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Community contribution must

Young Bites. Dated: 8/18/2017 11:22:07 AM

Educational systems in rural areas have different challenges compared to those in the city. Based on my experience, it depends on the problems, caused every rural places has unique character. It is the crucial part after doing such assessment in the school and community. In some rural places, the problems maybe very complex, and other places maybe just mediocre. Don’t expect too much to change a thing, a small step and permanent result is important to make it sustainable rather than see the school as programs or projects to develop. In rural education, usually we already have well developed plan that makes us unaware about the community. Forgetting about society and local community contribution is biggest mistake of rural education. Unlike education in elite school, rural education needs to take into account community contribution. We also need to take into account economy aspect of community such as what is the parent’s occupation, where the school located, are the community aware about education, and it can be part of promoting some educational goals. We can also understand what the aspiration among the community is and creating sense of ownership is a serious issue. Since teachers work in rural areas, they can be easily stress and overburden. Ensuring teachers well supported is crucial. When the recruiting process, employers need to ensure that teachers are aware of unavoidable challenges and lack of support. So, recruiting the best teacher is the best option. Then, teachers need to have enough time in terms of holiday and teacher development. The challenge will be very unique so that ensuring teachers well trained every time are crucial so that they can facilitate student learning well. Teacher also need do some extra work such as teaching students several times and teaching students some basic stuff because students never learn about it before. Also, several times teachers need to share with external educator such as lecturer and professor or experts to have some feedbacks about the learning process. Well, somehow this is the best option. Standardized test maybe make education meaningless because schools sometimes lack of support. Designing specific curriculum can help teachers and schools achieve certain goals faster and better and in the same time, students can still enjoy the learning process. This specific curriculum maybe not totally ‘new’, just adds some certain things that do not cover in national curriculum. Well, students have their own opinions and voices. Their imagination and feedback is crucial. We need to take into account student perception. Education is not only filling students with knowledge but students can create their own direction of we give only facilitate and support them. Poor educational achievement in rural communities is one of the major impediments to improving employability, and therefore to economic advance. In developing countries, millions of children have little or no education, and many leave school without completing their studies. UNESCO estimates that 80% of school-age children who do not attend school live in rural communities. In rural areas, literacy and numeracy remain significant challenges. The educational divide between urban and rural communities is not improving, and is a key obstacle to reducing poverty and hunger amongst the affected communities. As long as rural educational standards lag, the wellbeing gap between urban and rural communities will widen.