Education in Europe

When my former colleague, a Eurasian, was repatriated to Holland about four decades ago, he confided to me earnestly: "I love this country where I grew up, but for the sake of my children's education I have to go..."

Two other friends of mine, although they were Indonesian citizens, moved with their families to Germany. One settled down in Hamburg and the other in Berlin. Both admitted that they have done so for their children's education. However, when the children finished high school, they refused to attend a tertiary education center and preferred to live separately from their parents as soon as they found a job.

If they are not too choosy about the sort of job they want, especially as a manual laborer, it is not so difficult to secure one. In the same way as a fledgling bird leaves the parental nest, so is the son eager to leave his parents' house. To be independent seems to be the trait of the youth in Europe or even in America.

Needless to say that the parents were very disappointed, inasmuch as they had made a great sacrifice in moving to a foreign country, where in most cases, the parents could not secure a job of the same social level as that in Indonesia.

Ironically, there are many teenagers in Indonesia who are eager to continue their tertiary education in Europe but financial circumstances do not allow them to do so.

A. DJUANA

Jakarta