BADAN PENGELOLA HARIAN PENDIDIKAN DAN RISTEK

Masjid Al-Markaz Al-Islami Jend. M. Yusuf

AL-MARKAZ FOR KHUDI ENLIGHTENING STUDIES (MAKES)
EDUCATIONAL INEQUALITY
(Part 1)
Poor people and villagers ”are not” allowed to go to schools

By: Z

Consider Unyil, son of a municipal high official who lives prosperously in the capital city.
Every day, he goes to school picked up by his driver from his mansion. In school, he and his
affluent friends use computer to do their math assignment from their teacher. On the other side,
Bolang, a child living in a shack in his remote village, goes to school by walking down the hills
along with his other companions. Studying in a small class and reading his books on the
weathered table are his daily life in school. Though he is at the same grade with Unyil, Bolang
knows nothing about computer. Instead of using calculator, he uses gravels gathered from a
riverbank close to his school for studying math. They use an old fashion blackboard with some
white chalks bought once a month by their teacher from the closest suburb which can be reached
by motorcycle in 1 day journey.

GAP

The contrast condition described above on how those two kids in one generation
experiencing different education in their schools portrays the social reality of education divide of
rich-poor which is mostly drawn as rural-urban discrimination. It indicates that children in the
cities were given more access to high-quality schools than those of their peers in the villages.
The major problem is that poor people are provided with schools, but unlike those elite schools
in the cities, not with proper facilities to develop. The exclusion of the poor children increases
the number of uneducated and illiterate rates of villagers which keeps them to be left behind.
While cities grow faster each time, villages remain undeveloped. Ignoring education in villages
will delay their life improvement (as the impact of late adoption), and impede villagers’ welfare
to grow which eventually makes them laggard.

Lack of education for poor children in village should be tackled with higher attention,
because it is imperative to improve rural people’s life before thinking about overall development.
There are many ways to improving education in rural areas. Make access to good education for
underprivileged children, which is demonstrated by cheap and affordable education, skilled
teachers, good teaching tools, and many other conveniences, is the most important things to be
provided to make students’ passion for study to rise. Education is one of basic needs of human
(after oxygen, of course). Moreover, education is a primary need for building the country, where
children will play their roles as the holders of our nation’s future. Addressing issues on
Indonesian development is impossible to be realized without aiming its rural development, and
achieving rural development will be unworkable without resolving its education problem of rural
children.

* a reflection of national education day… commemorated on may 2, 2011..