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