tackle this by offering scholarships (like what the University of Indonesia's rector stated), changing the name of the subject into something more interesting (which sounds quite shallow and silly to me!), incorporating the natural sciences with other sciences to respond to the job market's demand, and giving grants to the existing natural science departments to develop or improve the infrastructure and overall quality.