RETANISA MENTARI

ESo Unila

Good morning ladies and gentlemen..

I often see some children around ATM center, traffic light, even in my neighborhood,
children whose ages are perhaps 9 and 10 years old selling tissue, newspapers, pempek at
school hours. While actually they should have been in classroom, studying with their friends.
I asked my neighbour named Ivan, who does that thing of why he does not go to school.
Then, he told me that his parents can not afford the financial for enrolling in school, also he
told me that for buying his favorite food is such a hard thing to do.

From those irony stories, me, Retanisa Mentari would like to deliver a speech entitled
Education is a Must. Ladies and gentlemen, education is a fundamental thing that everyone
should deserve in this modern society. Everyone has to be able to read, write, and access an
education. But sadly, our nation, Indonesia got the last rank out of 50 countries on behalf of
education system in the world. How can? What makes my neighbour choose to sell
newspaper rather than go to school?

Despite the successful of Indonesia’s economic development, it still fails to live the children
in Indonesia. Many still can not access high education. This might be caused by corruption
which has been a general problem of our country. Indonesia has a lot of natural resources that
should be a source for the education financial to those who can not access education, like my
neighbour, Ivan and where is the money? The irresponsible men take them away before it
even reaches to school or to those who need help accessing education.

That problem also causes the lack of facilitation for getting the education. When I was in
school, I could not see my teachers’ handwriting on the whiteboard beacuse as we know, not
all teachers have good kind of handwriting, so it made me lazy to keep my attention to the
lesson. While in Singapore, teachers use smart board to teach lessons. Ladies and gentlemen,
had you ever experienced being taught without any explanation? The teacher came to the
class, giving us a book, and asking us to make a short summary and answering questions
from the book. Later on, it causes us to memorize the materials then if we can not memorize
them, when exams, we cheat to our friends. This system gives too little room for our
creativity and makes students feel stressed out over many subjects which they should master.

So, what should we do with these problems? Starting from ourselves, we have to be grateful
for this opportunity, to be able accessing school until university. As an English Education
student, I always dream to be one of high qualified teachers, so at least I can create one high
RETANISA MENTARI
ESo Unila

achieving child. Can you imagine if Indonesia gives free education to all children, great
facilitation with comfortable place for studying, and wide room for creativity? I am sure there
will be no more Ivan who could not access education. So, what we need are easy access for
education, high-qualified teachers to teach properly, and more focus on open communication
or group projects rather than memorization. Then, we can produce high achieving and
creative young generations for Indonesia.

Ladies and gentlemen, school or education is something we have to do, something we have to
access. The more children can access education, the better Indonesia will be. Last but not
least, there is a quote by Malala Yousafzai saying that 1 child, 1 teacher, 1 pen, and 1 book
can change the world.