Learning from life is in no way less significant

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): In the view of educationists, there are three kinds of education that every person goes through in his or her life -- formal, nonformal and informal education.

Formal education is the education that we get during our years spent in the formal school system. Nonformal education is the education we obtain after leaving the formal school system and begin to take an active role within the society. This type of education is provided by institutions outside the formal school system, like study-clubs, pre-service and in-service programs within a working unit, and the like.

And what is informal education? Unlike formal and nonformal education, informal education is an event that happens to us without being planned in advance, and very often without us realizing it. It is an experience that we come across in our life and which we regard as enriching us educationally. If you sit in a bus or a train, and you strike up a conversation with a person sitting next to you, and you feel later that the conversation is very valuable to you, then you just had an experience in informal education. If you read a magazine and you come across an article that you find very instructive, you also just had some informal education. In both cases you didn't plan the event. It just happened to you.

In certain cases, it is very hard to distinguish an act of nonformal learning from an event of informal education. The difference is, in my opinion, basically that of intent. We cannot have a nonformal education experience without intending it, without consciously reaching for it. Experiences of informal education, on the other hand, just come to us without being sought after, without us even thinking of it. In most cases, experiences of informal education come to us in an unexpected way.

For comparison, let us examine acts of nonformal learning. If we deliberately go to see a friend whom we respect and consider wise, and during the encounter we learn something very valuable from this friend, it is an experience of nonformal education. We deliberately go to this friend to learn something.

Likewise, if we reach for a book that we consider a treasure, and after reading it we feel that we have learned something very valuable again, something that adds to our wisdom, this is also an act of nonformal learning. In both cases the element of intent is there.

In general, persons who are humble, wise and ambitious in a healthy manner realize intuitively the presence or oncoming of informal education opportunities. They feel these opportunities, they smell them as they were. They seize those opportunities and become wiser and more enlightened as a result. On the other hand, persons who are complacent, arrogant and ambitious in an unhealthy way, seldom realize when such opportunities occur. And consequently they do not benefit from them.

Over the years, the difference between those who make use of opportunities for informal education and those who are indifferent towards such opportunities can be tremendous, even though they may have enjoyed the same type and level of formal education.

What I want to say through these illustrations is that the value of both nonformal and informal learning for each of us is great. This is also true for us as a nation. Especially in these modern times, where information is overabundant and changes occur with alarmingly speed, we will never be able to grasp the meaning of developments around us if we rely merely on our formal education in our encounter with these complex happenings.

It is a tragedy, in my view, that too many among us view formal education as the most important in life and think that if you have had a good formal education when you were young, you have no need for nonformal and informal education for the rest of your life. These people think of nonformal and informal education as mere substitutes for formal education.

This is an outdated notion of nonformal and informal education. I share indeed the notion that formal education is very important in life. The more solid the formal education we had when we were young, the greater our capacity will be for nonformal and informal learning later in life. But this does in no way mean that we need no additional education next to our formal one.

In view of the vast amount of new things we have to learn as a nation to prepare ourselves for life in the 21st century, the task of building up national capability for nonformal and informal learning becomes very urgent. Unless and until we master this capability, we will never be able to respond to the challenges before us in a timely and intelligent manner. Unless and until we become capable of grasping the meaning of all the perplexing phenomena around us, we will never become a really modern and democratic nation.

In our case, modernity and democracy are intimately intertwined. We cannot become democratic unless we become modern, and we cannot become modern without becoming democratic. Alexis De Tocqueville (1805-1859) said in this respect: "Amongst democratic nations, each new generation is a new people." Can our youngest generation of active citizens be considered a new people compared to our oldest generation of citizens who are still active in civic matters? I really don't know.

As I see it, the great obstacle we are facing in this regard is that while learning opportunities are in abundance in our environment, we do not seem to have the ethos to use these opportunities. Most of us seem to prefer to use new electronic devices as an entertainment media rather than as a learning media. This situation seems to be complicated by the fact that there are too many unnecessary restrictions to learning in our society today. We cannot freely discuss things we deem important for our national survival. We are not free to question assertions whose validity we sincerely doubt. We are not even free to have such doubts.

Clearly, we will never become a nation capable of learning effectively as long as we do not improve our learning ethos, and, as long as these hurdles to free learning are not removed from our culture. So, how do we go from here? Again, I really don't know.