A Better Future

 “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.