The Formation of Good Morals Gives Birth to a Quality Next Generation of the Nation

Every learner has the right to receive proper education and teaching as stated in the 1945 Constitution article 31 paragraphs (1) and (2), which says that every citizen has the right to receive education and every citizen is obliged to attend basic education and the government is obliged to fund it. This is certainly a demand on Indonesia's education system to improve all components of education so as to achieve the true goals of education. The success of education cannot be separated from many factors, the main one being the quality of the teacher as both instructor and educator. One of the competences a teacher must have is teacher professionalism.

Teacher professionalism is a teacher's ability to carry out their duties as an educator and instructor, such as the ability to plan, implement and evaluate learning. A professional teacher is the hope of all of us, because by improving teachers' abilities to become professional teachers, the quality of education in Indonesia is expected to improve.

Learners need to be educated and nurtured by professional teachers so that the resulting quality will be better. A professional teacher should have the four teacher competences stipulated in Undang-undangRepublikIndonesiaNomor14Tahun2005TentangGurudanDosen namely pedagogical, personality, professional and social competence. Therefore, besides being skilled at teaching, a teacher must also have broad knowledge, be wise, and be able to socialise well.

Law Number 14 of 2005 concerning teachers and lecturers, Chapter III, article 7 (1), states that the teaching profession and the lecturer profession are fields of work specifically carried out on the basis of the following principles: having talent, interest, a calling of the soul and idealism; having a commitment to improving the quality of education, faith, piety and noble character; having academic qualifications and an educational background appropriate to the field of duty; having the competence required for the field of duty; having responsibility for carrying out professional duties; earning an income determined according to the field of work; having the opportunity to develop professionalism continuously through lifelong learning; having legal protection in carrying out professional duties; and having a professional organisation with the authority to regulate matters relating to teachers' professional duties.

If we elaborate the points above into a main idea, they roughly mean that the teaching and lecturing professions are jobs that contain duties and responsibilities to be carried out based on expertise in the field of work, able to develop scholarly writing and able to pursue the profession throughout one's life. The main idea can also be distilled into three important points related to teacher professionalism, namely expertise, commitment and skills.

What we can grasp from these important points of the principles of teacher professionalism is the ideal order of an educator, but in reality the education we face today tells a different story. News from the world of education is quite concerning: almost half of the roughly 2.6 million teachers from elementary school to senior high school in Indonesia do not have sufficient competence to teach, or it can be said that their qualifications and competence are insufficient for teaching in schools.

Quoted from kompas, there are around 605,217 elementary school teachers, 167,643 junior high school teachers, 75,684 senior high school teachers and 63,962 vocational high school teachers who do not have sufficient competence to teach in their fields. It is not surprising that the quality of our teachers ranks 109th out of 179 countries based on the Human Development Index. If these data prove valid, it is quite shocking that we, who have chosen the profession of educator, a place to serve and strive to prepare the nation's children who will take up the baton for the rise and fall of this nation in the future, should have such low quality.

Teachers, often called “unsung heroes”, hold a profession in education that is very often in a less advantageous position than other professions such as bank employees, Telkom employees and some private company employees. Not to mention when compared with teachers in several other countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, Australia and America.

Teacher welfare in Indonesia is still far below theirs, although we know that lately there has been an improvement in teacher welfare thanks to teacher certification. Even so, many people still doubt teachers' professionalism, for at least two reasons: many teachers and lecturers do not deliver work that satisfies the public, and there is a public view that educators' work can be done by anyone, not necessarily a teacher. This situation will certainly affect the general view of the educator profession.

Nevertheless, we can still be proud because whenever new civil servants are recruited, this field is still quite popular with those who want to become teachers. Although the author does not know their reasons for competing for these positions, we hope their reason for becoming educators is not merely that no other jobs are available. This work is truly very noble because the progress or decline of a country can be seen from how advanced the education in that country is.

The more advanced a country is, it can be assured that its education is advanced. Conversely, the less developed a country is, the quality of its education is clearly not good. Furthermore, education will advance when teachers, as one of the determining factors, are of high quality and truly competent in their chosen field. Therefore, in developed countries (Australia, Japan and even Singapore), the teaching profession receives salaries no less than those of other state employees. They realise that teachers are crucial for a nation's future progress through education.

One factor that may explain why education in our country is less advanced than in several other developed countries is that the budget allocated by the government is still relatively low: it was 10% before, and now it is only 20% of the state budget. Compare that with Malaysia, which allocates 20% and, it can be said, has no leakage (corruption) in its use. Besides the small education budget in our country being further reduced by the reality of leakage (corruption), we must also be open to the fact that teachers' qualifications in our country are still quite concerning. The quality of teachers as the backbone of the teaching and learning process is still very low. In terms of education, there are still very many teachers who do not meet the minimum educational qualifications for each level.

Seeing the reality above, choosing the profession of educator is a very brave choice and deserves applause. These people are among the chosen ones, strong against the temptations that discriminate against the role of an educator. To this day, the unpleasant nicknames, or puns, about the teaching profession have not completely disappeared from our memory. Some call teachers “nek minggu turu” (sleeping on Sundays), and others say teachers are “wagu lan kuru”. (awkward and thin). Even in higher education we often hear lecturers (dosen) twisted into “omongane sak dos, duite sak sen”, which means they talk a lot but earn very little.

Despite these unpleasant nicknames, and considering the noble duty of educators in advancing a nation in the future, let us think optimistically: for now teacher welfare is still less favourable compared with teachers in developed countries, but we must believe that being an educator is a very noble deed whose reward will be felt even after we die.

Buya Hamka, in his book entitled Lembaga Hidup, said that a teacher or instructor should be honest and frank with learners. Give them teaching according to their level of ability to think, adjusting to their level. Be honest in accepting whatever happens in the classroom. If a learner understands a problem far better than we do, respect them and praise them according to their ability.

When a student asks a question we cannot answer, have the courage to say “sorry, I do not know the answer yet, and I will try to find out in the future” or you can also say “give another learner the chance to answer it”. Never discriminate between one learner and another, because it can give rise to envy, jealousy or favouritism. Share your affection equally among all learners.

Besides teaching the knowledge we are engaged in, also slip in meaningful and useful advice so that they can gain added value from what is being discussed in class. The advice may be meaningful life experiences, ethical teachings, and even religion. Talk to them according to their level of thinking. Through this writing I hope the public will be more convinced that teachers are no longer what many people mock them as, but are people who will truly determine what learners become in the future and, more broadly, determine the rise and fall of a nation, and this is truly the ultimate aim of education in any country in the world.