Designing good education system is a quest for all governments

Illustration of Children Studies at School (Photo: www.unicef.org)

Education system is an important part of a country’s development. How to provide a proper education system fitting to young generation needs is hard to design.

Indonesian government recently drafted a new curriculum for primary school and has gotten  various feed-backs from its people. Indonesian Ministry of Education drafted a reform on the subjects that is required for Primary School and suggested to integrate natural science and social science to other required subjects such as mathematics and Indonesian Language. It also erased English from the list of required subjects.

The concern over how well the integrated subjects would help young Indonesians to gain knowledge in a vast subjects of natural and social sciences, remains unclear. Lack of science knowledge and later not being able to read research papers from scientists around the world because of the lack in English would be a shortcoming for Indonesians in gaining more knowledge to help develop the country.

In another part of the globe, different story is taking place. In Sweden, the government suggests on adding up Mandarin as an alternative language beside Spanish, German and France that have already been in the system.

One of my Swedish friends commented on it, criticizing the plan that it would put too much burden on the children. His main concern is that under the system the children will not have as much time to rest and play as they deserve to get as children.

Looking at the Korean education system that produce so many bright children and won gold medal for Mathematics Olympics this year, but it does not come without sacrifice. Korean students study for 14 hours a day. After school hours, they then go to cram school to prepare for the College Scholastic Ability Test, also known as Suneung (수능), which is a type of standardized test accepted by all South Korean universities in the morning.

The pressure and competition in academic field become one of the reason of high rate of suicide among young students in South Korea. According to WHO data, South Korea has the second highest suicide rate in the world after Lithuania.

Designing a good education system  in ways of benefiting children and providing them with knowledge efficiently is a big challenge for every government around the world.

Meidyana Rayana Intern Reporter news@theasian.asia