This write-up is meant as a journalistic personal opinion based on life experience as a student, a parent and an individual living in a society.
My parents said that I insisted to go to school before I was school-age ready. But that could be because I saw my older sister went to school.
From elementary until middle school, my report cards show that I was simply an average student in the class. I was never in the top 30% of the class, out of 30 students.
Outside academics, I was not a competent sport player in both basketball and volleyball extracurriculars offered during middle school. I could not even manage to fulfill the music class requirement that every student must perform singing in front of the class. It still vividly stays in my memory that the music teacher, a wise man and respected by all students, allowed me to complete the singing requirement after the class was over. He helped me sing along as my voice did not tune with the note.
In 6th grade, I recalled I performed as one of the two best students in the art class, mainly focusing on handicraft projects.
Among all school subjects, a foreign language class, English, was the most consistent highest grade I could achieve. I recall that I had always taken outside school tutoring for English. That might correlate with the grade.
I was not the brightest student nor had any slight talent in sport and music.
In Indonesia, high school students in a junior year must select the program, either social studies or science. I chose social studies over a science program. A result not dealing with science subjects made my academic performance accelerated. The academic achievement of being the top of the class gave me confidence that I was capable of doing something, but not in science, sport and music.
From my experience, I believe that education provides priceless values and helps to build characters. It is a journey that everyone needs to experience as it helps to find their identity and learn to be a thinker.
Both my parents are undereducated. My mother only finished schooling until 6th grade, and my father completed up until 9th grade. That circumstance was a norm for their era and where they reside in a small city in Indonesia, a developing country that at the time it just became independent from Dutch and Japan colonization a little over a decade.
With my parents having low education, their parenting style was on par with their education level. Nonetheless, they were successful traditional entrepreneurs in their era. They could afford to send their three children to 4-years college.
By the American education standard, my siblings and I will be called the first-generation to graduate from college.
Without going into detail, I am now a parent of a teen. I believe education from school helps me to be a parent equipped with intellect when I compare to my parents.
