MIKIGA, Taught the Child of SD to Love Agriculture
At the moment, the interest toward the agriculture was starting to be left from the level of SD to the university level. The interest of young generation was to occupy the field of agriculture to start showing the significant reduction. The sample case was the happening of the reduction of the interest to the Faculty of Agriculture in North Sumatra Province up to reaching 80% in 2011.
The interested person in this Faculty of Agriculture was not more than 60% from the quota or capacity available. Then in the last 2008, there were 2,941 seats of the study program of agriculture in the State University without the interested person. Based on the survey done at SDN Babakan Dramaga 05, Dramaga Sub-district, Bogor District, the interest and the insight of the child toward the agriculture was still relatively low.
Thus, to finish the problem a group of IPB students felt the need to give solution to the introduction of agriculture which was interesting, satisfying and containing the creativity element to the children of SD. The group of students consisted of Ihsan Alfalah, M. Haikal Catur Saputra, Iskandar Zulkarnaen, Ricky Sidik Perman, Ikhwan Ibnu Arbi.
“The glowing of the electronic games which develop rapidly lately also influences toward the decrease of interest toward the agriculture in the young generation circle, including the children. They tend to like the games than to play in the agricultural environment, whereas these games can lower the level of creativity. At the moment, there is not much introduction of agriculture to the children mainly the level of SD,” said Ihsan Alfalah when being interviewed by Pariwara Team of IPB after the presentation in Monitoring and Evaluation (Monev) PKM IPB 2012 in Campus of IPB Dramaga (10/5).
According to him, the introduction was not much packed interestingly and contained the creativity elements, whereas the introduction at the level of SD was the beginning or basic education. At the moment, the child started to know the education in truth. They started to know various kinds of knowledge, the ways to socialize and play. In this phase, it could be stated that the activity was based on three basic aspects, i.e., knowledge, attitude and skill. The three aspects were the basic or base of education which was the most important. This was because the three aspects were the things which were the most authentic in life.
The activity was carried out through Student Creativity Program – Social Service (PKM-M) which titled MIKIGA: Mini Kids Garden as the media for educative and creative playing through the concept of mini farming to increase the child’s interest toward farming.
This program was carried out at the SDs throughout Dramaga Sub-district, Bogor District by involving children and teachers. The involvement of teachers in this program headed for the children to get guidance, motivation, directive and evaluation to be able to learn creatively with the planned and systematic curriculum. This MIKIGA media taught the child for developing the mini farming autonomously.
“Besides that the children are trained to develop their levels of creativity in making the cattle doll and the components of mini agriculture which are made from the use of environment waste. Then, they are given the knowledge about the way to plant, take care, and harvest the vegetable plants in the media. This is done in order the child has the agricultural spirit and the care for environment since early. Therefore, this socialization is expected to be able to increase the child’s love toward agriculture and apply it in the daily life,” he added.(zul)
