Education and duty
Education and duty
A distant relative of mine has 10 children: seven of them are sarjana (university graduates), two girls are assistant pharmacists and one son is a so-called 'stranded' doctor, meaning that he had to stop his medical studies midway. The father, who died a few years ago, was a wage earner, so it was not easy for him to provide the children with a proper education. And it was for this reason that the eldest son had to terminate his medical studies in order to assist his father as the breadwinner of the family.
Not only are the children blessed with a good set of brains, but each of them regards it as his or her responsibility to finance the younger brother or sister's education after finishing his or her own education at university. This is by no means an easy task for a man who lives on one salary alone.
Here is another picture of another family. Parents send their children to school in the hope that when they grow up and finish their education, they become law-abiding citizens, acquire a good position in the community and last but not least, they will consider it as their filial duty to support their parents when they are too old and feeble to work. These are the things that every parent hopes for, but in real life this is not always the case.
And what is most distressing is that it sometimes happens to the most ideal parents, who are law-abiding, honest, hard-working and yet sometimes parents find out to their dismay that the children are not what they hope for.
A son was sent abroad to study, naturally at his father's expense. After the son graduated, he landed himself a well paying job, but has no feeling of filial duty towards his parents and much less compassion for younger brothers who have no opportunity to study abroad. The son is financially well-off, but he does not think of relieving his parents of the financial burden to send his brothers to school.
I always believe that education creates law-abiding citizens, refined people but above all, the natural feeling of filial duty towards their parents. It seems that I am wrong, at least, in this case.
A. DJUANA
Jakarta