“I don’t want to be a
product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me.”
A quote from a 2006 movie, ‘The Departed’, shows that the
world you live in could form you. Not all people have an integrity which keeps
them from becoming what they want.
Education is one of the thing which could define a person.
Almost in every case, the first education a person gets is from their family.
People learn to read, to walk, to speak as their basic skills in their future
life. Stepping the age of 3, children goes to primary school. They would learn
basic manners such as eating, being polite, and being caring. As they goes to
elementary school, children will have their first experience in facing other
people. The school’s culture could really affect a children’s thought. Getting
older and older, what a person has gone through during their life will become a
part of their life. When a person is old enough, their characters would be damn
impossible to be changed. Then the question is, when is the right time to give
them education?
Compared to a forty years old man, a three years old child is much easier to be
educated. Education on knowledge is important, but education in manners is much
more important. From manner, it could
become a character. And from the character of a community, it could become a
culture, an ideology. Furthermore, the ideology of a generation will most
likely be inherited by the generations after, even though it will have changes
slowly.
Let’s not regret what has happened but instead let’s fix
before it’s too late. In order to build a better future, first it needs an
inception. Teach our kids to do little things like throwing trash in the bin,
smile when they meet people, be polite to others, and respect each other. Prevent
your kids from things which could be the inception of something bad. At least
avoid violence in the house. No profane word, no hatred. No matter how school
teaches their student, they don’t have the authority to control what the
students do at home, but school could make a subject, once a week, which
teaches their students manner. In school, usually there is something we call it
basic learning. The purpose is to shape the mind of a person so that it fits
the existing culture. No matter how everybody did to you, everything starts
from the person itself.
Imagine what humanity could have earned if we had been
living in harmony. It would just took years to teach knowledge, but it would
take a lifetime to teach about the meaning of living.
