Not Afraid (Doc: http://4.bp.blogspot.com)
Do you know what’s more boring than history? The same history that is taught over and over again. Don’t get me wrong or anything. I really do like history, just a different kind. And I have a lot of friends who are bored of history class. But maybe they aren’t bored of history class. Maybe they are bored of the same kind of history. Ever heard about that? So here’s an idea, why don’t schools have World History?
I personally love world history. But I never learned one bit of it from school and it is sad that I may never will. My upper grade classes stated that there is no other history than Indonesian History. If there was it was probably less than one-eighth of the book. I’ve searched and scattered my new History books just to find only an amount of less than 15 pages about history in other countries. 15 pages cannot cover World History. 15 pages is like, the World War 2 summarized.
And when I learned World War 2 in 8th grade at Junior High School, it was mainly the Indonesian perspective, the usual Netherlands colonizing Indonesia and forcing them to work. But World War 2 is more than that. Also, all my teachers said that the Netherlands were bad and cruel. But at that time, I guess it was normal for countries to do it. And if that event never happened, we might have not gotten stronger. Because of the Dutch and Japan colonizing us, we finally rose. We awakened from the slumber of doing nothing in particular, and worked together to fight of Japan.
sw_01 (Doc: theatlantic.com)
Students can get bored really quickly and I can understand that because I am a student. But if teachers somehow showed us something new a couple times, we might get activated. The switch in the brain will turn on. Sometimes students don’t know what they want to be when they grow up. That is why it is the teachers’ job to show it to them.
I have seen my classmates get pumped about a subject onetime. We were studying astronomy in Geography class. The teacher was about to give an exercise but before that she asked if there were any questions. Most of the time no one has questions, but this time my friend and I agreed to ask as many questions as possible to waste time until the bell rang. And to my surprise, we actually learned something.
Soon all the classmates participated in this event and we began asking question about the Universe, Saturn, Comets, and Asteroids. At the end the teacher gave the exercise as homework, but no one really bothered, because we learned and were happy about it. If students are happy as they study, than the more easy it is to study. Kids are good in soccer because they practice it every day as they enjoy it. If they can do the same to studying then the easier it will be.
So please, teachers. If we can cooperate, then you should to by showing us the world. Show us more than Indonesian History. We already know that Indonesian History is important, but doesn’t that mean the history of other countries is important too? History isn’t just based on one single country. We need to see the world from different perspectives. It’s the same as a map to a globe, 2D to 3D, a cat to a dog.
If for all your life you’ve only seen a cat then the picture of a dog must blow your mind. If for all your life you lived in Indonesia, and suddenly you got a ticket to Egypt to see the Pyramids, wouldn’t that be amazing? If for all your life you have learned Indonesian History, and finally for the first time in your life you got to learn about Asian Dynasties and The Roman Empire, wouldn’t that be the most awesomous (I know that isn’t a word) thing ever?
The Indonesian Department of Education, if you read this I want to let you know that to make kids study more, the solution is not making more ‘Ujian Nasional’ papers so that kids don’t cheat, thus forcing them to study. Forcing is never a solution. You can’t make the horse drink water if he doesn’t want to. The solution is making studying more enjoyable.
Actor Sanders Jan Klerk (Doc: commons.wikimedia.org)
Thanks for Reading
Amri Mahardhika Dhimasanti