The Value of Oneself

How people would value themselves?
How people would value others?

There are many ways to describe how people are valued but all of those values falls into the grace of the one that valued. Those values sometimes may vary and falls into judgement and subjectivity. Nevertheless, value is something that detemines actions against the valued which under concequence can bring destructive result or something good.

Now, how do you value your life?

In my first year, I learn that in Statistics we have three types of values. But, because of my degrading of knowledge, I can only provide two types of values which is, I think, really matters on this scope of writing.

The first type of value is NOMINAL. This type of value is the type of value that falls into the grace of concencus. The real example of this type of value is the value that written in your money, e.g. Rp 50,00 or Rp 1000,00. The next good example is the grade of your school lesson. They would grade you from scale 0 to 10, 0 to 4, or just simply from A to F.

This type of value have something in common:

First, their grade is based on rought estimation. The value is calculated based on some part of estimated examination of the valued.

For example, to judge one's overall Mathematics capability, the academic system use grades based on the paperworks and tests. Even if the test is grading on a subject, they only cover some parts of every subject, which determined by the tester to tell which part is the most important and may represents the whole. The tests then graded based on scale and using standard means or weighted means calculation then the end result determines the one value.

Second, their grade is based on the subjectivity. From the mathematics grading example, we can see that how many times we may say that something is objective, it would end as something subjective. Now, if for instance we have a test about vectors. What would be fit to the test? Tester, the teacher, would choose parts that they mostly understand or have taught.

Third, their grade is based on the situation at the time. Even if the value would mostly representate the one being valued, it would mostly represents the valued at the time. Imagine this, you are in the street and you take the picture of it. You may say the value is the picture of that street at that time, but how far the street changes, the picture would never change.

When one being tested of any subjects, there are many things would affect one's thinking effectiveness. At the time, the test subject may understand it very well because of the preparation before. The test subject may also becomes failure because at the time the test subject running the test late, on unpleasant environment, anxiety, or the health of test subject makes the test subject cannot be one true self. But, whatever the condition at the time, it would in the end represents all the time took.

Four, THIS TYPE OF VALUE IS NOT REAL. Yes, my friend, this type of value is not real. Once in my Statistics class, my dean/teacher* asked us about a case of a drop out student. It is an anomaly for a high passing grade faculty to have failure in their class. If they are failure wouldn't they failed from the start?

I simply concluded at the time by saying human is a changing variable. You may be hero for most of the time, but at certain times, you may be a pain in the ass. You may be failure for most of your life time, but at some important time, there may be times where only you who can fill the vacancy.

This judgement actually also comes from a point of view. If we broaden the view, then we would say that the student is not a failure. He is trying to make his family survive. Which by this type of objective point of value, he is in the next step of success.

The perspective of thinking also making one judgement over other answer is vary. How can you tell the richness of a person?

When my dean/teacher* asked us why Indian people would study in America and never returns while Indonesian would do otherwise, I give my short answer saying that Indonesian students are rich students. Of course I know not all Indonesian people are come from high income families. Many Indonesian students depends on scholarship. But, when they come back, they would be treasured. They would have jobs and they have potential to gain high income. In the end, they would be a rich people with probability of more thatn 95%.

Imagine of Indians, when they got back, they would be treasured based on their order status, no matter how far they achieve. Their potential of being rich is thus nothing compared by Indonesians because their order status. Indians do not own the land they were born, but Indonesians does. So, by my point of view based on the potential of being rich, Indonesians is a rich person while Indians not.

But, then again, my perspective at the time is not de facto as the correct one. Because, in other point of view, Indians is the rich people while Indonesians not. They would respect Indian over Indonesian in terms of software developer employment. Their culture is more recognise than the whole of Indonesian. Dangdut music is simply from India.

In the end, the way how NOMINAL value are given is based on a short periode of time and in a perspective point of view. That's why nominal would never represents the real value. So, why are we using nominal values?

The new Indonesian Curriculum has put out the ranking system down. The tendency of misusing student's rank report is making the educators, parents, and students biased against the true purpose of education system. They have their mindset to achieve higher rank, greater value in school report than to have the students understands the academic subjects. By making the ranking system thrown out, the false thinking may also be thrown away and making the education system in the right track.

NOMINAL value have the tendency of misleading people from knowing who they are. It has an effective way to make people choose the improper action and making their mindset incorrectly written. But, NOMINAL value is not as bad as it seems.

By using rank tests and paperworks, the educators would evaluate how effective their teaching. The test result would make the students understand what have they miss in the evaluation. Parents would also can see how much their children progressing.

So, nominal value could be use as a tool to evaluation so that one can go further. That's it. But it can never be the true color of oneself.

Now, consider this. How many times it takes for you to build your own degree? How much the cost that spent on you education?

You have live until this very moment of reading this blog. How many food do you take? How many attention you have took from people surround you? How much cost have spent on you?

Even if you are considered ugly at this time, but how much cost spent on nursering you?
Even if you are not a perfect person, how many people have spent their time knowing you?
Even if you have no people behind you or everyone have cause you difficult time, how much it takes to make you at this point?

The price of molding one into something is called INTRINSIC value. This type of value is represents the real value of the valued. It represents the total cost that have been spent to have the current state.

So, why not think of your intrinsic value instead of nominal value?

--
*Note: At that time he is our Dean and also our Statistics Teacher

Comments

Popular Posts