Five Lessons I learn from India (2)
Posted on November 29, 2007
Filed Under Blogger Indonesia, Culture, Education, Fatih Syuhud, Indonesia, Indonesian Blogger
Lesson #3: Simplicity and humility–substance over physical appearance.
This is India’s strong point, and our unflattered weakness. We tend to appreciate whatever “visible” to the naked eyes more than what the real thing is. We tend to praise the physical beauty than the inner quality; we are the blatant worshipper of consumptive attitude which is–as Fareed Zakaria puts it–the rotten egg, not the inner stuffing–of modernity.
If Indonesian as a society wants to make a change toward the better in any domain of lives–including the corrupt mindset and practices among bureaucrats and any government officials from top to bottom and any educational institution both state-run and private ones, it’s from this point where we should start. To be more focus and concise, I’ll give you two examples which is representing our educational institution “dignified” tendencies. The educational institution is a barometer and the avantguard of society, call it the purest segment of a particular society. If this institution is tainted, so are the others.
- Educational insitutuion: Luxurious building first, quality teaching staffs, good lab, and big library later. If you want to establish a university or school in Indonesia, first and formost is to build a good or luxurious building with air conditioned. Don’t think much about big library, quality teaching staffs, etc –they are not necessary. The later are not something to be proud of. And none of the students will pay attention anyway.
- University professors or lectureres have to live in dignified way. By “dignified” means you gotta have a nice car, hence the emergence of flying professors. Your colleagues and the rich students will look down upon you, when you just a professor with motor cycle–not to say a bicycle. Everybody wants to stay away from such “undignified” and unclebrated professor. In India, however, we often see professors riding their old bike or old scooters. They are not poor. Some of them are also teaching in world prominent universities abroad, Amartya Sen the nobel prize winner just to mention one of them. That’s just their lifesyle.
- In Indonesia, the urge to live a “dignified” lives really push the university professors and school teachers to live beyond what they really are capable of. This is where the corrupt practices in the schools and universties start. (to be continued)
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For me India is the mother of simplicity, she teaches us how to focus to substance rather than to the superficial stuffs, I got surprised when I visited a university class there,they still use chalk to write on a black board.
i wish professors in Indonesia are more humble like the
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