The Byzantine Empire was the
Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and during the period
of Christendom. The Empire existed for almost a thousand years until it was
conquered by the Islamic Ottoman Turks and was converted to a Muslim City. The
Empire started to flourish since the edict of Milan and when later Christianity
becomes the state religion of the Empire. The Byzantium Empire has advances in
many areas such as spiritual, theological, commercial, artistic, and
intellectual. Focusing on the area of intellectual, we can see that the
Byzantium Empire became the intellectual center of the world, where academics,
libraries, and colleges grew; moreover, disciple was cherished as well. From the
Byzantine Empire we can learn that education is very important for a nation to
develop or flourish; therefore, with the strong power of intellectual, the
Byzantine Empire was able to flourish well in many areas.
In the modern Indonesia today,
many of the youngsters does not see the value in the intellectual power or what
we call the education; consequently, our nation was not able to prosper and develop
to become better compared to other nations. The youngsters of our nation tend
to be lazy and have no motivation to pursue their education; they prefer to
stay in their comfort zone, playing games and enjoying their life with friends
being unable to practice deferring their gratification. However, there are also
some people who were willing and were motivated to study, but were not able to
afford the facility; therefore, unwillingly remain uneducated. Because of this
our nation which has a great potential was not able to grow and maximize the
potential.
People should realize that
education is important for the future of their nation, and also their own
future. They should be able to motivate themselves and defer their
gratification of staying in the comfort zone. The government should also be
able to provide a facility for the people who were not able to afford education
so that everyone was able to have a chance for education since a developed
nation is marked by the quality of the education. Today, we can see that the nations
that have a good quality of education were able to flourish well such as our
neighbor, Singapore. The other example could be United States where education quality
was high as well; therefore, they were able to advance in technology, arts, and
many other areas
Before I came to MSA, I don't
think that education is important for me at all to become a successful person
since my parents’ inheritance is enough for me; furthermore, I don’t think of
any relation between education and building the nation. I always think that it
is all the responsibility of the government to develop the nation, which in
fact not. Now, my whole perspective of education changed such that I see education
as something very valuable and that I should always try to achieve the best; moreover,
now I also understand that education is not only for my own benefit, but also
for my nation since I also have the responsibility for my nation. One of my
goals in life is to contribute something for the development of my nation and to
leave a legacy for my nation.
Noah Webster, an American
educator and a political writer, says that the morality of a nation is
determined by the vocabulary of the youth. His statement shows how the low
educated people will just say whatever they know while the educated people will
be wise with their words. Sometimes people ignore the importance of the
vocabulary to the youth while it’s actually significant in determining a
nation’s morality. Education is one of the effective ways to developing and
improving the youth’s vocabulary that will also develop and improve our
nation’s morality. As the conclusion, the challenge in the world today,
especially in our nation, is to solve the irony in education where some poor
people who are willing to study but could not afford the education, while there
are many wealthy people who could afford to even learn in the best school but
have no motivation to study neglecting the importance of education and prefer
to live in their comfort zone. People should be aware that education is important
so that people are willing to study despite their condition that they may
eventually change their nation or even change the world.