Socrates, the founding father of Greek Philosophy, He is characterized as hugely pessimistic about anything related to democracy once falling into conversation with a character called Adeimantus In Book of The Republic.
He tried to get him to see the imperfections of democracy by equaling a society to a vessel. Socrates asks If you were going out on a journey by the ocean, who would you ideally want in leading the ship? Just random people or the educated/professional ones in the rules and demands of seafaring? The professional, of course, says Adeimantus, thus, why do we keep thinking that any old person should be fit to decide who should be a leader of a country? Answers Socrates.
Through that conversation, Socrates pointed out that voting in the election is actually a skill, not a random feeling. And just like any other skill surely, it needs to be taught to people. Because letting the citizen vote without proper education is as irresponsible as putting them in charge of sailing in a storm as described in the dialogue with Adeimantus. Socrates was not an elitist in the typical sense. He didn’t accept that a narrow few should only ever vote. He did, though, insist that only people who had thought about matters rationally and profoundly should be let near a vote.
We now may have misremembered this distinction between an intellectual democracy and a democracy by patrimony. We have given the right to vote to all without connecting it to that of wisdom. And Socrates knew precisely where that would end up: which is to a system called, demagoguery. Indonesia for instance, a struggling democratic country where at the moment its education system is also one of the poorest on earth. How dangerous it is, while across countries, education and democracy are highly correlated.
The aim of education in a democratic, society such as to instill the values of cooperation, transparency, justice, and fairness into the hearts of our students are the ones which are missing in our education system. Then how on earth, we, who lack proper education system can deliver those values in the class to the students while there are not many teachers that have minimum qualifications.
Teachers cannot teach the students properly. Their income was also meager. This condition makes them to work hard outside of the school to increase their salary. The school sometimes is even closed because there is no teacher to teach. The students do not come because of access to the school becomes a flood. Or the students are not found the transportation to school.
Moreover, based on the monitoring of Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) between 2003 and 2013, there are 296 cases of educational corruption investigated by law enforcement and dragged 479 people as suspects. The state losses on all these cases amount to Rp 619.0 billion.
It is not surprising then Indonesia suffered significant declines in their scores slid from 48th to 68th place in 2016. These are some big problems of Indonesian education condition. The racial, religion, gender other ‘cheap’ issues would easily ignite us who do not have a high level of education and clear thoughts about how democracy should be applied in the society. As it has been proven on President Trumps’ victory, He got voted among from high school graduates or those with a lower level of education. However, Trump has the backing of 44 % compared to the 36 % who support Clinton.
We have been through that in the Governor election in Jakarta, although no statistical data showed such that profile. In the short period, Indonesia is entering its political years. That kind of cheap issues surely not possible will be used to gain people’s support by the candidate whether from House of Representative or Presidential.
We can imagine people across Indonesia will be faced by the candidates and politician with their vision and missions regarding regime if they are elected, then as a good citizen we suppose to check and analyze all those candidates’ vision and missions. Comparing each other who is more suitable and make sense to build their region. How do we all supposed to do that if we do not have a proper education or even we could not read. All they will consider would be mostly on the racial and other cheap issue which can endanger our nation. Money politics also would be used to gain the voters.
Law enforcement should indeed act as the avant-garde to prevent such that ‘dirty’ ways to be used by the politicians to gain the voters voice, otherwise it can endanger our national stability. But the most important thing is, again, it is the education is all that matters. It is the education that lasts to flourish our democracy as dreamed by Socrates.
Democracy is something that has to be preserved by citizens of our country. And the schools must be the first places besides family where students can be taught about democracy and a voice that is heard, and they must be able to take action on issues that they care about. If we do not push ourselves and government to focus on education, revitalizing the schools and caring about teachers, then we are condemning our democracy to further degradation. It is time we make the shift towards a democratic approach to education in our classrooms and schools.
