UNDERSTANDING AND APPLICATION OF SEJAHTERA IN EDUCATION

    Education plays an important role in the economics and social sustainable development while sejahtera is vital to ensure an education is well developed to be taught to the nation. Sejahtera can be understood as “to arrive at the state of wellbeing” or “balanced and harmonious”. As a student in a high institution and a former school student who left school 3 years ago, I can say that Malaysia is now working to improve our education system (school system) to achieve 17 sustainable development goals. The application of sejahtera in school can be seen in the classroom and also outside the classroom. I believe that school should not just be focusing on sports and academics and the action taken by the ministry is indeed right as they applied sejahtera in schools. They have put more attention in producing a student that is well prepared for today and also the future, which is after their school life. Going back to the meaning carried by the word sejahtera, education should be balanced especially in the 21st century classroom and this is applied  by the teacher. For example, if a teacher teaches english subject in school, she/he will relate it with other issues that are circulated in that particular time so students are able to think out of the box and at the same time be able to achieve learning objectives. Here, sejahtera is applied to education in students where students will not just understand certain topics in the textbook for exam in school but also be able to maintain their critical thinking to ensure they are prepared for the future. 

Other than that, the concept of sejahtera can be seen in our education system where students’ physical, emotional and mental health are well taken care of by the teachers especially during this pandemic. Although we can see a few little students ranting on social media about their mental health, I believe we cannot put the blame purely on teachers but to look at the whole situation such as time management of the student itself and the workload given by teachers. As for me, most of my instructors are really understanding and they also are tolerable especially during this pandemic where everything is hard and affected. For example, let’s say that we face difficulty in joining online classes, the lecturer will record it and email it to us so we can also learn like other students when we have a better line connection. If we have too many assignments that need to be submitted at a time, we may also discuss and explain so she/he may lengthen the due date to ensure our mental and physical health is stable. Above example shows how sejahtera is clearly applied in education where harmonious and fair decisions were made to ensure no one was left behind and the stability of mental, physical and emotional were also taken into account. 

In conclusion, it is clear that our education system applied the concept of sejahtera and it has brought eases to everyone involved in it. Sejahtera is indeed important not just to the education system but also in our daily life so everyone will not be doing something too much or too little as sejahtera requires us to have a stable, harmonious and balanced way of life.