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hat is the objective of education? We should never stop asking ourselves this question. Nowadays, education is intended merely to obtain knowledge from books and acquaintances. Education is too focused on science and technology. Ethics and spirituality are absent from the curriculum. Consequently, there are many life aspects neglected in today'€™s education. The result is the calamity we can see today.

However, education should help students reach their potential. This can only occur if it is sustained with humanity. Therefore, education must imbue the young with love and benevolence. Thus, students are to be involved in order to acquire such character traits as humility, fortitude, gratitude and forbearance. If not, what then? But alas, we insist on privileging knowledge alone. This results in destruction: strife, violence, outrage, harassment, massacre, holocaust and so on. Education will not transform by itself without love. How do we learn, for example, to understand one another if we have no love? The result of defective education is a motherland of hatred and misery.

Despite all this, self-reliance is to be emphasized as the main basis of one'€™s personality. Only by that can a person become whole and mature. Hence, education must get the students to be able to shoo away all their rigors and cope with life as well. They must forge themselves beyond the boundaries. That is the hallmark of education. They must be helped to avoid becoming burdens on others, the state, the nation.

Students should be taught not to be accustomed to disorder themselves. They are to be educated to behave well wherever they are. Education needs to instill self-respect and respect for others into students. They must be trained through self-discipline, everyday manners, grace. These are the qualities of attitude that the young should have.

Even so, education should lead away from base knowledge to an understanding of the divine. Only through this can humans find inner peace. It is our duty now, because education is a sine qua non for mankind to bring this whole wide world into the utmost peace. That is education for ongoing transformation. There, the country will be safe and sound.

Juan Karnadi
University of Indonesia
Depok, West Java